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New Re: Configurability.
So, configuration in KDE is poorly implemented, but configuration is not necessarily bad.

How do you then move from that position to "removing most configuration as done in GNOME" is good?

I would prefer a GNOME with all of the configuration options available in a non-confusing way. Or are you also postulating that this is impossible?

Ad hominem context: I'm a GNOME user and I dislike KDE.
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New Re: Configurability.
I would prefer a GNOME with all of the configuration options available in a non-confusing way. Or are you also postulating that this is impossible?

I'd like a pony, while we're wishing.

This is not impossible, it's just really hard. (The UI thing, not the pony thing. ObAmericansDon'tGetIrony: I don't really want a pony)



Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
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Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
New Removing options

I don't think GNOME has "removed" most options, because they're still there, and stil accessible via GConf. Is GConf ugly? Yeah, and I'd love to see something better. The problem is that it's hard to find a middle ground here, and so long as the "main" preferences suit the needs of most users, there's not as much impetus to do something about it.

\r\n\r\n

I do tend to feel, generally, that "less configuration == better". Which, again, is not to say that all configuration shoudl be unilateraly abolished. But I believe strongly in the principle of least total interface, and so my point of view on configuration is the opposite of many people's; rather than "how can you justify removing that?", my thinking tends to be "what is the justfication for keeping this?" In other words, an application should have just those configuration options which are absolutely necessary to its use, and no more. The reasoning behind this is that it makes the application simpler to use, keeps use focused on the application's primary tasks, and reduces the chances of errors due to misconfiguration.

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New Simpler to use, keeps use focused, reduces errors
If there's anything I've learned as a developer, when you are writing general-use applications (by which I mean things like file managers, email programs, and the like -- not VAR or OEM applications in vertical markets), it's that you will not be able to envision the uses to which the user wishes to put your application.

Is this bad? No. Only control-freaks are bothered by this.

As an example: I use Nautilus for one thing, and one thing only: managing images. This probably isn't considered a "primary task". And they way I find most convenient to use is to have two tree-views side by side, in image mode.

Now, once Nautilus went to spatial mode, I couldn't do this any more. In fact, there is/was no option in Nautilus to turn tree-mode back on. It was considered too complex, or not primary, or it increased the chance of errors, I guess. Now, yes, I could possibly spelunk through gconf and find the setting, which is probably some silly, undocumented, difficult-to-find option named "window mode" or something similarly obtuse with possible values of "1 == spatial, 2 == tree view, or 3 == animated aardvarks". But that's a pain in the ass. So I don't use Nautilus any longer.

The evolution of GNOME has been a constant parade of weird decisions like this. Am I a power user? I guess if you pick your definitions carefully, I am. I consider myself to be just a user, albeit a fussy one who wants to be able to click a button to make his programs do something they ought to be able to do. Although given where you are likely to find GNOME, I'm probably a lot more indicative of the general user base than Joe Average Housewife.

I don't think removing options make programs simpler to use... I think it makes them simpler to configure, which is different. And since configuration is something typically done once, that's a bad optimization.

I think trying to focus someone's use of an application is a bad thing to do. Make common things simple and easy, but don't make hard things impossible. And yes, configuring tree view is impossible within the confines of Nautilus. By removing the configuration to a completely different application, you have escalated the difficulty of use by several orders of magnitude.

As far as errors due to misconfiguration, I guess I'd like an example. Because if a particular configuration causes errors, then it should be disallowed in that combination (don't let people set their font color the same as background color, for example).

Crazy-quilt configuration ala KDE is obviously bad. Hamstrung configuration ala GNOME is just as bad, in my opinion. The best compromise is something like what Sawfish does: break the options into "simple" and "complex", and let the user toggle what they want to see. The clueless need never know the wide universe available (keep their grubby hands off all those knobs, the toddlers!), while the subversives can turn on the animated aardvarks all they wish.

Now then, if the concern is *support* (which isn't a concern of GNOME developers, as they tend to just ignore people they are irritated by), then the obvious path is to allow OEMs to weld that switch to "simple" (on the Sun Java desktop, for example) to keep the support calls down. Support is the only valid reason I see for such limitations.
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New Simple/Complex
Nautilus used to have a system like that with Basic/Intermediate/Advanced options, patterned after the rating system used on ski slopes (ie: Advanced = Black Diamond).

IIRC, the arguments against it were:

There's always some option the gets put in advanced that some basic or intermediate user will be looking for but now they have to look in 3 different places for it.

Some people don't like being thought of as "basic" users even when they really are and will turn on the advanced option so they don't fee; short-changed on available features.

Advanced ends up being a huge KDEesque mess anyways.

Whether any of this was backed up by actual user testing I don't recall.

One could probably dig up the arguments on the GNOME mailing lists if desired.
--
Chris Altmann
New Re: Simple/Complex
There's always some option the gets put in advanced that some basic or intermediate user will be looking for but now they have to look in 3 different places for it.
As opposed to looking in a completely different application altogether, using a non-intuitive interface to look for an obscurely named property that may or may not do what you want it to do depending on if you get the right code in the box or not.

Some people don't like being thought of as "basic" users even when they really are and will turn on the advanced option so they don't fee; short-changed on available features.
Uh, right. Penis envy via config dialogs. I think the person who came up with that one probably eats way too much pizza and bursts into flame if he accidentally exposes himself to the sun.

Advanced ends up being a huge KDEesque mess anyways.
Sure, if you can't be bothered. And how is this any worse than gconf?

I swear, gconf has turned into the ultimate alibi. Just throw it in there and see if it sticks! You don't have to bother with actual thought!

Thanks for the reply.
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New hey! thats what I do for a living :-)
"As opposed to looking in a completely different application altogether, using a non-intuitive interface to look for an obscurely named property that may or may not do what you want it to do depending on if you get the right code in the box or not" perfect job description, thanx,
bill
"the reason people don't buy conspiracy theories is that they think conspiracy means everyone is on the same program. Thats not how it works. Everybody has a different program. They just all want the same guy dead. Socrates was a gadfly, but I bet he took time out to screw somebodies wife" Gus Vitelli

Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 49 years. meep
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
New When's the last time you looked at Nautilus?

Edit -> Preferences, "Behavior" tab, click "always open in browser windows".

\r\n\r\n

Voila, old-school file browser with tree in the sidebar.

\r\n\r\n

Now, you were saying? ;)

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New And this invalidates my point somehow?
The fact that they fixed it later on rather points to the silliness of the choice in the first place, doesn't it? And by extension, perhaps, they might have made other silly choices?
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New So which do you want?

A project which never makes any mistakes (no such thing), or a project which makes mistakes and then doggedly refuses to fix them? Me, I'd rather have a project that fixes stuff when they realize it's not right.

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New That isn't his point.
You are trying to steer this into something it is not.

You are cherry picking his points and ignoring the hard ones.

Surely, you know I'd like a project that fixes its mistakes.

The point is though, there are many trying to tell the GNOME devel team about those mistakes before hand, but are apparently talking to the hand that programs.

Its not that I don't think that the whole less is more thing isn't good, just sometimes things needs to be re-looked at occasionally.

Mind you, I chose to use GNOME everyday for my desktop @ work, home and other places. Infact I store most of my desktop tweaks in an easily accessable location and grab them where ever I sit down for a while. I severly dislike KDE, eye-candy is not what I use computers for.

But, I would like to be able to set rules (not with Devil's Pie, a completely seperate program again) about how things open and what sizes, color scheme, which workspace I want it on, special accel keys for common things I always do.

Right now, I have to setup launchers for these types of things. WTF, now I have drawers full of lauchers for my specific tasks... yeah it is manageable, but a PITA. I want the window manager/etc to see the stuff I do and if it matches a rule... of it does things.

Like if I "sudo su -" in a window, changing the color scheme to a scheme I know means "root access enabled" on this session terminal... or a another scheme if I switch to a "system user account" or some such. Also, being able to enable snap-to in metacity (or magnatism/edge resistance/etc) so I can easily maximize my use of my workspace real-estate without overlap. Yes, I also want it to automagically remove the scrollbar, status bar, menu when the wm detects me moving windows together.

These are the kinds of things I want back. For now, I have a launcher farm. I can only hope.

Jim, I really do like a significant portion of the usefulness improvements and speed and quickness GNOME has gotten, but I really have been looking for something that is GNOME v2.12 as far as usability, but GNOMEv1.4 in configuration Mindset with "Basic, Medium, Pro, Expert, OMFG-I-WILL-GET-THROUGH-THIS-CONFIGURING-NEXT-WEEK" settings... yes another exageration... but you get the idea.

I also understand, TIMTOWTDI. *NIX alone holds this as an imutable. It causes Fear, Loathing, Uncertainty and Doubt with "in-experienced" users, in everything. I support many people (our customers and vendors alike) in getting to us the info/data/whatever out of their system. I also help them get the info/data/whatever back into the systems they have after we correct it, I also help our customers help us do a better job for them. These people need SANE-Defaults, and minimal configs. Windows by default is far from that idea.

I'd rather have those people be able to turn on something in OMFGIWGTTCNW(see 2nd previous paragraph) mode that will instantly tell me what I need to know. Maybe, I guess you've never supported those people that can't do with computers... but still need the ability to flip a bit somewhere. GCONF doesn't have even close to the granularity I want or need to configure the things I do... or support.

