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Comment by irthomasthomas | Hacker News Reader

KDE doesn't assume I'm an idiot who needs all options hidden away, yadda, yadda.

Have you read KDE's new Human Interface Guidelines? Because that is exactly what they are doing, now.

  Make it easy to focus on what matters --- Remove or minimize elements not crucial to the primary or main task. Use spacing to keep things organized. Use color to draw attention. Reveal additional information or optional functions only when needed.
  I know how to do that! --- Make things easier to learn by reusing design patterns from other applications. Other applications that use good design are a precedent to follow.
  Do the heavy lifting for me --- Make complex tasks simple. Make novices feel like experts. Create ways in which your users can naturally feel empowered by your software.

It looks like they are moving more and more toward a iphone/android like, dumbed-down experience. https://develop.kde.org/hig/

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>It looks like they are moving more and more toward a iphone/android like, dumbed-down experience.

Have you actually used KDE? The amount of settings in the "system settings" application is almost overwhelming; it is definitely not a "dumbed-down" experience. The thing you're quoting is just asking devs to keep things a little more focused, not to remove options altogether ("Reveal additional information or optional functions only when needed.")

I can't find it now, but Dolphin used to have a rather demoralizing web page that listed user stereotypes (something like "Joe is a corporate developer", "Bob is an artist...", "Fred is an enthusiast..." and basically amounted to if you've been a linux enthusiast since you were a teenager, we don't want to hear your feedback. I can't find it now, I hope they deleted it. I know creating such stereotypes is or was common practice in corporate software design, but it's vile.

There's nothing vile about that, it's normal development practice. If you decide to make a code editor you're not making an app for artists, you're making an app for developers. That's a conscious choice you make when you sat down and said "I'm going to make a code editor today." Unless you think it's stereotyping to consider that people have different skills and professions?

Just think a little bit more about this in the context of your example. A user who isn't a Linux enthusiast or sysadmin isn't going to know anything about what /usr/share or /var/lib, etc is supposed to be. And a user who knows everything about that isn't going to need a fancy file manager to perform sysadmin tasks on those folders! They know how to do everything from the command line already.

This is a very weird dichotomy that doesn't actually work that way IRL. A power user is not necessarily a command line wizard, and even if they are, plenty of tasks are still easier and quicker to do in the GUI - provided, that is, that the GUI can actually be optimized for the needs of said power user. We used to be able to accommodate all kinds of users with customization; now it's increasingly the lowest common denominator (and often an imaginary one at that) with no escape hatch.

I actually think the reason for that is economic and it does work IRL. What you think of as "power users" actually requires a lot of training, it's expensive to produce them. Their skill set still isn't enough to offload real development tasks on them, so whatever they do is still completely dependent on having a team of engineers to support them. If you're going to be paying the engineers anyway, it's cheaper to just make something that requires less training for the users up front.

Creating, testing, and updating documentation for command line tools takes a tiny fraction of the time and effort required to do the same for GUI tools. At the same time, the command line across Linux distros is subject to way less variation than all the GUIs across the same. Moreover, the fundamentals of the shell and the syntax of the CLI tools are way more stable over time than a given GUI configurator's layout, so CLI documentation will remain correct and useful longer than GUI documentation. Add to that that for many Google-able tasks, the same task may be relevant to headless servers, and you have another, independent cause for CLI documentation to be created without a GUI counterpart and for it to show up highly in search results.

This means that most documentation for advanced tasks in a volunteer-maintained system where everything actually has configurability via the CLI will tend to cover and emphasize CLI methods.

It is arguably possible to have knowledgeable 'power users' who do not know how to use an operating system's CLI. Longtime Windows users probably fit the bill. But on Linux, nobody who has spent enough time actually reading documentation or following tutorials (and made a reasonable effort to understand them) to become a power user is actually unable to use the CLI. The CLI-averse power user just doesn't exist on Linux due to a bit of a chicken-and-egg issue.

PS: The only system directory tree users should ever 'administer' on Linux by directly manipulating files in it is /etc. The grasp of the CLI needed for this is extremely basic, and there are even nice CUA text editors for the terminal these days. There's no wizardry required to do anything that isn't as destructive or risky as confusing the operating system itself (namely the package manager) about the state of the filesystem.

To me that means thinking about contextual information rather than "dumbing down". I don't remember anything significant being removed in the last 5 years, Dolphin is an almost perfect "power user" file manager, and they have not been messing around with it. In fact the whole Plasma desktop environment is getting into a nice stable state.

I can see it being overwhelming for someone used to an iPhone (or Gnome :p), but the KDE approach seems to be to hide advanced options/GUI by default if needed, but make enabling them a simple check box that doesn't suddenly disappear one day.

> I don't remember anything significant being removed in the last 5 years, Dolphin is an almost perfect "power user" file manager

When Dolphin first came out, it was arguably a 'dumbed down' version of Konqueror, which has even more features and also supported web browsing.

But over time, it became clear that Dolphin did a great job of organizing and simplifying Conqueror's file management functionality without losing power in any way that mattered.

I hope that kind of change is what the new KDE HIG is going for. If so, I think KDE is going to be better than ever.

The box at the bottom of that page gives me hope:

> Note

> KDE encourages developing and designing for customization, while providing good default settings.

It's not dumbed-down to make apps that are focused around performing a specific task and making them easy to use. That's literally the entire purpose of designing apps. There's nothing else to it. iPhone and Android didn't invent that either, I think most people would agree that not every app needs to be Emacs.

I think there is. It transforms the applications from a tool to an appliance.

> Use spacing to keep things organized

Stupidity is contagious. Some five years ago i had to use Gmail for work and someone from Google had the great idea to use a big "Gmail" icon which did nothing but used around 1/5 of the screen.

Or you go to a website to fill a form (name, address, etc) and there are exactly 3 text inputs on the screen, the rest being unused space.

Probably, it's the unified material design to blame. It's a space hog, though on mobile it was pretty good in the beginning around android v5.

Have you read KDE's new Human Interface Guidelines?

No.

Because that is exactly what they are doing, now.

That is unfortunate. I'd hate to have to move off of KDE. It's been great up to this point.

You don't have to. The OP is entirely misinterpreting the KDE HIG. If you want to see how actual KDE devs interpret it (rather than some random non-KDE user on a message forum), just go use the latest KDE. It isn't turning into Gnome.

I do use the latest KDE. I'm just saying that if they start making changes that go in the "let's dumb this down and start removing options" path, then I'll probably start looking at other options.

I don't see any evidence they're going to do that, including in the HIG quote the OP posted before. It said nothing about removing options, so any suggestion they are seems like scare-mongering to me.

There's a difference between simplifying and putting extra options under a setting, and removing things altogether.

I don't know if this you are doing should be called "FUD" like in the old days or "fake news" as a more modern term.

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