No, seriously.
This mindset of, “If you don’t like to read pages of documentation to figure out how to do the thing you’re wanting to do, then maybe Linux isn’t for you?” Or the “god. How dare you ask such a STUPID question. You’re using Linux wrong and it probably isn’t for you. Go back to baby’s first OS!” Is the biggest gripe I have about using Linux.
Especially since the manpages are not written to always be comprehensible for end-users, but for developers and professionals. Some tools like tldr can help, however they rarely come preinstalled and aren’t getting the attention they deserve.
So you ever tried support with windows? Go to some crappy community site with people who barely know what they are talking about and try some powershell and regedit crap.
Or go read conflicting Microsoft documentation that always seems to make man files look easy.
Its computers. You read stuff to deal with stuff, the OS is irrelevant.
I can’t say I’ve ever ran into anyone like this. And the Arch wiki is so newbie friendly, I use it all the time and I don’t even use Arch.
Ive seen a lot of anti-gui sentiment but nothing I can remember enough to link to
There was a long time when a casual user would have been better off on Windows, but I don’t think that’s true anymore, at least not on every distro.
Just as you can use Windows for years and never need Group Policy or Regedit, you can do Linux just the same without terminal.
This is the area where I feel Linux has come the farthest since I became interested in it.
I just have never had a Linux system that didn’t require some sort of terminal work to fix the occasional bug. A couple of updates ago Fedora left me with conflicting packages that needed the terminal to straighten out.
Here’s the thing that a lot of long-term linux users don’t seem to understand: If it involves typing out a command in a terminal, or editing a configuration text file, 99% of casual users are already out. It doesn’t matter if they just copy-paste a command or have change a single number in a text file, they literally don’t even want to try, they consider that “too complicated”.
And yet I had to edit a config.json file for a program to run on my friend’s w11 pc yesterday, interesting…
I mean, you’re right, he was too dumb to do it, but also that was on windows.
Users copying and pasting random command line code from the Internet should be fine
It is how every community support page works.
For windows. Poweshell that regedit it will fix everything.
Had to do this recently for a borked nvidia driver on windows. Welcome to computers!
If you are using Linux you should learn terminal basics. The terminal is a very powerful tool that can be useful if you learn it. That doesn’t mean you need to use it all the time but it is nice to have in some cases.
I’ve been hearing about Linux elitists for the last 20 years, and I have yet to meet one. But what I do see is an endless wave of trolling and bad faith arguments about the supposed complexity of Linux.
They treat a wide array of developers, maintainers and enthusiasts as employees of Linux inc, and now they’re grumpy because their imaginary ticket submitted to a nonexisting helpdesk is not being processed.
I have recieved much more help and support from the Linux community than from any other proprietary software helpdesk.
I’ve been hearing about Linux elitists for the last 20 years, and I have yet to meet one.
Post/browse a help forum, it doesn’t take long to find them
YOU SHALL USE tty ON A 4K HDR SCREEN
I use Arch BTW!
In fairness sometimes users don’t want to hear the truth
I too have never seen this. I see a lot of people claiming they are there but don’t seen to find them. Been doing this a long time.
man this is a good linux meme, its funny and its real criticism of linux. why were all the linux memes shitty for a while there? why are they better now suddenly?
The problem is that the road between creating a piece of software that does something well, and then creating simplification layers on top of it is typically much longer than just “edit a config file” and “here’s a readme”.
You need extra documentation, config gating and workflow, warnings, UI/UX work etc.
I know there are Linux elitists but kind of expecting that much extra work for what is still at it’s core mostly volunteer software seems like it’s own form of elitism.
The thing is, simple can mean two things, and they are quite often at odds with each other.
It can mean simple to understand, or simple to use.
For example, a piece of software that’s just a binary, a config file and a man page describing the config file and the software’s behavior is generally quite easy to understand. Like, you can fit the idea of the program entirely into your mind and “comprehend” it, though it may not be easy to use for a novice.
