Pretty much sums up why it won't happen until someone starts imitating Steve Jobs and DICTATING how The Desktop should look like. And that means more pretty than functional.
Nope. I left the Linux desktop for OSX not because of aesthetics but because of the freedom from frustration that OS X gave me. Design isn't about making things more pretty, it is about improving the way a system works where the human part of it meets the machine part of it.
Linux distros just haven't put in the man-hours to make it a functional desktop for many.
I am not sure the desktop needs conquering, we have more than one option and Linux won't make it unless it can get apps that people just have to have
Which is hard for it to get. Developing an app for desktop Linux means targeting a small group of people who are willing to endure frustration in order to run code whose source is available. Unless you are have some other revenue stream besides your customer, you can't make it more than a hobby.
The main problem, I'd say, is that there really isn't much of a reason to switch. People who buy a computer don't have any incentive to go through the with hassle.
If computers came with Ubuntu pre-installed I'm sure people would use those without a second thought.
However, the package management still needs to improve. One realizes that upon upgrading from one Ubuntu release to the other particularly if you have a bunch of software installed from PPAs. It would be unreasonable to expect a typical user to be able to fix the problems that it leads to.
While `apt-get` is great, you realize the limitations when you need to resort to `dpkg` when the package management is left in a broken state due to the occasional mess created upon removing a package.
I wish somebody from Canonical were looking at this thread.
But we have plenty of distros where the people behind it do just that?
Wow, this is such a difficult problem. Let's just get back to bragging about how many file systems Linux supports. "And how many file systems do Windows and Mac OS support?" "Yuck, yuck, yuck"
I used OSX around 10.4 for about four years, because it seemed like the best of both worlds: nice UX with an unix backend. That is, indeed, why OSX appealed to most geeks, right?
I became tired of OSX after a couple of years. What apple dictates might look good, but it's far from functional. It's eye candy with little substance. On the surface is pretty, but Finder under OSX was essentially a crapshot. Under Linux I could have virtual desktops, but not under OSX (that only arrived years later). Tweaking, even slightly, any default behavior is hard. That is also the reason why Gnome doesn't appeal to me. The basic OSX desktop doesn't offer anything beyond a current Gnome release. Things change if you need commercial programs, but the desktop itself is not inferior in both behavior, looks and general interaction. Gnome is, performance wise, slower, but the people that use gnome do not seem to notice.
Not to mention that what every developer does on OSX is install an external package manager, and by and large replace every single userland utility and library with an up-to-date variant from Brew, MacPorts, etc. This was a massive burden. Any linux distribution is far superior in that regard.
I don't think that Gnome today is far away from OSX. Sometimes OSX is smoother, sometimes Gnome actually is.
But, my desktop today is nowhere even remotely comparable to what gnome offers. I'm using a tiling window manager with pretty much any program customized to the point of being unrecognizable. It's incredibly efficient compared to a pretty desktop. I'm aggressively disabling eye candy and animations everywhere. I'm often using CLI versions of GUI programs because the actual user interface is superior. Some TUI programs have no rivals in GUI form.
The fact is, is that if you use your computer professionally and switch to linux, you start to understand what user interface efficiency is. At some point, eye candy becomes a second, third, fourth priority. This doesn't mean the program is any less usable though. I still value presentation. I'll take a nice UI any day over a crappy one, given the interaction is the same.
I've witnessed the same happening to many people that I've suggested linux. Many of those still use windows or mac, but with completely different habits.
> Tweaking, even slightly, any default behavior is hard.
I understand why they want to restrict tweaking - it makes support easier. Hide the tweaks in config files, make it clear that you're not going to support tweaked systems. But don't ban tweaks.
That highly depends on what you do with your computer professionally though. So it might be a fact for some, but completely false for others.
I'm using a tiling window manager with pretty much any program customized to the point of being unrecognizable.
I played that game for years but gave up afterwards. Maybe I was doing it wrong but I spent just too much time to my liking on it. Now I'm more in a mindest of 'if you can't build me software which I can use almost as-is, I'll look for something else'. Not always ideal either and sometimes there are no alternatives so you'r stuck with crap after all. And yeah maybe I'm not using my computer as efficiently as possible (looking at some collegues though, I'm a wizard compared to their 'let's use a mouse for everything and double-clik to make sure it hits'-style), but I'm getting work done.
I have my own list here, but I'm curious to hear yours to potentially add to my list. Thanks for the great post.
Very true. Before starting my current position, i was a Visual studio die hard.While i still think it's the best single IDE, one thing thing i notice using linux CLI and vim in particular how much faster is it to do thing. And i seem to remember better how to do stuff instead of being lost in menus .
I think the current trend in UX is toward making them more intuitive (which i think linux/CLI could read do a be job at), but sadly we are sacrificing efficiency in the process.
You can have aesthetically pleasing and functional at the same time - they aren't mutually exclusive. Making the interface attractive doesn't mean 'dumbing down' the interface either.
Ubuntu is arguably the most popular Linux Desktop distribution and their model of UX development is to have a dedicated UX team designing the Ubuntu desktop experience. Presumably they read feedback from the community of Ubuntu users but ultimately, they make the final call on UX decisions.
The model for open source code contributions just doesn't work for visual and interaction design. (Or if it does, I've yet to see a successful example that wasn't an exception rather than the rule).
When there are too many participants in the visual and interaction design of a program or OS, you end up with a project pulled in every direction and pleasing to no-one. But if you go the opposite route and limit design decisions to a dedicated UX team or sole designer, you end up generating resentment from contributors or users who feel their input is being ignored.
UX/UI work is very different that base dev. work, and maybe should be approach differently.
My other though would that maybe the talent pool of UX designer is just too small in the Open Source world, and that most OSS tend not to treat UX design as a first class requirement.
Not really. I mean if you think about it, the original Macintosh looked like shit even compared to its predecessors; what was it, something like a nine inch screen in black and white, even greyscale it could only do with migraine-inducing dithering. But it could do desktop publishing when pretty much nothing else could, and Macintosh programs mostly used a consistent interface so you could figure out how to use them, and these functional advantages got people to buy the computer.
Linux Mint looks as pretty as Windows or Mac OS, and Ubuntu would if they'd change the weird purple color scheme, but what happens when a client sends you an Excel spreadsheet? What happens when you want to plug in a second monitor? What happens when you want to play a triple-A video game? What's the battery life like on a laptop? Those are functional issues that need to be solved.
WPS Office covers me on that area. I use spreadsheets every week.
> What happens when you want to plug in a second monitor?
It works. Beautifully. In fact, I got a Powerpoint presentation, opened it with WPS, and the presentation was shown in the second display, while showing the notes and the rest of the 'WPS Presentation' in the laptop display.
> What happens when you want to play a triple-A video game?
Now this depends more on how many triple-A video games get sold in Steam for Linux than anything else. The technology is already there. The market is still small.
> What's the battery life like on a laptop?
This is a serious issue, and it needs to be solved.