So, are we understanding MY gripe with GNOME? Its not that I hate GNOME, I just get annoyed with it regularly, but not so much that I would goto KDE, I'd rather goto XFce before that. Even Enlightenment, BlackBox or WindowMaker but never KDE. I'll use KDE if I have too... but quickly try to get back to GNOME.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
Freedom is not FREE.
Yeah, but 10s of Trillions of US Dollars?
SELECT * FROM scog WHERE ethics > 0;

0 rows returned.
New Re: That isn't his point.

You are cherry picking his points and ignoring the hard ones.

\r\n\r\n

No, I'm first and foremost trying to avoid the inevitable conclusion some people seem to have entrenched in their heads, which leads to replies of the form "Oh, so you just think all configuration should be abolished in all applications, then."

\r\n\r\n

The point is though, there are many trying to tell the GNOME devel team about those mistakes before hand, but are apparently talking to the hand that programs.

\r\n\r\n

Perhaps it feels that way, but I don't think that's reality. Most usability professionals will tell you that, 99% of the time, ignoring feature requests and requests for changes is the only way to keep things working -- people either don't know what they want (most average users), or tend to request things which would only be useful to a tiny percentage of users ("geeks"). The only methodology which works is to start with a trained usability expert, design according to best practices, do user testing, and go back to step 1.

\r\n\r\n

And in many ways, usability suggestions are subject to the same criteria for \r\n[link|http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html|smart posts and questions] as any other aspect of development. Writing to a development list with "well, I think application foo ought to allow configuration of bar" is next to useless; what's needed is more like "in a significant percentage of use cases, we found that our users had trouble with application foo due to the unavailability of configuration for bar; here are some suggestions from our daily use for how that configuration could be accomplished in a simple and unobtrusive way."

\r\n\r\n

And even then care needs to be taken by developers in what they actually decide to include; I don't see many people complaining that Firefox is "crippled" or "dumbed down", but they went through the same process GNOME is going through right now -- they had a huge, bloated, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink suite of applications, and pared it down to the feature set and options that most people want most of the time. Also, I find it amusing that people complain about things like gtweakui and say that third-party applications shouldn't be needed to perform whatever their pet configuration task is, but have no issue with using third-party extensions to add configurability (that is, configurability other than about:config) or features to Firefox. There's a double standard there, I'm thinking.

\r\n\r\n

And for the record, I work in GNOME from time to time, but spend most of my time in Enlightenment, and have for years. I love GNOME now because I can just log in and get things done, but I also love the extreme configurability of E; I also recognize that there's absolutely no way to please all of the people with a single system, and accept that a system which aims for the general populace will occasionally conflict with the level of fine-grained control I'd like to have.

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New So have we finally come back to GNOME usability?
And even then care needs to be taken by developers in what they actually decide to include; I don't see many people complaining that Firefox is "crippled" or "dumbed down", but they went through the same process GNOME is going through right now -- they had a huge, bloated, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink suite of applications, and pared it down to the feature set and options that most people want most of the time.


Trouble is, they're turning people off of GNOME because of the features they are removing, as is evident by this thread. For the good of Linux, I hope they realize this before it's too late.

For example: Nautilus is a great idea with severe problems in execution. Re-enabling the tree-view is difficult enough that you can see the Nautilus programmers don't want to provide this mode. Yet they do, probably because so many people obviously still want it! So what's the usability model again?

Wade.
"Insert crowbar. Apply force."
New ObLRPD.
Unless, y'know, EASY FONT CONFIGURATION is more important to you than freedom.

:-)

Cheers,
Scott.
New You know, it's funny.

Geeks fall all over themselves to condemn GNOME to the depths of hell for switching Nautilus to be spatial by default, and also fall all over themselves to switch to the Mac, which brought spatial file managers into the mainstream.

\r\n\r\n

And FWIW, most "average users" I've shown spatial Nautilus to have been a little bit reluctant at first, but then realized that for many common file-management tasks, spatial mode is extremely useful. It's only geeks with a near-autistic aversion to change who I've seen kickin up a huge ruckus about it.

\r\n\r\n

Also, it's kind of odd to see other people in this thread claiming that things are unusable unless they're configurable, and then have you come along and claim that putting an option in a preferences dialog increases difficulty.

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New Re: You know, it's funny.
Do you remember when Mac OS X made its first public appearances? Spatial was gone. Dead. Finder was "just another app" according to Steve. The future was documents in the Finder, photos in iPhoto, and music in iTunes. It was existing Mac users (the ones that liked spatial at least) that cried and whined until Apple reimplemented a half-assed spatial mode that still isn't near the standards of the original while the non-spatial mode has undergone refinement and enhancement in every version.

I also find it funny that some of the original developers of Nautilus (Andy Hertzfeld is the one that comes to mind) at Eazel were designers of the classic Mac OS, yet they didn't choose a spatial model for their new file manager. I wonder why that is.

I'd like to see GNOME or one of it's corporate sponsors do some actual new research and see if a spatial desktop is still the best system for most users with today's data volumes rather than relying on decades old Apple research (done when Macs had a single 400k floppy drive) and one in depth article by spatial fan John Siracusa as they appear to have done.

--
Chris Altmann
New I find it pretty handy.

But then, unlike a lot of geeks, I actually tried it for a little while. I discovered that a lot of what I do actually is file management (moving groups of things around, creating new files and folders, transferring things back and forth -- spatial mode is wonderful with remote filesystems, since you have a source window and a destination window, and just drag and drop between) instead of file browsing, and thus spatial mode is a pretty big help. And if I don't want all those windows, I can either close all parent windows with a simple keyboard shortcut, or right-click on a folder and hit the "browse" option to get an old-style browser window.

\r\n\r\n

So I'd really like to see whether there's any solid evidence against spatial file managers, other than a bunch of whiny geeks who decided they didn't like it without ever giving it a shot.

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New I now see why you've been upsetting people in here.
Also, it's kind of odd to see other people in this thread claiming that things are unusable unless they're configurable, and then have you come along and claim that putting an option in a preferences dialog increases difficulty.


Please read a little more carefully. What I actually said was that the option that I wanted to change was hard to find. I did not say that providing the option made things harder. *Not* providing the option would have made things harder. The option should have been easier to find: that would reduce difficulty.

And FWIW, most "average users" I've shown spatial Nautilus to have been a little bit reluctant at first, but then realized that for many common file-management tasks, spatial mode is extremely useful. It's only geeks with a near-autistic aversion to change who I've seen kickin up a huge ruckus about it.



Some tasks.

Let me say that again: Some tasks.

I agree, spatial is good for some things. I disagree that all file-handling is easier with a spatial interface.

In my experience, Nautilus doesn't do spatial all that well, in fact. I tried it. After a while, I went searching for the option to run in browser mode.

Wade.
"Insert crowbar. Apply force."
New Please...
Why insult me now, you've obviously slipped and fell on your Ego spillage. <intercom type=announcment>Ego clean up in aisle 5 and bring a bucket.</intercom>

Why oh why do you insist on making this personal? Calling me a stupid idiot by plonking me with the "smart questions" faq. You pompus ASS.

In any case, I see you only address the questions you want to address and avoid any real discussion once again.

When you decide to "see" the questions, then maybe we can continue. I am not talking about my *STUPID* questions... I am talking about Scott's in which you Cherry picked before you Cherry picked mine. You are not trying to avoid the inevitable conclusion, you are avoiding answering them questions on fear you can't answer them without quoting Pennington, which will send up the "bullshit" detectors.

And if you don't mind, please never insult me like this again, as it just doesn't cause you to garner any "kindness" with me.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
Freedom is not FREE.
Yeah, but 10s of Trillions of US Dollars?
SELECT * FROM scog WHERE ethics > 0;

0 rows returned.
New Please...

Before doing anything else, get over yourself. My reply was polite and in no way attempted to insinuate anything about you, personally; I was simply making a point about the types of "usability" requests mailing lists often get, versus the types of requests which would actually do some good. Meanwhile, you're the one who actually resorted to personal insults.

\r\n\r\n

While you're working through those issues, I'll be waiting here patiently to find out exactly what the questions are that I'm supposedly avoiding, and what this "inevitable conclusion" is.

\r\n\r\n
--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New Try at least reading your own posts
While you're working through those issues, I'll be waiting here patiently to find out exactly what the questions are that I'm supposedly avoiding, and what this "inevitable conclusion" is.
Well, if you go back to [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=234361|here], you'll notice that you raised the concept of an "inevitable conclusion". And since you're so fond of the Good Questions FAQ, you might notice that it says:
So, while it isn't necessary to already be technically competent to get attention from us, it is necessary to demonstrate the kind of attitude that leads to competence \ufffd alert, thoughtful, observant, willing to be an active partner in developing a solution.
This includes: accepting that others may understand an issue and still disagree with you; not setting up straw men; addressing the points made, not just the ones that support your position.
===

Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
New That I did.

I raised the idea that some people thought there was an "inevitable conclusion", and then pointed out why I feel that it isn't. If someone has an actual argument for why it is, I sure haven't seen it yet, nor have I seen any other "inevitable conclusions" mentioned, so I'm really curious.

\r\n\r\n

And again: what are all these points people are making that I'm apparently ignoring? Someone point me to one of them, I'm really starting to wonder...

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New No you're not. You're not wondering at all.
Having stayed out of most of the Gnome usability v. KDE threads I've seen you in, I've come to the conclusion that all you're really interested in is trolling, scoring points, and insulting anyone who dares to disagree with you.

If you actually took the time to read the posts of the people who were disagreeing with you, you would be able to respond more substantively than by accusing them all of being... what was the term... "whiny nerds." Or whiny geeks. Whatever. But you don't.