By contrast, a piece of software that contains additional layers for easy of use, like a GUI to edit options, may be simple to use, but not necessarily simple to understand. The additional layers add more complexity that does not contribute to core functionality of the program, it can become unclear what gets changed where when you click on buttons, the config file is likely not documented, human readable or editable, or it may even be a completely opaque configuration database (the registry), … So making the software more simple to use, often makes it harder to comprehend.
I, and I think many other nerds, like software that is simple in the “comprehensible” sense, we want to be able to wrap our head around it completely and we don’t mind putting in a little bit of effort to achieve that comprehension, whereas other people prefer to hit the ground running.
The biggest barrier to widespread adoption is the portion of the toxic parts of the general community. You know who they are, you see them all the time. They exist across all distros, and they seem to go out of their way to make the experience as miserable as possible when new users are asking simple questions.
They often are some of the first people new users interact with when needing help transitioning over. They seek out those beginner questions to act superior, and just turn the average user off to the point they decide to never try it again.
Without strong moderation to reduce that dipshit commentary, the Linux community will always be working against mainstream adoption.
Documentation has gotten worse too. Veronica Explains discussed this issue in one of their videos. If you look at some good examples of documentation like the Commodore 64 manual, it explains concepts to an audience unfamiliar with computers in a way that’s easy to understand. Lots of modern software doesn’t have docs like this anymore. Then, on top of that, you have the condescending users in help forums.
Discovered Veronica recently… ❤
The biggest barrier to widespread adoption is the portion of the toxic parts of the general community.
You should be careful with that. Because what exactly are those toxic parts, when deciding upon strategy of fighting against them, might be understood differently.
That’s why most elitists on Linux spaces don’t know WTF they are talking about, but the elitists who deed have been pressed out earlier.
Also I really don’t see any problem with pointing someone to a place in a well-written manual. After answering a few simple questions, of course, and seeing that they don’t understand hints that all this is documented specifically to avoid annoying other people.
luckily people seem to be becoming better with this.
linux is also becoming better at being user friendly.
Hey, I installed Arch btw with Hyprland and I gotta say, the docs are super newbie-friendly. No problems on my end.
The Arch Wiki is so nice
But I’ve never met anyone like this. Do they exist?
Git gud n00b!
/s, of course.
I’ve come across this kind of response a few times on here and elsewhere, but I think it’s nowhere near as prevalent as it’s sometimes made out to be.
Agreed. I wish moderators would ban those people from linux communities and more users would report their elitist behaviour. It’s really annoying to ask a question and get belittled for having the audacity of being ignorant.
I understand these people lack power elsewhere in their lives and want to be powerful where they believe themselves to be experts, but it’s a real pity they express it with a complete lack of empathy. If you don’t want to help, don’t say anything. Let somebody who does want to help nicely do the helping.
I understand these people lack power elsewhere in their lives and want to be powerful where they believe themselves to be experts, but it’s a real pity they express it with a complete lack of empathy.
You seem bitter.
There are two kinds of Linux elitists - 1) those who know nothing, but have recently discovered Unices and think they are all-powerful and there’s the right way to go and simple solutions and everything is clear, and the future is bright, 2) those who are tired to rephrase the manuals and want newcomers to sometimes think why they don’t expect Russinovitch-level knowledge of Windows internals from other normal usual Windows users, but with Linux every stupid thing they want to do should be baby-fed to them down to that deep level.
I really hate the first kind, it’s the type who think making yet another “nice wallpapers” Ubuntu-based distribution makes them cooler than me, or that Wayland is already good enough for everything and my arguments that there’s no FVWM under Wayland should be disproved by myself doing my own google search, and so on.
The second kind is normal for every area of human existence. You don’t have to know everything, but also nobody owes you accepting you as equal to those who do, or your opinion, and nobody owes you the benefits of knowledge, and nobody owes you making things work the exact way you want.
