Desktop Linux

[Karsten Wade]

On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 14:58 -0400, swhiser wrote:

> The presentation speaks for itself as to why Linux can't get across.

I disagree, but that's mainly because a presentation of slides /= a real
report.  Fortunately, I read his article[1] as well.  Or do you mean,
because he used special Acrobat PDF extensions and non-free fonts, the
presentation looks terrible, and that speaks for itself?  That's like
blaming proprietary document formats being unreadable on the recipient,
instead of the sender and they proprietary software vendor.

The problem is, he is discussing Linux in general, as if it were one
entity.  Anyone is welcome to put the kind of polish on a desktop that
he is proposing, without having to make "all of Linux" do that.

I find his ideas contradictory.  For example, in his article he
specifically mentions the reversal of OK and Cancel in GNOME is stupid,
then he says, "... application developers need to make some of the hard
choices and stop falling back on the "make it a user option" solution
that seems to be all too popular in most software these days."

Well, are we to trust our usability experts to make these decisions or
not?  He seems to think yes, and well, no.  It depends on how "valuable
to change" an area is, versus how "comfortable" the change is.

As long as the future of Linux on the desktop is couched in the terms of
how like Windows it is for Regular Users, I think we'll do little more
than be a Windows UI clone.  Since the Windows UI sucks, why clone it?

After all, we already have Xandros.

FWIW, no amount of catering will get people to be unlazy.  I tend to
agree that a Windows2Linux migration project would be good and helpful,
but I already encounter people who were surprised at how easy a modern
Linux desktop is to learn.  Even if there were a feature-for-feature
compatibility and it all looked the same, what would be the value gained
for the few stragglers brought along?  This value would all be in the
hands of the people prepared to sell those new Windows-like desktops to
companies, which brings us back to the chicken-egg scenario.

- Karsten
[1] http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/008499.html
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
gpg fingerprint:  2680 DBFD D968 3141 0115    5F1B D992 0E06 AD0E 0C41   
                       Red Hat SELinux Guide
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/selinux-guide/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/attachments/20050816/5102bf52/attachment.sig>