You're certainly quite invested in seeing the KDE community crumble to dust and blow away into the wind, to be left behind as a faint rememberance and all that, but that's just about the length and breadth of what I get from you.

Oh, that and something about folders.

Oh, that, and that you're smart, or something. But apparently not a geek, because they're whiny, and apparently they have unreasonable expectations like "I'd like my software to work the way I'd like it work, instead of how someone else tells me I *ought* to like my software to work."

Those whiny, heartless bastards!
"We are all born originals -- why is it so many of us die copies?"
- Edward Young
New Whoa, there, cowboy!

I think that if KDE and its advocates really, truly want to aim for a broad userbase of varying technical abilities, then they've got a heck of a lot of work to do on usability, and their attitudes and implementations of configuration are just one aspect of that. This is, however, a noticeably different position from wanting them to "crumble into dust". And if some people like KDE as it is right now, I'm not doing anything to try to convert them; I'm just pointing out that the people who like KDE as it is right now tend to be almost exclusively of the "power user" class and so are unfazed by what would be, to less-savvy users, a mess of usability problems.

\r\n\r\n

And as for the rest, I'm begging. I'm pleading. I'm on me knees grovelling for someone to show me even one of the points I'm allegedly ignoring or glossing over here. Everything I've posted in this thread has been met with one of two responses:

\r\n\r\n
    \r\n
  1. "Oh, so you don't think anything should be configurable at all, then."
  2. \r\n
  3. "Yeah, well, somebody else made a whole bunch of good points which I won't mention or direct you to, but you ignored them all!"
  4. \r\n
\r\n\r\n

This does not a discussion make, I'm afraid, so it looks like all we've got is a good old-fashioned flame war. I don't generally like those, but I could probably get into the swing of it if that's what people really want.

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New Points you missed.
  1. the red herring of characterizing having the ability to configure as 'configuring endlessly...' while characterising the DELIBERATE INABILITY to do fine configuration as a '...desktop with proper usability' is rationalisation, pure and simple. It's a pretty irrational rationalisation, too. (from [link|/forums/render/user?username=imric|Skip] [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=233468|here])

  2. What you (and the Gnomes, apparently) don't get is that having the option to configure something doesn't meant it will be used by the rank-and-file. The idea that nailing settings down is even desireable is blown out of the water by the swift appearance of configuration utilities like tweakui. Hell, look at Windows. Windows tweakui is one of the most popular utilities, and the ability to do more than change themes and wallpaper. (from [link|/forums/render/user?username=imric|Skip] [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=233471|here])

  3. [...]I have no problem with defaults. I have a problem with making it deliberately difficult to change them. That in effect nails them down.[...]The ability to tweak it, to REALLY make it 'yours'. That's why tweakUI and related animals are among the most popular utilities in existence. If your point had any muscle behind it, there WOULD BE NO TWEAKUI FOR GNOME. No need for a tool that makes it easy for casual users to change the settings you and the Gnomes say that users don't want to change anyway, and that power users are satisfied to used Gconf to do. (from [link|/forums/render/user?username=imric|Skip] [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=233708|here])

  4. But Oh! I can go into the Registry on Windows too, to make changes! And Look! It Has A Gui App, Too - regedit. That makes everything all right.ange anyway, and that power users are satisfied to used Gconf to do.

  5. What I've said is that KDE is more reliable. I've said that it is faster and easier to use. I've said that fine configurability is not a bad thing. Nowhere did I say that it is not useable by anyone. Nowhere did I say that it is hated by all users. And for the record, I really hope they achieve parity with KDE. That's why I keep trying it out. Oh, BTW, I do keep trying it - unlike what you imply. (from [link|/forums/render/user?username=imric|Skip] [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=233896|here])

  6. So, configuration in KDE is poorly implemented, but configuration is not necessarily bad.

    How do you then move from that position to "removing most configuration as done in GNOME" is good?

    I would prefer a GNOME with all of the configuration options available in a non-confusing way. Or are you also postulating that this is impossible?

    Ad hominem context: I'm a GNOME user and I dislike KDE. (from [link|/forums/render/user?username=admin|Scott] [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=234106|here])

  7. I don't think removing options make programs simpler to use... I think it makes them simpler to configure, which is different. And since configuration is something typically done once, that's a bad optimization. (from [link|/forums/render/user?username=admin|Scott] [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=234115|here])

  8. I think trying to focus someone's use of an application is a bad thing to do. Make common things simple and easy, but don't make hard things impossible. And yes, configuring tree view is(was but is now fixed in lter versions) impossible within the confines of Nautilus. By removing the configuration to a completely different application, you have escalated the difficulty of use by several orders of magnitude.

    As far as errors due to misconfiguration, I guess I'd like an example. Because if a particular configuration causes errors, then it should be disallowed in that combination (don't let people set their font color the same as background color, for example). (from [link|/forums/render/user?username=admin|Scott] [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=234115|here])

  9. The fact that they fixed it(nautilus spatial mode selection) later on rather points to the silliness of the choice in the first place, doesn't it? And by extension, perhaps, they might have made other silly choices? (from [link|/forums/render/user?username=admin|Scott] [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=234115|here])

  10. Right now, I have to setup launchers for these types of things. WTF, now I have drawers full of lauchers for my specific tasks... yeah it is manageable, but a PITA. I want the window manager/etc to see the stuff I do and if it matches a rule... of it does things. (from [link|/forums/render/user?username=folkert|Greg] [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=234303|here])

  11. [...] being able to enable snap-to in metacity (or magnatism/edge resistance/etc) so I can easily maximize my use of my workspace real-estate without overlap. [...]These are the kinds of things I want back. For now, I have a launcher farm. I can only hope. (from [link|/forums/render/user?username=folkert|Greg] [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=234303|here])

  12. So what's the usability model again? (from [link|/forums/render/user?username=static|Wade] [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=234361|here])

  13. This includes: accepting that others may understand an issue and still disagree with you; not setting up straw men; addressing the points made, not just the ones that support your position.(from [link|/forums/render/user?username=drewk|Drew] [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=234775|here])

  14. And if you can't be arsed to address all of the points I made, then I think I'm done. I make it a habit not to converse with people who drag threads off by nitpicking a few things (cf. Bryce). (from [link|/forums/render/user?username=admin|Scott] [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=234203|here])

--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
Freedom is not FREE.
Yeah, but 10s of Trillions of US Dollars?
SELECT * FROM scog WHERE ethics > 0;

0 rows returned.
New Re: Points you missed.

Unless otherwise noted, the pronoun "you" is used below to refer to the original author of the snippet to which I am responding.

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the red herring of characterizing having the ability to configure as 'configuring endlessly...' while characterising the DELIBERATE INABILITY to do fine configuration as a '...desktop with proper usability' is rationalisation, pure and simple. It's a pretty irrational rationalisation, too.

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Having lots of configuration does not necessarily mean that users will endlessly configure the application. However, when I installed KDE on this machine, I had to spend a good hour on configuration before it was in anything resembling a state I could use effectively. GNOME, on the other hand, rather than pop up wizards when I log in and leave things in a fairly useless state to start off with, has sane defaults which mean I can pretty much log in and get down to business.

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Also, GNOME continues to offer access to what you call "fine configuration options". It's simply done through GConf. Please do not attempt to misrepresent this in the future.

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What you (and the Gnomes, apparently) don't get is that having the option to configure something doesn't meant it will be used by the rank-and-file. The idea that nailing settings down is even desireable is blown out of the water by the swift appearance of configuration utilities like tweakui.

\r\n\r\n

What you and many others in this thread don't get is that while a very small percentage of competent users do want to have absolutely everything configurabel to the nth degree, this is not a capability that is desired by the remaining large majority of computer users, and furthermore, the structure required to present this level of configuration has a negative impact on usability for that large majority, in the form of:

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    \r\n
  1. Added confusion as they attempt to decipher configuration items with which they're not familiar; what average user ever needs to configure the focus model used by the mouse, for example?
  2. \r\n
  3. Added difficulty and time spent trying to find the options they do want to configure; when there are twenty configuration options, finding the one you want is easy. When there are 200, not so much.
  4. \r\n
  5. Increased likelihood of accidentally misconfiguring something, due to a combination of the effects of (1) and (2) above.
  6. \r\n
\r\n\r\n

As for tweakui, I would again point out that this is factually incorrect; configuration options in GNOME are not "nailed down". Additionally, the GNOME version of tweakui does not offer very many options, and at least a couple of those options have since been exposed more prominently in GNOME's own UI. And finally, the desire of some users to have more configuration options does not mean that those configuration options automatically should be exposed to the majority of users; given the points above about the negative impact too many configuration options can have for most users, I'm quite happy to have them in GConf, and have third-party applications which provide hooks to that for those who do not wish to use GConf.

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If your point had any muscle behind it, there WOULD BE NO TWEAKUI FOR GNOME.

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I'm not really certain what the logic is behind your saying this; my point all along has involved the fact that different groups of users have different needs and desires. Arguing that no user should ever have a motivation to obtain a utility like tweakui is, essentially, arguing that the desktop should please 100% of users 100% of the time, a patent impossibility. When you have an actual realistic goal to aim for (like, say, providing a usable desktop with a minimum of fuss to a majority of users, something which GNOME currently aims to do and, to my mind, mostly accomplishes), I'll be listening.

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I can go into the Registry on Windows too, to make changes! And Look! It Has A Gui App, Too - regedit.