TLDR - community members are as valuable as their contributions. If someone’s contribution is reposting Nixie Pixel videos (or whatever is their alternative now), then no matter how “not elitist and nice” they are, they are not very useful compared to those with knowledge. But if someone’s being elitist without any knowledge (as is typical among Arch Linux users), then maybe they are even less valuable.
As a third party, I feel I have to contend this.
“Nobody owes you accepting you as equal” is also a form of dangerous elitism. Linux is built on the foundation of cooperation and mutual aid, and I don’t think it’s the right place to figure out who is more or less “valuable”.
Someone who lacks some of the technical know-how of Linux might be useful to the community as a Linux advocate, or as someone with good ideas on user-friendly design, or something else entirely that can still be useful.
Besides, if we ever hope for “the year of Linux desktop” to be a real thing, we have to be inviting. Yes, most PC users are not technical specialists. Yes, they will have dumb and silly questions. Yes, many of such quesrions have already been answered before, and yes, they could have searched better.
But such is life. Maybe we have time and will for this, but most people don’t. If we want for all our favorite programs and games to finally become Linux native, if we want to ensure Linux experience becomes smooth, if we don’t want to be seen as a community of red-eyed nerds, we need all those people in. And there’s no detriment to this greater than constant infighting and elitism, than forcing people to bury down the wikis instead of providing useful support, and so on. People will just…leave back for Windows, and that’s it. Poof, one less potential supporter in an uphill battle to make Linux mainstream.
Now, I know how frustrating it may be to answer same questions again and again, in your free time, getting nothing for it. I understand it. But we shouldn’t let frustration break the bonds that make it all work. If you don’t feel like answering that same question, just…don’t. That will be enough. Someone else will get them up to speed.
Linux is built on the foundation of cooperation and mutual aid
It’s very dangerous to make casual users and activists and someone like me equal to people doing actual work.
As demonstrated by RedHat-fed activists abusing that equality again and again, making “the community” appear what RedHat wants it to be.
Besides, if we ever hope for “the year of Linux desktop” to be a real thing, we have to be inviting.
You know who’s not being inviting? Microsoft and Apple. The former just informs you that the PCs you can buy come with Windows that version, the latter just shows how damn fscking important and rich you’ll look if you buy their stuff.
The problems are all technical (with “user-friendliness” and “just works” movement as it exists contributing to them and not solving them), if they didn’t exist, nobody would care that the community is grumpy.
Yes, they will have dumb and silly questions. Yes, many of such quesrions have already been answered before, and yes, they could have searched better.
It’s fine to be dumb and ask questions, but with Unix-likes it’s somehow common that newbies first ask for advice, then get it, then react with “that’s dumb, should have been done like in Windows” and that tends to irritate people. And sometimes they want to do things the hard way, but blame the system for them lacking knowledge to do that.
If we want for all our favorite programs and games to finally become Linux native, if we want to ensure Linux experience becomes smooth, if we don’t want to be seen as a community of red-eyed nerds, we need all those people in.
Something is wrong. Amateur radio and in general knowing stuff about radio being associated with a “community of red-eyed nerds” was a fact, but never prevented people from using radio in the 90s and 80s. Most people can’t do electric design for their apartment, yet they use electricity.
And there’s no detriment to this greater than constant infighting and elitism, than forcing people to bury down the wikis instead of providing useful support, and so on.
So why don’t BSDs have that problem?
That’s a rhetorical question, because in BSDs they don’t slap layers of layers of tools intended to make things “easier” and parallel ways to do the same. Linux user-friendliness movement is doomed in the way that it’s not aimed at making kernel interfaces and basic tooling simpler, it aims at making graphical and scripted slap-ons that make things kinda work. All with different logic, taking the nerves out of newbies, and at the same time those newbies can’t exactly tell what’s wrong.
And infighting and elitism are because it’s hard for everyone to admit they are all wrong, all sides. The “elitist” side, because yep, newbies shouldn’t struggle with setting up sound where in BSDs that’s kinda easy, for example. The “newbie-friendly” side, because they are focusing on the wrong thing.
The development process is the problem. Both with the kernel and the userland and with major DEs.
