Subversion to enable Git-like features

But Subversion's UI is horrific and its common operations throw away data in many cases. If Git is the Linux of version control systems, Subversion is the Windows of version control, and I don't mean that as a compliment. At least it's possible to get Linux working.

Which do you mean? Git-GUI is not "very nice" by any means. TortoiseGit is decent but a new Git user is hardly guided there (compare that to: http://mercurial.selenic.com/downloads/).

Also, my point wasn't specifically about GUIs per se but about usability overall. Git developers have only very recently, and only very grudgingly it seems, accepted that usability is even a serious concern. Considering that a developer will have an enormous amount of interaction with source control tools (almost as much as with an IDE or build tools in general) usability is obviously a huge factor. Git has a lot of the technical aspects nailed but I would be shocked if it won the current battle for revision control system of the future.

You miss the point. The problem is that you think "Subversion is the Windows of version control" is an insult. Windows is the world's most prevalent desktop operating system, by a huge margin. Windows is responsible for around $4 billion dollars of profit per year for Microsoft. Only a fool dismisses a fact like that as irrelevant, obviously Windows is doing something right.

Both Git and Linux are very ideologically pure in their design and construction. This has considerable benefits in some areas (I'm a huge fan of Linux as a server) but leads to a degree of maniacal zealotry in the developer and fan-base which ultimately causes the projects to become self-limiting.

I like Linux. I like Git. I think the technology underpinning both is fantastic. I'd like to see them both succeed. I'm just sad that there are so many zealots peddling the idea that any flaws (and there are many for Linux on the desktop and for Git as a tool for every dev in the world) can be swept under the rug because of the awesomeness of the ideological purity of their construction.

The thing is that git is a developer's tool. It's made for people who are on a commandline anyway, and I don't find it any more difficult to use than SVN or any other VCS I've tried. Most SVN users aren't used to the distributed paradigm, and so they might have a learning curve there, but otherwise most non-trivial SVN operations occur at a CLI too.

I agree that it'd be nice to see Git's functionality bundled up nicely, but that's not an exercise for Git's devs. Git, as one might expect, follows the normal philosophy in UNIX circles: do one thing and do it well. Adding a nice UI is an exercise for someone who wants to do that, and there are many projects attempting to do things like that, see http://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/InterfacesFrontendsAndT... .

Linux is the same way. Linux is just a kernel. It's up to others to throw nice GUIs (or any other program) on top of it. This is happening more and more, though I agree it could use more structure and organization. And for the record, I find GNOME much more usable than Windows.

The only reason Microsoft is on the top is its marketshare. People don't want to know anything about their computers, they just want to watch funny videos and talk to their friends.

If you sit someone in front of something that doesn't look like Windows, they flip out. My grandma flips out when we try to show her something on our Linux computers, she says, "Where's your icons? Why does this look different? This is crazy."

The sad thing is that a lot of this is Microsoft's fault in the first place. They've used their marketshare totally irresponsibly. Failings in the design and implementation of Windows have made users almost universally afraid of tinkering with their computers because of the possibility of breakages, viruses, and other unpleasant consequences.

Windows is #1 because of its marketshare and that's it. There may have been reasons they got to #1 a long time ago, but those are irrelevant now. What's relevant now is that Windows keeps on trucking because any program or component you pick up at the store will work on Windows, because everyone uses Windows, and you wouldn't make any money selling something that Windows can't work with. Everyone knows how to use Windows; they know to click the Start button, to click on the blue E, they know where things are. It's just like the systems they use at work or school.

For most people, the reason they choose Windows is because Windows is everywhere, and that's it. You won't find many people saying that they want to use Windows because they love the concept of the Start button. They use Windows because they know how it works. A few smaller niches use Windows because a program or a set of programs that are important to them run [well] on it. Very, very few use Windows because of Windows itself.

So, uh, now that we're done with that tangent, I think the Linux community recognizes the need for usability. You should read Planet GNOME or Planet KDE more often; there are frequently posts there about usability studies and improvements on their software. They are making strides. It's just that getting cooperation, funding, etc., is an uphill battle when your installed base is under 2%.