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I have never once claimed that GConf is the ideal solution to this problem, merely that it is a better solution than exposing a bewildering array of configuation to all end users. But then, nobody else in this thread has had any problem putting words in my mouth, so why should I expect you to act differently?

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How do you then move from that position to "removing most configuration as done in GNOME" is good?

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Now who's ignoring the other side's points? I've been pressured about this from almost the first post in the thread, and I've now made the case for reduced configuration several times. You've got some reading to do.

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I would prefer a GNOME with all of the configuration options available in a non-confusing way. Or are you also postulating that this is impossible?

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Pretty much, yes.

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I don't think removing options make programs simpler to use... I think it makes them simpler to configure, which is different. And since configuration is something typically done once, that's a bad optimization.

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Simpler configuration does mean simpler use; the fewer the number of items which must be confifgured before use, the easier it is to begin getting Real Work done. Also, plenty of configuration tasks are performed more than once; look at wallpaper and desktop theme choices for a couple good examples.

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I think trying to focus someone's use of an application is a bad thing to do. Make common things simple and easy, but don't make hard things impossible.

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So... the most commonly used options should presented in a prominent "Preferences" system, while less-used or "more complicated" options should be presented via a separate mechanism which is not as prominent? How is that different from what GNOME does right now?

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The fact that they fixed it later on rather points to the silliness of the choice in the first place, doesn't it? And by extension, perhaps, they might have made other silly choices?

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This is, or quickly becomes, a red herring. The subject of debate is the reduced number of configuration options GNOME exposes in a prominent fashion, not the default options set for a particular application or applications, nor whether a particular option should be exposed in the "main" preferences system or only in GConf. I would, however, argue that the particular choice to make it "difficult" to switch Nautilus to browser mode was incorrect, though since I don't know what information the developers based that choice on, I can't say too much more about it. The fact that a particular choice was made incorrectly does not, however, provide any support for the KDE style of configuration; it merely provides support for an argument that the methodology used to make this choice should be examined, and corrections should be made to the development process to avoid a repetition.

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Right now, I have to setup launchers for these types of things. WTF, now I have drawers full of lauchers for my specific tasks... yeah it is manageable, but a PITA. I want the window manager/etc to see the stuff I do and if it matches a rule... of it does things.

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Again, "I want application foo to provide bar" does not automatically translate to "application foo should provide bar"; the choice of whether to add a feature or configuration option must be based on careful analysis of the costs and benefits of doing so. Also, there are plenty of window managers available which will do what you want, so complaining that one in particular does not seems, to me, a bit odd. Again, no desktop or WM can or should attempt to please 100% of users 100% of the time, as that is an impossibility.

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being able to enable snap-to in metacity (or magnatism/edge resistance/etc) so I can easily maximize my use of my workspace real-estate without overlap. [...]These are the kinds of things I want back. For now, I have a launcher farm. I can only hope.

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Same reply as above.

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So what's the usability model again?

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This was part of a point about how Nautilus made it "too difficult" to switch to browser mode. That point turned out to no longer be accurate, and in any case I've already responded to it above.

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The remaining items quoted were people accusing me of "cherry-picking", or ignoring points made by others and of setting up straw men. I thank Greg for actually taking the time to tell me what it is I've supposedly ignored, but beyond this I'm afraid I'm still somewhat in the dark. As I saw it, it was the people who jumped to "Oh, you hate all configuration and think it should all be abolished" who were attempting to knock down arguments which were not actually being made. But hey, that's just me.

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New Last word I will speak to you.
As I pointed out, KDE does NOT require configuration in the manner you suggest. In fact, I have not gone through what you describe in a long, long time.

GConf is a 'registry editor'. It is the same thing as regedit. It sucks for configuration. Your elitist attitude is showing.

"the structure required to present this level of configuration has a negative impact on usability for that large majority"

This makes no sense. If you are relying on so-called sensible defaults, the that structure has no impact on your "usability for that large majority". Making things a PITA for any of the remaining minority that may want to customise or support Gnome is not a helpful.. In short, it is a net minus for the usability of the desktop.

"But then, nobody else in this thread has had any problem putting words in my mouth"

Nobody has to do that, you do it yourself quite eloquently. I was responding to what you think are 'points', nobody made up anything about wwhat you were trying to say.

"Hey, that's just me"

Yes. It is just you.
[link|http://www.runningworks.com|
]
Imric's Tips for Living
  • Paranoia Is a Survival Trait
  • Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised...
  • Even though everyone is out to get you, it doesn't matter unless you let them win.


Nothing is as simple as it seems in the beginning,
As hopeless as it seems in the middle,
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
 
 
Expand Edited by imric Nov. 21, 2005, 08:33:07 PM EST
New Re: Last word I will speak to you.

GConf is a 'registry editor'. It is the same thing as regedit. It sucks for configuration. Your elitist attitude is showing.

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And I have said, at least twice now that I can recall in this thread, that I don't feel it's an ideal solution. I do feel it's better than "expose all options to all users all of the time", however.

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This makes no sense. If you are relying on so-called sensible defaults, the that structure has no impact on your "usability for that large majority". Making things a PITA for any of the remaining minority that may want to customise or support Gnome is not a helpful.. In short, it is a net minus for the usability of the desktop.

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OK, Interface Design 101 time. Each and every time you add some new element to an application's interface, even if it's "just a checkbox" or "just a toggle", it will have a certain impact on a certain number of users. A sort of usability calculus must then ensue, often involving one or more rounds of testing with actual users, to determine whether the number of users negatively impacted, and the amount of the negative impact on those users, is smaller than the number of users positively impacted and the amount of the positive impact on those users. If this turns out to be "no", then the new interface element generally should not be included.

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And as I have repeatedly provided reasons why exposing large numbers of often-esoteric configuration options to all end users often results in a significant negative impact for the majority of users, I find myself unabel to make sense of the rest of your argument here.

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Nobody has to do that, you do it yourself quite eloquently. I was responding to what you think are 'points', nobody made up anything about wwhat you were trying to say.

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I began this thread with some semi-joking comments about KDE. It quickly devolved into other people's assumptions that I am against configuration of anything, for any reason, at any time, and their attempts to belittle such a position. My own efforts to point out that this was not, in fact, my position and that I did not, in fact, advocate it seem to have gotten lost in people's knee-jerk reactions and exclamations that I was not responding to their points. I found this rather odd, as I tend not to respond to a strawman as if I held the position its creator claimed I did, because this tends to cement in the mind of its creator that his strawman is in fact a correct representation of my position. However, I chose to indulge and attempted to steer the conversation away from such hand-waving and fallacy, and in return was met with rudeness and flames.

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So. Nice bunch of folks you've got here, huh?

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New There's this thing called "history".
I wasn't going to jump back into this, and I'm breaking a cardinal rule here for dealing with Internet naffheads, but please point out exactly where I said you were "against configuration of anything, for any reason, at any time".

The words should be easy to find, since I've responded to you a grand total of 4 times in this entire thread.

Until you do that you're just engaging in excuse-making and calumny.
-scott anderson
New And we know where calumniation leads.
oooOOOooo


Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
New Ooh, I know this game!

My turn: I refuse to respond to you further until such time as you read, collate and reply to each and every point I have made in each and every post in this thread. Your replies must make use of blockquote tags to identify material you are quoting from another post, must provide a hyperlink to the post from which the quotation is taken and must not at any time use quotation marks in any fashion, in order to avoid the impression that material contained within them is a quotation from another user.

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Reading the most recent batch of replies from several people, it appears that these are just some of the rules by which all members of the ZIWT forums are expected to abide, and until such time as I see them observed I will not respond to any points you attempt to make.

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Because, you know, fair's fair, right?

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Seriously, though? While I don't think I ever said that you personally made such a statement, and I defy you to find where I claimed that you personally made such a statement, it was the conclusion toward which many replies from multiple people seemed to be tending, or the conclusion toward which they apparently hoped to lead me. As it is not a conclusion I agree with, and as it is a common strawman used by certain types of people when arguing against anything which involves the word 'usability', I have gone to extreme lengths to distance myself from it and from anything which gives even the appearance of attempting to lead me toward it.

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New Since you asked.
[link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=235617|Post #235617]
Configurability, in and of itself, is not an evil, should not be unilaterally abolished, does not cause applications to lose their focus, does not cause global warming, and did not shoot JFK. And I don't care who or what they are, I will flame the everliving hell out of the next person who claims I said it does.
Emphasis mine. Now, since this is a direct response to a post of mine, I assumed that you were speaking directly to me.

And this is what I call a "conversational slide". Ignore most of the points in a post, nitpick a few things, and then make a claim (as above) which is then used to slide the conversation away. You've been pounding your shoe on the table and yelling about how everyone says you want to abolish configurability, while conveniently using it as a club to avoid talking about the precise points being made. Granted, you've answered some things, but only when dragged back around. Usually when confronted with [link|/forums/render/user?username=tablizer|this sort of troll], I use a [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=156381|single point, single post] technique. But you're a fairly boring troll, so I'm not interested in whatever meager entertainment you might provide.

IHBT. HAND.
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New Let's try it again then. (new thread)
Created as new thread #235846 titled [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=235846|Let's try it again then.]
--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New Actually, dung-for-brains, you didn't. (new thread)
Created as new thread #235422 titled [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=235422|Actually, dung-for-brains, you didn't.]
"Insert crowbar. Apply force."
New I really haven't paid much attention here
but reading through this now I understand how you have managed to basically end discussion with several of the most patient and rational of our group.