Simplification is kind of vague
Just let the user decide
Yeah they probably mean easy. And probably easy for me, or what I already know.
That said, one of the complaints I commonly hear about Gnome is that it’s simplified to the point of being hard to use. So again, simplification is probably not what they mean.
This whole thread seems to be, primarily, people inventing strawmen and them a comment thread dogpiling them.
We have the “elitist Linux question answerer” and the “average user who is grandmother of 93 years that faints at the sight of terminal text” taking a lot of heat.
Many of stray shots at developers for having the audacity to provide access to the software that they made in their spare time without providing a full UX that compares to IOS.
The “fellow Linux users” who installed Linux 5 years ago, ran into a problem and declared Linux a failed experiment.
The OP isn’t even a good meme. It’s just ragebait.
The people who post these kind of things are not trying to improve the community. They’re concern trolling.
Nobody is “preventing simplification”. Anyone is more than welcome to fire up an IDE, clone a project and simplify whatever they feel like. That’s how the open source software ecosystem works. If you don’t like something then fix it.
You’re not a customer, you’re a community member. Making demands of other people isn’t going to go over well, but it isn’t because people are “elitist”.
My only beef with this lately has been valutwarden.
like look, I get it, http is shit, but I’m on a local network and it isn’t shared or even published to the greater internet in any way… can’t I NO, YOU WILL USE DNS CERTS PER ARTICLE 1.2 OF THE INSTALLATION GUIDE AND YOU WILL SET UP A REVERSE PROXY WITH CLOUDFLARE…
ughhhh
It’s a big abstract to understand, are you trying to say that there are Linux enthusiasts that protest GUIs being made simple and intuitive, and that if they succeed, would-be Linux users will go back to Windows, which is more intuitive?
Maybe for KDE, but just introduce new users to GNOME, that’s perfectly intuitive and even looks great!
Maybe I’ve been using KDE too much, but what’s unintuitive about it?
Maybe unintuitive is the wrong word, but for new users the amount of options can be overwhelming, and the UI looks… not very modern by default, lol
How does plasma6 not look modern by default? It’s mostly how Windows look like.
Well yeah I know how the defaults look like, really didn’t need that reminder?
So what’s wrong with plasma6? (Compare it with win10)
Windows 10 wasn’t even on my list as it is not a modern OS any more (it has been replaced by Windows 11), but even so it had a better UI, without those weird UI features that just serve to look bad
- floating taskbar at the bottom, not actually at the bottom, above it
- those blue highlights around widgets that do not look good
- that horrible off white colour for widgets
- general bad design
And of course windows 11 and GNOME improve with even more UI features
- blur
- transparency that actually looks good
- rounded corners that look good
Basically, it’s not one specific thing that makes KDE look bad, but rather their general approach to design, which seems to be ‘we don’t care what we’re doing, we’ll just set the default to something random as we expect users to customise it anyway’ which is fine for advanced users, but not so friendly to new users
Clearly, Gnome is the most modern looking of the three.
It might be GNOME or it might be Windows 11 (although of the Linux ones it’s still GNOME), but KDE is clearly (subjectively) the most ‘programmer art’ of the 3
Subjectively, I think, KDE/Plasma would make me unproductive compared to Gnome, maybe not as much as being on Win11 for sure. Both are cluttered and distracting from my point of view.
I am looking forward to niri, because I realized that GTK is the real king that makes Gnome so awesome to use. Niri would make window management even better. (:
A word on new Linux users: I have seen most prefering Gnome, older people tend to prefer the Gnome classic, because they are used to the idea to see which programs are currently running (taskbar). And this makes it easier for me to help them, because it still behaves like a modern desktop.
The KDE/Plasma/XFCE/Cinamon users around me are all long time Linux users. They made a dicision for themselves and know how to use it.
Ok so we went from talking about how intuitive/easy to use it is to how it looks. Looks are much more subjective and also depend greatly on theming even if it’s just using a light or dark theme.