You simply have no idea what HCI models entail and why it is so important to get it right...which Gnome (as many have pointed out) was close to and then moved away from as a paradigm.

GConf is not a settings manager that "joe user" will use. And contrary to what you believe..."joe user" wants to be able to personalize the experience.

My mother? Maybe not. But even she has learned to turn on and off some configuration options in Windows (who says you can't teach new tricks...)

You are also completely off the mark about KDE...and before you confuse me with someone who has a stake in this dispute...I use xfce4 as my default window manager. It does what I need and doesn't do much else...which makes it less of a pig than Gnome and KDE.

However, I did configure KDE about 3 days ago on a new install and it took 3 clicks and one slide.

If it takes you an hour to do that...then I may have a better understanding of the issue at hand :-)

Simply put, to me if a TeakUI tool is necessary, the application is broken. If it was correct, there would be no need to develop >work-around< tools that (alas) turn into "killer apps".
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition

[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
New Re: I really haven't paid much attention here

You simply have no idea what HCI models entail and why it is so important to get it right...which Gnome (as many have pointed out) was close to and then moved away from as a paradigm.

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Then pray enlighten me, because UI design is a fair chunk of what I do for a living, and while I don't consider myself an expert by any stretch of the imagination, most everything I've ever read on good UI design indicates that, the simpler you can keep an application in terms of providing sane defaults and avoiding the need for much end-user configuration, the better, and that "everything should be configurable in every imaginable way" as some models, KDE's in particular, advocate, is the sort of thing which leads to overly-complicated and unusable systems.

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So please, do let me know how I can correct my woeful ignorance.

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GConf is not a settings manager that "joe user" will use.

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I never said it was. And yet I'm the one being flamed in another thread right now for an apparent lack of English comprehension.

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And contrary to what you believe..."joe user" wants to be able to personalize the experience.

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I have never stated otherwise. I have merely stated that there are a huge number of options which "geeks" and "power users" tend to want and use, which "Joe User" neither knows about, cares nor understands. "Joe User" doesn't know what a mouse focus model is, for example, so why should he have to sift through that in his desktop environment's configuration? For all but an extremely tiny minority of users, "focus follows click" is both expected and desired, so why does this need to be exposed in an environment's primary configuration system?

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You are also completely off the mark about KDE...and before you confuse me with someone who has a stake in this dispute...I use xfce4 as my default window manager. It does what I need and doesn't do much else...which makes it less of a pig than Gnome and KDE.

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And for the most part, I use Enlightenment. My comments about experience with KDE are based on distributions which do not provide it by default and thus with getting a "sotck" install with little to nothing pre-configured (as opposed to KDE-centric distributions which would obviously take some steps to alleviate this). However, the required set of "sensible defaults" seems to me to be a bit large to have to configure if one is using just a "stock" KDE install. The initial setup wizard is some help, but I tend ot feel that if a desktop environment requires a setup wizard at all, something is likely wrong with it from a usability standpoint.

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Simply put, to me if a TeakUI tool is necessary, the application is broken. If it was correct, there would be no need to develop >work-around< tools that (alas) turn into "killer apps".

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I've said now, several times, that the GNOME tweakui has, as far as I can tell, led to changes in which options are exposed by default in GNOME's primary preferences system. This is an example of developers learning to improve through user feedback. However, the existence of a tweakui for GNOME has been used in this thread as an argument for the position all every conceivable configuration option should be exposed to all types of users at all times, a conclusion which does not follow logically from its stated premise and which, as I have been trying to say since the beginning, almost inevitably creates a worse user experience than GNOME currently offers.

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New Hmm
Correct in the first quote. Too drastic of a statement and likley uncalled for. Apologies.

However, my experience with Gnome, which is actually fairly substantial from a user perspective (I used to really like it), is that its adoption of "sane defaults" has actually been at the expense of users like myself (and others here). You dismiss this by accusing the group of being techno-geeks and not understanding that to make it usable you must oversimplify...and us geeks will just have to use our geek-fu to (now understand this statement carefully) reclaim lost functionality that has been removed to (in your words) improve the experience.

Perhaps you picked a bad example here

"Joe User" doesn't know what a mouse focus model is, for example, so why should he have to sift through that in his desktop environment's configuration? For all but an extremely tiny minority of users, "focus follows click" is both expected and desired, so why does this need to be exposed in an environment's primary configuration system?


because mouse behavior is something that every system has a gui config utility for...and adding a click behavior option is a line and a couple of radio buttons in a screen that is already there. This is not "sifting through" anything. Its using existing and expected UI toolsets effectively for not only the majority of users...but with that option...almost the entire community. Not a bad result.

I get your point, however...but you need to understand something else. Dumbing down the interface for everyday users isn't going to win many friends and influence many people that use Linux...and desktop Linux isn't something that is forseen as a "real soon now". So the end result is you have a user community with a set of expectations and developers programming away from these expectations.

Thats not a good combination.
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition

[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
New A couple things

You dismiss this by accusing the group of being techno-geeks and not understanding that to make it usable you must oversimplify...and us geeks will just have to use our geek-fu to (now understand this statement carefully) reclaim lost functionality that has been removed to (in your words) improve the experience.

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Not quite. I've been pointing out that the functionality is still accessible, yes, but one of my earliest posts in this thread was "nobody's forcing you to use GNOME". If you want something which exposes tons of configuration all the time, then use something which does. But don't go to a project whose aim is a simple, usable desktop for a broad userbase and ask for that, because it's not really compatible with that aim.

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and adding a click behavior option is a line and a couple of radio buttons in a screen that is already there

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Every UI change, even when it's "just a couple radio buttons", has an impact on usability. Every such change must, therefore, be rigorously determined to be necessary. As I've said before, many people here seem to have the attitude "how can you justify removing this?" while my attitude is "can you justify keeping it?" Applications should have as many configuration options as are absolutely necessary, and no more, because when you start throwing in edge cases like "well, maybe one or two people would want this to be configurable like that, so let's just go ahead and add it", you start down the road to feature creep and poor usability.

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Dumbing down the interface for everyday users isn't going to win many friends and influence many people that use Linux.

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I really, really, really hate the phrase "dumbing down". That's how most "geeks" perceive it, unfortunately, but it's very sad that they do because it implies "those average people are too stupid to use our l33t system!" In reality, usability has nothing to do with "smart" and "stupid" people, and the best interfaces are those which are intelligent, not those which are "dumbed down". But any attempt to simplify the use of Linux applications, or remove unnecessary hurdles to learning to used Linux, is immediately set upon as "dumbing down", even if it results in interfaces which are more intelligently designed.

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Case in point: I'm helping to develop an application which will profile certain types of information about web sites. As part of its configuration, it needs to know things like whether a site has a search function and what URL and URL parameters it uses in searches. Comparable applications tend to have an input box for "search URL" and another for "search query delimiter", along with explanations (sometimes lengthy explanations) of what these mean. My proposal for interface to implement this is somewhat different: since a large part of our target audience is bloggers, I proposed that it instead ask "what blogging software do you use", and offer a list of Movable Type, Wordpress, etc. Since those packages each have their own standard search URLs and parameters, that information can be inferred from the blogging software without needing to mess about with asking a user for it. Of course, an additional "I don't see my software listed here" option would pop up a traditional search URL/query parameters input, but for the vast majority of cases we've just avoided the need for that.

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This would be called "dumbing down" by many, but what it really involves is making the interface more intelligent; it doesn't need to ask potentially-confusing technical questions because it can usually infer the answers it needs from a simpler question.

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(It also, you'll note, removes at least one item of configuration. I'm a fan of that.)

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New Nits
But don't go to a project whose aim is a simple, usable desktop for a broad userbase


Point I made before, define your userbase. For Linux, that userbase is a fairly well educated and fairly technical bunch. And possibly, the alienation of the userbase may have come from a change in project goals...which will generally make enemies of the current userbase if they feel like the changes aren't necessary/warranted (which brings you back to the curse of having smart people as users)

I understand the feature creep issue. However, we're back to an understanding of the usersbase, which for Linux (be definition) is a broader group that those used to a "click to focus" model. And again, I understand your overall point, but this was not a really good example to prove it.

That's how most "geeks" perceive it, unfortunately, but it's very sad that they do because it implies "those average people are too stupid to use our l33t system!"
.

And my point to you is that "those average people" are already l337 and are likely to remain that way. Ignore your audience at your own peril.

the best interfaces are those which are intelligent


I disagree, the best interfaces are those which are intuitive and consistent from the outset. The great interfaces are those which, from the humble beginnings of consistency, give the user the ability to adapt the interface to his/her specific situation (ie-disability configurations, personalizations, etc.)

And I will remain with judgement that Apple has the edge on all current competitors but the simple most elegant and consistent desktop experience came with Warp 4 (and it was also incredibly configurable). And, unfortunately or fortunately for the Linux community, Microsoft is 3rd. Hopefully this will change (or Microsoft will finally break backward compatibility in a gracioius gesture to implement a better security model..or hell will freeze over ;-))
If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition

[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
New I never got it with Warp.
I thought it sucked. Fiddly, ugly, corporate horribleness. Like Windows 3, but uglier.


Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
New It wasn't pretty, granted
But it was consistent and built to handle common tasks (at the time) quickly and with minimal fuss.

If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. Fudd's First Law of Opposition

[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
New And, it could be made quite pretty
Though nowadays without the AA it's harder to make it look good in comparison to other interfaces.
--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton                            jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca]                   [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada               [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
New I thought its font handling was spectacularly awful.
And as I was trying to do document work at the time, that didn't help any at all.


Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
New The early iterations of the TT handling _were_ awful
it improved over time, and nowadays if you go and get the OS truetype implementation, it's actually pretty damned good (what's it called, opentype IIRC?), but when it came out TT fonts did look bloody awful... on the screen. It worked fine for print output, but I still prefer using ATM fonts on Warp, despite the fact that TT works very well now. Not least because they work sooooo much better in PDFs.
--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton                            jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca]                   [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada               [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
New Re: Nits

Point I made before, define your userbase. For Linux, that userbase is a fairly well educated and fairly technical bunch. And possibly, the alienation of the userbase may have come from a change in project goals...which will generally make enemies of the current userbase if they feel like the changes aren't necessary/warranted (which brings you back to the curse of having smart people as users)

\r\n\r\n

GNOME has defined its target userbase. Its target userbase, however, is not necessarily the sort of person who's already using Linux, and a lot of its moves toward simplicity and usability have been undertaken with an eye toward bringing users to Linux who never would have considered the switch before (and who mostly would not have considered the switch because Linux represented a bewilderingly complex and frightening system with an obscene learning curve). Also, there's rally no way to aim for this target userbase without forsaking the "absolutely everything must be configurable in absolutely every conceivable way" crowd.

\r\n\r\n

I disagree, the best interfaces are those which are intuitive and consistent from the outset. The great interfaces are those which, from the humble beginnings of consistency, give the user the ability to adapt the interface to his/her specific situation (ie-disability configurations, personalizations, etc.)

\r\n\r\n

That really is a nit you're picking there. For sake of technical precision, I would have been better off saying "A characteristic of many of the best interfaces is that they are intelligent", but felt no need for such cumbersome language.

\r\n\r\n

As for alienating the userbase, I don't think it's too much of a problem. The people who were going to switch away from GNOME over this have already done so. The remaining noise is from people who wouldn't use GNOME even if it implemented everything they say they want, and can be safely ignored.

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New OT: Please don't put things in quotes unless you're quoting
In this thread especially, some of the arguments have been over what people said. Putting thing in quotation marks that aren't quotations, especially in a thread like this, can add to increased confusion and misunderstanding.

For example, you wrote:

Also, there's rally no way to aim for this target userbase without forsaking the "absolutely everything must be configurable in absolutely every conceivable way" crowd.


I think you're putting words in the mouths of a [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/board/search/?field_searchUser=-1&field_searchSubject=&field_searchContent=absolutely+everything+must+be+configurable+in+absolutely+every+conceivable+way&field_searchSignature=&field_searchForum=-1&field_boardid=1&submit_ok%3Amethod=Search|crowd] that isn't participating in this thread. ;-)

If you want to give your impression of an argument put forward by others, but it's not a quotation, maybe use italics or something.

Thank you.

Cheers,
Scott.
New When I quote

I use the blockquote tag.

\r\n\r\n

And at this point, honestly, there's so much straw lying around I might as well use it to build some men of my own.

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New He seems to be listening to you.
Perhaps you could add that the direction the GNOME developers are taking are "we want to you use it thus" instead of "how do you currently use it and what is difficult". This was, IIRC, the nucleus of the disagreement about GNOME's configuration.

Wade.
"Insert crowbar. Apply force."
New Well.

He was being fairly polite.

\r\n\r\n

Why not go over [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=235846|here], and let's see if we can't have a civilized discussion about configurability?

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New Do you blame me for losing my temper? (new thread)
Created as new thread #235928 titled [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=235928|Do you blame me for losing my temper?]
"Insert crowbar. Apply force."
New Perhaps I see the problem.
U writes:

However, when I installed KDE on this machine, I had to spend a good hour on configuration before it was in anything resembling a state I could use effectively. GNOME, on the other hand, rather than pop up wizards when I log in and leave things in a fairly useless state to start off with, has sane defaults which mean I can pretty much log in and get down to business.


[link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=203862|Here] and [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=198434|here] you mention that you've used Fedora and Ubuntu, with most of your experience being on RedHat flavors.

RedHat and Fedora have been on Gnome for a long time. RedHat has [link|http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/09/19/1032054902523.html|preferred] Gnome since at least the late 1990s. Ubuntu has always been Gnome-based.

I'm a Linux novice, but I was able to install MEPIS (a Debian-based distribution with a KDE desktop) and be up and doing useful things with it in much less than an hour (once I found a version of MEPIS that worked with my wireless out of the box). I've done almost no configuration of anything on MEPIS.

Couldn't it be that much of your criticism of KDE and praise of Gnome be based on your familiarity with Gnome on distributions that prefer it?

Cheers,
Scott.
New It feels like this essay might be appropriate here
Substitute Windows with KDE and/or Gnome as appropriate.

[link|http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm|http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm]
New That's good. +5 Informative.
"Insert crowbar. Apply force."
New Actually.

I'd never recommend anything try to be "more like Windows", for any reason, least of all a perceived winning of new users. I think Linux usability can learn a lot from the Mac, though -- there are many things that Apple has learned to get just right over the years (and, on the flipside, many things they've horribly fucked up; nobody's perfect), and the perception that "we don't do things that way" would hopefully be somewhat lessened by the fact that the Mac OS, too, is built on top of UNIX.

\r\n\r\n

And that essay seems, to me, to be verging on NIH syndrome. Not a good thing.

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New I agree with on this one,
I tried Ubuntu for a while and found gnome to be useful once I had it configured, however, there were some things that I never got working.

I switched to Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE instead of Gnome) and had it working with little configuration issues and everything now worked.

Horses for sourse I suppose.
New Actually.

I prefer to use a distro that's *not* oriented toward a particular desktop when trying it out; I'm sure Kubuntu and others provide nicely preconfigured stuff, but from a usability perspective I'm interested in the stock shipping version of the environment, not the version you get after a third party intercepts it and fixes things to make it easier ;)

\r\n\r\n

And just to drive home the point that I've been making about different types of users wanting different things: I use Enlightenment by choice, and it requires more configuration than any three other desktops/WMs put together. I like that sort of fine-grained control. But I know that not everyone does, and in fact the vast majority of people wouldn't have a clue what to do with such a thing. Which is why I think anything which aims at a broad userbase (as GNOME does) should work on simplicity and sane defaults rather than "everything is configurable in eighty zillion ways", because the former approach nets many more users than the latter.

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New The parent to this post summarizes the stymie perfectly.
HERE we go:
prefer to use a distro that's *not* oriented toward a particular desktop when trying it out; I'm sure Kubuntu and others provide nicely preconfigured stuff, but from a usability perspective I'm interested in the stock shipping version of the environment, not the version you get after a third party intercepts it and fixes things to make it easier ;)


This entire paragraph sums up what you are trying to summarily speak about.

This is why we are having such a mis-intepretation of things.

This explains many, many, many of arguements here.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
Freedom is not FREE.
Yeah, but 10s of Trillions of US Dollars?
SELECT * FROM scog WHERE ethics > 0;

0 rows returned.
New "Enlightenment by choice"
So let me get this straight.

Note: I'm paraphrasing based on my limited understanding.

You have been engaging in a heated discussion, in favor of a simplified environment with as few choices as possible, taking away options that were there in an environment that a bunch of people here used to like, but now find it annoying.

AND YOU DON'T USE IT? YOU WANT MORE OPTIONS? YOU WANT YOUR VERY COMPLEX ENVIRONMENT?

If this was the corporate world, I'd start thinking of conspiracy theories that have to do with crippling the competition.

New The WM is only one aspect of the environment, Barry.


Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
New To me, it's a simple dichotomy.

There are times, many times, and not all times, when I personally like the level of configurability Enlightenment provides. However, I understand that not everyone prefers this level of configurability, and that many people would find the idea of having to spend as much time tweaking a desktop as I've spent on E to be absurd. For these people, GNOME exists; it's very easy to change the things people most commonly want to change, and it just gets out of the way and lets you Do Stuff. There are times when I'm a fan of that myself; the only things I've ever changed in my GNOME setup are:

\r\n\r\n
    \r\n
  • The theme.
  • \r\n
  • The wallpaper.
  • \r\n
  • The fonts.
  • \r\n
  • The set of application launchers and applets in my panel.
  • \r\n
\r\n\r\n

These things are all extremely easy to do in GNOME, and don't by any means represent the extent to which GNOME is configurable. But this leads to a useful observation: not everyone wants or needs a high level of fine-grained configurability, and often a desktop which does not offer that is just as usable, possibly more so, than a desktop which does.

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New WEEEEEE! (Great gallopin' goshes)
Thanks for reminding me, though not really reminding me.

I am now using Enlightenment as my window manager.

It has been quite a while since I looked at E, I'd like to say: THANKS.

I have to say, I am surprised. Especially now I get to get rid on my launcher farms.

Everything I wanted is in E, and I still get GNOME.

Schweet. Now to turn off the things I don't want, as GNOME does some of the tasks the way I want. But most tasks or events i want E to take care of.

And, if I am remembering right Enlightenment was the default GNOME Window Manager for a good while early on (pre 1.0 through 1.2, I believe)

It still seems to work just fine. I'll start a new thread *IF* I find anything I can't do (or remember howto do) which is doubtful. (Though recently I forgot the tags for underlining text, in HTML... ahhh!)

/me is now discovering all the things he missed again.




Edit: AHHHHHH! I have window Grouping again! AHHHH! AHHHH! I have sane Window Shading again. AHHH! I can turn off brders or not per window and have it remember it!!! AHHH even gnome-terminal works with autochanging my text color schemes... ahhhhhhhhhh......