Back to the original question of is it intuitive. For a windows user trying Linux for the first time, most would prefer a DE with a start bar on the bottom by default, some might prefer the look of older versions of windows. (Remember that widows 8 and 11 had/have terrible adoption rates). And others really won’t care much but will just want to be able to quickly find their apps.
I was a windows user for a long time. I only stopped at windows 10 cause I was sock of ads and candy crush soda saga acting like it was a core component of the OS. When I ran windows 8, the first thing I did was install an app that made the start menu look like windows 7. When I first tried gnome I’m 2012 it was so weird. It felt like if apple had made windows 8 with a side dock and a start button that took over the whole screen and these large buttons with a lot of wasted space with long transitions that my computer couldn’t really render.
I switched to XFCE and loved it, thought this was more windows like. It did seem to be lacking some features and didn’t look as modern but it was so much easier to use i liked it more. then I switched to KDE and thought this is what windows wants to be. I also loved all the settings that were configurable and how much control I had over the look.
I still use gnome for work (gnome DE is required) and have KDE on my personal and I got to say how much more productive I am with KDE over gnome.
Wait what’s wrong with KDE? I’d think a windows user would be more comfortable in KDE than GNOME any day.
idk about others, but for me, KDE feels unpolished. Besides breeze, nearly every theme feels or is unfinished. Now, gnome is also pretty finicky to theme, but in the end i had some pretty uniform and fully featured results which I haven’t been able to replicate on KDE. Also extensions on gnome are pretty neatly implemented. The only downsite do gnome is how stingy they are with Wayland (No server side decorations and other important features)
are you trying to say that there are Linux enthusiasts that protest GUIs being made simple and intuitive, and that if they succeed, would-be Linux users will go back to Windows, which is more intuitive?
Not just GUI, but that’s a prime example. A good one would also be the whole debate about warning measures in apt so it doesn’t just happily remove essential system components like xorg. That debate came up after LinusTechTips’ video where Pop!_OS became unusable as he tried to install Steam. Good example as countless people blamed him for “executing commands he didn’t understand”, he as well as System76 were flooded with hate for “making Linux look bad”. Which, well, in that case it absolutely was as there were no safeguards or structures preventing either a wrongly configured package to be published in the repo, nor for the user to not remove essential parts of your system with a command that isn’t specifically about them (
sudo apt install steam). Anyone who’s arguing that more of the Linux software stack should aim to be more stable and accessible usually gets hated on, and people who’re new to Linux but also say they don’t want to get into PCs but just use it and for it to work are getting alienated and in some cases outright attacked.Windows obviously isn’t really more intuitive compared to a fully working Gnome or KDE environment except for people who already know it for decades. That’s not what it’s about in this case though, but people who expect literally everyone to spend weeks and months learning about concepts, commands and structures in their computer that by now is second nature to them but not interesting to many others. It’s xkcd 2501 in a nutshell, but with toxicity sprinkled on top. Common users mostly have to stay in certain corners like the Linux Mint forums to consistently have a good time, and it really sucks.
A good one would also be the whole debate about warning measures in apt so it doesn’t just happily remove essential system components like xorg. That debate came up after LinusTechTips’ video where Pop!_OS became unusable as he tried to install Steam.
Linus had to override a warning message so serious that he had to literally type in “Yes, do as I say!” – including the exclamation point! – in order to force it. Quit your bullshit.
Should’ve been more verbose with that argument.
Yes, there was that single safety measure. Will this single thing with the white text next to hundreds of other rows of white text create sufficient awareness to discourage someone who was 1. told by the internet that “this is the solution!” and 2. has no notion about the severity of this action given they’ve nothing to compare it to except systems (and the web) that constantly cry for attention? Lol no, absolutely not.
There’s a good reason fatal warnings are almost always red or yellow and there are literally pictograms of human skulls in warning signs. People will not understand some white text next to a ton of other white text (that’s utterly incomprehensible to most of them, raising the tendency of people to disregard all of it) paired with something akin to a captcha as the fatal warning it was meant to be. That is not how (a majority of) humans work. The warning as it was back then provided no sufficient safeguards for newcomers, yet gave people sufficient reason to blame them. Although, and that’s the worst part, they have to be applauded for even featuring a warning at all.