Maximum Window heights and widths, stacking rules, icon boxes, plus nautilus behave differently now... better. Configurable workspace flips, configurable snap-to, macro definitions, menu rules... script that work with the window manager... WOOOOOHOOOO!

/me runs around skipping for joy, jumping up and down in defferent location as to not ruin the concrete

/me explodes into a puddle of utter pleasantness.




AHHHHHHH!


Below are the keybindings for E as it comes "from the factory"
       CTRL+ALT+Home - Re-shuffle windows on screen to be Clean
       CTRL+ALT+Del - Exit Enlightenment and Log Out
       CTRL+ALT+End - Restart Enlightenment
       CTRL+ALT+Up-Arrow - Raise window to top
       CTRL+ALT+Down-Arrow - Lower window to the bottom
       CTRL+ALT+Left-Arrow - Go to the previous desktop
       CTRL+ALT+Right-Arrow - Go to the next desktop
       CTRL+ALT+X - Close the currently focused window
       CTRL+ALT+K - Kill the currently focused window nastily
       CTRL+ALT+I - Iconify the currently focused window
       CTRL+ALT+R - Shade/Unshade the currently focused window
       CTRL+ALT+S - Stick/Unstick the currently focused window
       CTRL+ALT+(F1 - F12) - Go directly to desktops 0 - 11
       ALT+Tab - Switch focus to the next window
       ALT+Enter - Zoom/Unzoom the currently focused window
       SHIFT+ALT+Left-Arrow - Move to the virtual desktop on the left if there is one
       SHIFT+ALT+Right-Arrow - Move to the virtual desktop on the right if there is one
       SHIFT+ALT+Up-Arrow - Move to the virtual desktop above if there is one
       SHIFT+ALT+Down-Arrow - Move to the virtual desktop below if there is one


/greg's brain dribbles out his ear (only his left one as the eardrum is perforated)
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
Freedom is not FREE.
Yeah, but 10s of Trillions of US Dollars?
SELECT * FROM scog WHERE ethics > 0;

0 rows returned.
Expand Edited by folkert Nov. 22, 2005, 12:49:44 PM EST
Expand Edited by folkert Nov. 22, 2005, 01:23:47 PM EST
New What hardware are you running that on?
One of the old bugaboos about E! was it was very resource-heavy. How's it these days? Are you running it on Barry's Quad Opeteron? ;-)

Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Re: What hardware are you running that on?
It was resource-heavy on old P233 boxes with S3 ViRGE graphics cards and 256MB of RAM if you were really lucky.

Today, it's just another WM.


Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
New Very Lean, comparatively
Xorg is significantly lighter on resource use, while using E!.

Matter of fact Metacity used 25MB and E! only uses 10MB.

Infact, that is with a ton of special fun stuffs enabled.

Xorg went from 200MB of resources IN USE with a tons reserved using Metcity, down to 100MB with E!.

Mind you, I was running Evolution, about 50 terms, VMware(with 768MB allocated), Firefox, GAIM and a crap-shoot of other proggys.

Even @ home it rocks.

Oh, I changed Window Managers with out restarting X or GNOME or even logging out. Everything survived.

The only problem I haven't figured out is registering the config stuff with GNOME, so it works from the "windows" thinger in the gnome-tool-center

Oh, also all key-bindings seem to be controlled by E! now... a bit annoying at first, but very very manageable.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
Freedom is not FREE.
Yeah, but 10s of Trillions of US Dollars?
SELECT * FROM scog WHERE ethics > 0;

0 rows returned.
New OT: X's reported memory usage means nowt
Every lil' mmap() that uses shared memory is in that total.

Gauging X's performance by the size of its RSS is a fruitless exercise.


Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
New Yes, I understand that is the case.
But, I m talking about the code and data stack.

Those two mean more than RSS.

But in anycase.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
Freedom is not FREE.
Yeah, but 10s of Trillions of US Dollars?
SELECT * FROM scog WHERE ethics > 0;

0 rows returned.
New Points mangled too, though?
Jeez guys, just 'cause ya can see why curl grad V=0 --- hit don't mean shite, when it comes to decent Interior Design of a 'Space' a homo-sap has to inhabit, oft daily. [YPB]

This thread + some unnecessarily snide means of arguing past each other: should I take this as another small confirmation that, the people who design code - should not be prominent re layout, in the stage where a GUI is implemented for non abnormal people?

As a merely medium-competent long-term user of various of this stuff, even in Octal: I'm yer Pigeon. I ain't stoopid, just iggerant of details and loath to invest time to learn unnecessary ones: I won't never be a Sys Admin in this life. Too much like accountancy.
I prefer KISS, but can deal with complexity when forced: it's called 'electronics' (or physics.)
I gots questions ~~

1) re the 'Configuration' brouhaha; lots of digital Yes/No think in these phrasings, I wot. What's amiss about: Standard, Advanced menus?
Or for those who love granularity in dosage: Standard, Intermediate, Advanced?

2) As the tweakui discussions abutted on: yes, even Newbies {some of them; many even?} eventually aspire to alter their environment, from er, Experience - especially, I wot: those coming From the oft brain-dead arbitrariness of ugly Doze menus; the way things are stuffed drill-way-down \\ from-illogical-Parents, as afterthoughts: (locale altered with each new Beastworks sub-par 'release'.)

3) Further, 'Std. Med. Advanced' options - allow a beginner, in time + curiosity to see what Is Available! in the next one or two grades of complexity. Put the two option lists side by side say, with shading to show overlap (duplication): there's something that {fortunately..} ain't-MAN; the options educate and - need not be indulged, until some hour for experimenting is freed. Cheap thrills.

4) So WTF is the Problem? I gather /infer that this GConf utility has all the charm of the Lufthansa pilot in Oh Pun, the ergonomics of CP/M debug and the fuck-you,unAnointed-one bellicosity of er, LILO?
So then: Don't Just Have That! See 1)

See, thanks to a fine gift - I have MEPIS & Ubuntu on tap; see things to like in both KDE and elvish country. I *could* also do CL stuff as needed - it's pretty fucking simple logic-with-switches after. all. (The art lies in, simply how well one groks 'logic' and how many codes you've memorized.)
Even rote can serve in the interim.
But it's Still a PITA to imagine That, for some bloody subtle GUI change!

So I'm not 'typical' either - but I can already see that there's nothing Dishonorable in paying sharp attention to the modelling of whatever GUI, making its standard face workable and fairly simple (as pretty much seems to describe the aim of GNOME).

But WTF should the ball become Dropped once the entry-level User is (in fact, I'd say thus far) pretty much accomodated? It should Be - a mouse click (and not a CL) away to add as many transmogrifications as are actually available in teh gearbox == sans doing stupid Billy-style kitchen-sink auto-bloating.
(Hey, doesn't this OS use modules ferCthulusake?) Otherwise - your option is to change distros or some other absurd busy-work-around, due to a big Omission in choice.

Some will never peek. Fine - that's a Big market. (Die Billy/BallyCo)
But I think many more (than the GNOME folk yet cared to consider) want Something More; it's simply a continuum; it is NOT ever: Mortimer Snerd OR Dick Feynman (who, I suspect would never piss away the Time to become an \ufffdber-configurista for-its-own sake, anyway.)

Now, even moi realize that - infinite flexibility carries aleph-null bug possibilities, n! testing time and all manner of Myth/Man/Month consequences.

This is why we have Smart people; people who can wield discretion.
The Ubuntu distro could apply some intelligence towards at least 3 Ranges of personalizing one's Satisfiction. "Snap-in Whatevers" that need 20M lines of gratuitous code for 34 people? Fergeddit; but let's not reductio all suggestions to absurdum, just 'cause it's so much ez fun to do.

Ubuntu Could improve.. if anyone who rilly prefers (just) the ('slick', 'tight' = Billy's actual words) coding fun - ventured far enough from work-lair to enquire.



Meine drei pfennig,

(Would cha cha be ahc ahc, in pidgen-Deutsch?)

New And regarding "focus"

I don't think a file manager is a great example here, because it's expected to be something of a jack of all trades. But right now one of my favorite applications is [link|http://basecamphq.com/|Basecamp], a web-based project-management system with an almost absurdly small number of configuration options. The developers started with a single thesis: project management is not about graphs or charts or four levels of committees signing off before something can go forward. It's about communication. So they built an application which made communication simple and easy, and kept things tightly focused. At first they only used it in-house for their web-design clients, but then they began marketing it as a service and now are making boatloads of money from it. And its focus hasn't hindered use one bit -- plenty of web designers use it for project managemnet, yes, but it turned out that "project management" is a pretty broad thing, and now they've got customers using it for everything from major corporate processes to wedding planning.

\r\n\r\n

So "focus" doesn't mean "define exactly the set of things users will be allowed to do, and forbid all other uses".

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New Then explain how configurability causes lack of focus.
And if you can't be arsed to address all of the points I made, then I think I'm done. I make it a habit not to converse with people who drag threads off by nitpicking a few things (cf. Bryce).
Regards,

-scott anderson

"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
New Again.

Configurability, in and of itself, is not an evil, should not be unilaterally abolished, does not cause applications to lose their focus, does not cause global warming, and did not shoot JFK. And I don't care who or what they are, I will flame the everliving hell out of the next person who claims I said it does.

\r\n\r\n

TOO MUCH configurability, and POORLY-ORGANIZED and POORLY-THOUGHT-OUT configurability, on the other hand, have all sorts of negative impacts on an application.