The argument that came up afterwards was about exactly this, making the warning adequate and sufficient so even if the information on the internet said they should execute this, people are still being made sufficiently aware so they’re more likely to stop despite feeling that whatever they want might be just around the corner. But of course there’ll always be some people who prefer to call others stupid for their lack of experience or mistakes, especially if they want to protect something from criticism they identify with.
My previous statement was bad, but I stand with the opinion about the whole debate from back then being a good example.
A good one would also be the whole debate about warning measures in apt so it doesn’t just happily remove essential system components like xorg.
Yes, there was that single safety measure.
You are contradicting yourself.
There’s a good reason fatal warnings are almost always red or yellow and there are literally pictograms of human skulls in warning signs.
I mean this is the most respectful way possible… You are looking for a walled garden that protects its users. Linux is not that, never has been, and probably never will be. There are other options like Windows and MacOS that fill that role.
There are some extremely toxic members of the community but your complaint comes from the way Linux runs. If you/they don’t like how it runs then why are you forcing it?
You are contradicting yourself.
I already admitted my previous statement being bad.
You are looking for a walled garden that protects its users.
No, I don’t. There’s a difference between a walled garden and a safe environment, the word itself even says it. Windows, iOS etc. outright build closed boxes you can’t escape. The Linux community rightfully doesn’t like that, but to a degree where we hardly even have proper safety rails next to cliffs and either no or insufficient warning labels next to exposed 11kV powerlines. Yet we expect people who don’t know what they see to not hurt themselves and instead stand still and study books for a few weeks. Even worse, in an attempt to keep answers as universal as possible the correct answers often are that “it’s easy, just hook up X to the 11kV powerline” (equal to editing grub.conf, xorg.conf, or anything else that could literally kill your system or user-essential parts like the graphical interface).
I’m so fed up with the notion that any change that adds safety rails is seen as building walls. Just because you have to add “–no-preserve-root” to delete your root folder you’re not prevented from destroying your OS if you want to (people seriously argued against this change). Improving the apt warning so humans pick it up is not a wall either.
You seem to know a lot. So why not make those changes yourself? If you want bigger flashier warnings then do it. There is nothing stopping you. Depending on your skill you could have had it done in less time than you spent on this meme and thread.
I’m not trying to be argumentative but you sound like you want the linux community to build what you want and disregard their own wants. In addition, you want the community to be extra super nice to you when they do it. The sense of entitlement is astounding.
Whatever you need to tell yourself about people voicing criticism the community culture to shut it down. I’m already contributing to the best of my abilities, so please stop with the “just fix it yourself” nonsense. Not even professionals like Torvalds would have the ability to to all that. Hell, not even companies can; System76 ends up creating a whole new DE because the cultural and structural issues with Gnome were so severe, and they’re working on it for years now (arguably they could’ve moved to KDE, a new DE without old baggage might be a good idea though). Some parts of the Linux community even are so toxic they’re famous for ripping each other apart regularly, like the Kernel devs.
It’s this whole culture and the bad decisions it causes I’m criticizing. And the only way to change anything about such a thing literally is to loudly criticize it, and to introduce new people with new perspectives. Who unfortunately more often than not get alienated by all the toxicity.
I don’t really have social circles that show of Linux elitism. While on public spaces and have the time and energy I try to help out as best I can in a respectful manner and make sure not to get frustrated or annoyed at peoples need to learn things. While I haven’t encountered the elitism myself I can obviously see why it would be extremely off putting to encounter it as a new user and it saddens me a bit to hear about it.
I have a few local friends who wishes to give Linux a go now and decided to hook them up with containerbased systems, in this case since they play video games I chose to give Bazite a go for them specifically for the reason that ruining it with modifying installed packages is going to be harder. I don’t mind helping them out myself however and have found the bazzite community pretty forgiving as well luckily.
just introduce new users to GNOME, that’s perfectly intuitive and even looks great!
Gnome 2 sure, modern not so much. I mean when useful features are cut from the GUI it just means it’s harder to actually do things. Like removing “open in terminal” made non-GUI stuff more difficult (esp. w/complicated directory).
I’d say XFCE or Cinnamon or anything else like those are better.
What’s wrong with Gnome Shell? It looks very sleak and modern albeit really hard to customise.
I guess I would boil it down to: I’m not using Linux on a touchscreen and am unlikely to any time soon. I’m not even sure if/when I’ll ever go beyond 1080p (and a small screen at that) because cost.
I don’t want a dock or full-screen apps menu. I don’t want to fix those (or missing features) using extensions. I do want to customize things*, but otherwise I don’t need my desktop to look new or exciting.
* I even made my own hyper-minimal XFWM window theme (which is honestly unneeded for maximized applications due to my XFCE settings anyway, but it does allow me to have a rolled-up music player always visible like an old-internet music widget).
I found gnome so unintuitive that i ended up switching to a different shell to uninstall it because I couldnt figure out how to close that app selection menu thing. (Though maybe I’m just bad at figuring out UX flows that are intuitive for most, seeing how I also despaired as my prof handed me his macbook for my thesis presentation and I didn’t manage to open the file, though tbf there I couldn’t even try to google it and was already nervous)
I’m sure it’s not hard once you know but any UX flow that isn’t already familiar can cause issues like that. Which is why KDE will feel much more friendly to the average windows user since it works the same way for the most part.
Did you follow the tour?
Gnome requires a different way of thinking. It works great for some but if you come from a long Windows/Mac background it probably is to much of a culture shock. It is not for everyone and that’s ok.
Fully guilty of not even knowing there is one. I kinda just poked around installing DEs until I found one I liked.
It’s definitely the windows background for me though, gnome is just entirely different. Not saying it’s bad, but the people we’re trying to convince to switch usually have just as much of a windows (or sometimes mac) background, and often less willingness to learn.
Honestly most modern Linux software is fine.
I personally like gnome but I think the key with gnome is you need to learn the workflow. If it works for a user it feels very natural and clean but if you want something that’s close to Windows or Mac gnome isn’t it.
It’s hard making things simple, it requires research with focus groups, constant testing, firm guidelines based on the results.
They’ve done a lot of that in the middle 90s to middle 00s, when after things moving fast most GUIs were so atrocious it was just necessary. Thus classic Windows versions and classic MacOS (till 9) and Amiga Workbench and even Windows XP are very usable. Even OpenLook and Motif are not so bad.
Today we have a lot of network effects and inability to just drop something we hate to use, thus the market incentive for a similar widespread optimization of GUIs doesn’t form.
So - both KDE and Gnome today are horrible, but Gnome folks are at least trying very hard. I generally like KDE more, but their ergonomics were always overloading me as an ASD person to the degree of being exhausted by 15 minutes of using it.
Gnome is less overloading, but - use of titlebars to show custom controls for every application is good for wow-effect, but bad when you want to expect only one function from titlebar in every application. And the paradigm of Windows taskbar or Motif icons or something else for hidden windows being indicated and immediately accessible is good. If they don’t like taskbars, they could add something like iconbox in TWM or old FVWM or such. And a more Spartan (like usual) application menu.
TLDR, between imitating Apple/touchscreen UIs and ergonomics Gnomers have to make a compromise, or pick one lane. Right now it’s quite irritating when in some place they pick the latter and in some the former.
I think KDE and Gnome are much more user friendly than Mac or Windows. They just work and the UI tends to be fairly consistent and clean. I think this is due to foss and not having to worry about saving money by not fixing things.
Than today’s Mac and Windows - sure. But take w2k or macos 9 - and hell no. Those are much cleaner and more consistent.
Evil or not, w2k is something everyone should thank MS for, it’s really how it should be.