\r\n\r\n

With regards to focus, over-configurability has a nasty way of causing feature creep; "well, we want people to configure this, so we should offer a way to configure that and those as well, and that means we need to support option X so we'll have to refactor foo..."

\r\n\r\n

And in terms of user focus, it also has a nasty habit of distracting attention from what the user is actually trying to do; there are so many applications out there which immediately pop up configuration dialogs first thing after launching, when so many of them don't actually need to do that, and would run just fine for most users with a sensibly-chosen set of defaults.

--\r\nYou cooin' with my bird?
\r\n[link|http://www.shtuff.us/|shtuff]
New You sure about the JFK bit? I got doubts...
     Novell/SuSE moving to GNOME as default enterprise desktop - (pwhysall) - (128)
         Something tells me the KDE folks forgot to . . . - (Andrew Grygus)
         OTOH, SuSE founder and kernel hacker quits. - (Another Scott) - (3)
             Heh. - (mmoffitt) - (2)
                 OT - any luck - (imric) - (1)
                     Oh! - (mmoffitt)
         Never! - (ubernostrum) - (112)
             Sombody want to whack him with The Sign? -NT - (drewk)
             Heh, Gnome. It's still crap. - (imric) - (109)
                 I lasted a while this time. - (static)
                 It's the apps, stupid. - (pwhysall) - (15)
                     That's brilliant! - (cwbrenn) - (4)
                         The criticism stands, and is as follows: - (pwhysall) - (3)
                             I'm not screaming "freedom..." - (cwbrenn) - (1)
                                 I know. - (pwhysall)
                             My recollection is similar to BDR's. - (Another Scott)
                     That's one of the reasons I keep checking it out. - (imric) - (9)
                         Forget usability for a moment. - (pwhysall) - (2)
                             EXACT opposite on Mepis - (imric)
                             That is my biggest irritation about Linux distros - (ben_tilly)
                         Spatial == ass, IMO - (admin) - (5)
                             What is "spatial"? - (cwbrenn) - (4)
                                 Spatial: each folder gets its own window - (admin) - (3)
                                     Spring-loaded folders roxxor. - (pwhysall) - (1)
                                         They're patented by Apple. -NT - (altmann)
                                     That's one of the reasons why I prefer File Commander. - (Another Scott)
                 Nobody's making you use GNOME. - (ubernostrum) - (91)
                     ROFL - I know. - (imric) - (2)
                         You undermine your own argument. - (ubernostrum) - (1)
                             More stuff and nonsense. - (imric)
                     Just to let you all know... - (folkert) - (87)
                         Damn, I gotta meet somebody like that... - (inthane-chan)
                         Greg? - (imric) - (85)
                             Really? - (ubernostrum) - (82)
                                 Except that KDE actually works. - (imric) - (81)
                                     Works so well, in fact... - (pwhysall) - (4)
                                         Skip uses Mepis. Mepis isn't dropping KDE. - (Another Scott)
                                         Yeah and did you see the uproar from the users at Novell - (imric) - (2)
                                             s/users/KDE developers/ -NT - (ubernostrum) - (1)
                                                 According to YOU. - (imric)
                                     Re: Except that KDE actually works. - (ubernostrum) - (75)
                                         Waiting for the ad hominem when you ran out of logic. - (imric) - (74)
                                             And yet you don't seem to have any responses. - (ubernostrum) - (73)
                                                 ROFL. - (imric) - (72)
                                                     Configurability. - (ubernostrum) - (71)
                                                         Re: Configurability. - (admin) - (70)
                                                             Re: Configurability. - (pwhysall)
                                                             Removing options - (ubernostrum) - (68)
                                                                 Simpler to use, keeps use focused, reduces errors - (admin) - (67)
                                                                     Simple/Complex - (altmann) - (2)
                                                                         Re: Simple/Complex - (admin) - (1)
                                                                             hey! thats what I do for a living :-) - (boxley)
                                                                     When's the last time you looked at Nautilus? - (ubernostrum) - (59)
                                                                         And this invalidates my point somehow? - (admin) - (58)
                                                                             So which do you want? - (ubernostrum) - (57)
                                                                                 That isn't his point. - (folkert) - (56)
                                                                                     Re: That isn't his point. - (ubernostrum) - (55)
                                                                                         So have we finally come back to GNOME usability? - (static) - (5)
                                                                                             ObLRPD. - (Another Scott)
                                                                                             You know, it's funny. - (ubernostrum) - (3)
                                                                                                 Re: You know, it's funny. - (altmann) - (1)
                                                                                                     I find it pretty handy. - (ubernostrum)
                                                                                                 I now see why you've been upsetting people in here. - (static)
                                                                                         Please... - (folkert) - (48)
                                                                                             Please... - (ubernostrum) - (47)
                                                                                                 Try at least reading your own posts - (drewk) - (46)
                                                                                                     That I did. - (ubernostrum) - (45)
                                                                                                         No you're not. You're not wondering at all. - (cwbrenn) - (44)
                                                                                                             Whoa, there, cowboy! - (ubernostrum) - (43)
                                                                                                                 Points you missed. - (folkert) - (42)
                                                                                                                     Re: Points you missed. - (ubernostrum) - (41)
                                                                                                                         Last word I will speak to you. - (imric) - (6)
                                                                                                                             Re: Last word I will speak to you. - (ubernostrum) - (5)
                                                                                                                                 There's this thing called "history". - (admin) - (4)
                                                                                                                                     And we know where calumniation leads. - (pwhysall)
                                                                                                                                     Ooh, I know this game! - (ubernostrum) - (2)
                                                                                                                                         Since you asked. - (admin) - (1)
                                                                                                                                             Let's try it again then. (new thread) - (ubernostrum)
                                                                                                                         Actually, dung-for-brains, you didn't. (new thread) - (static)
                                                                                                                         I really haven't paid much attention here - (bepatient) - (15)
                                                                                                                             Re: I really haven't paid much attention here - (ubernostrum) - (14)
                                                                                                                                 Hmm - (bepatient) - (13)
                                                                                                                                     A couple things - (ubernostrum) - (12)
                                                                                                                                         Nits - (bepatient) - (11)
                                                                                                                                             I never got it with Warp. - (pwhysall) - (4)
                                                                                                                                                 It wasn't pretty, granted - (bepatient) - (3)
                                                                                                                                                     And, it could be made quite pretty - (jake123) - (2)
                                                                                                                                                         I thought its font handling was spectacularly awful. - (pwhysall) - (1)
                                                                                                                                                             The early iterations of the TT handling _were_ awful - (jake123)
                                                                                                                                             Re: Nits - (ubernostrum) - (2)
                                                                                                                                                 OT: Please don't put things in quotes unless you're quoting - (Another Scott) - (1)
                                                                                                                                                     When I quote - (ubernostrum)
                                                                                                                                             He seems to be listening to you. - (static) - (2)
                                                                                                                                                 Well. - (ubernostrum) - (1)
                                                                                                                                                     Do you blame me for losing my temper? (new thread) - (static)
                                                                                                                         Perhaps I see the problem. - (Another Scott) - (15)
                                                                                                                             It feels like this essay might be appropriate here - (broomberg) - (2)
                                                                                                                                 That's good. +5 Informative. -NT - (static)
                                                                                                                                 Actually. - (ubernostrum)
                                                                                                                             I agree with on this one, - (Moriarty)
                                                                                                                             Actually. - (ubernostrum) - (10)
                                                                                                                                 The parent to this post summarizes the stymie perfectly. - (folkert)
                                                                                                                                 "Enlightenment by choice" - (broomberg) - (2)
                                                                                                                                     The WM is only one aspect of the environment, Barry. -NT - (pwhysall)
                                                                                                                                     To me, it's a simple dichotomy. - (ubernostrum)
                                                                                                                                 WEEEEEE! (Great gallopin' goshes) - (folkert) - (5)
                                                                                                                                     What hardware are you running that on? - (Another Scott) - (4)
                                                                                                                                         Re: What hardware are you running that on? - (pwhysall)
                                                                                                                                         Very Lean, comparatively - (folkert) - (2)
                                                                                                                                             OT: X's reported memory usage means nowt - (pwhysall) - (1)
                                                                                                                                                 Yes, I understand that is the case. - (folkert)
                                                                                                                         Points mangled too, though? - (Ashton)
                                                                     And regarding "focus" - (ubernostrum) - (3)
                                                                         Then explain how configurability causes lack of focus. - (admin) - (2)
                                                                             Again. - (ubernostrum) - (1)
                                                                                 You sure about the JFK bit? I got doubts... -NT - (hnick)
                             Yeah... I know. - (folkert) - (1)
                                 *smile* - (imric)
             Thats why I choose "none of the above" - (bepatient)
         Gnomes are so cute! I love that Travelocity guy! :0) -NT - (imqwerky) - (2)
             IFS -NT - (Silverlock) - (1)
                 And you flushed me for saying Gnomes are cute. :-P -NT - (imqwerky)
         Well, wasn't that fun? - (pwhysall) - (6)
             Go away, this is good clean fun. - (admin) - (5)
                 Mind where you're waving that thing. - (pwhysall) - (4)
                     Well... - (admin) - (3)
                         That wasn't my sister... - (pwhysall) - (2)
                             I wouldn't have made that mistake - (admin) - (1)
                                 With *your* eyes? Puleeze. -NT - (pwhysall)

Every problem that humanity has ever encountered throughout history can be traced back to Gary in accounting.
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