Make. It. Simple. Linux Desktop Usability
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Re: Make. It. Simple. Linux Desktop Usability
#2> I’d like to see the Linux desktop improve. And I think a wakeup call is needed
This. Absolutely this. Please don’t take his post as a personal attack, and consider the possibility that Linux is not as usable as it should be.
Re: Make. It. Simple. Linux Desktop Usability
#3As mentioned in the article, KDE. I started with xfce because I liked the lightweight nature of it. But it was lacking in a lot of ways. Once I started using KDE I never looked back. It takes a little bit of configuring to get it how you like, but you can make your desktop fit your workflow exactly how you like it. I've never had problems. Using windows or other desktop environments feels clunky and inefficient compared to the setup i've slowly built and tweaked to my needs over the years.
Re: Make. It. Simple. Linux Desktop Usability
#4If more people read this and comment (one way or another), we might get a more usable desktop on Linux.
I’m going back to Linux after years on the Mac and windows, and it’s killing me. Finding anything is a pain in the butt, hence me posting this.
Re: Make. It. Simple. Linux Desktop Usability
#5It's like these people haven't heard about Cinnamon.
Re: Make. It. Simple. Linux Desktop Usability
#6I don’t understand a lot of the criticisms at modern ui/ux patterns in this post. Ex: complaining about the hidden settings menu in chrome. Most people just want their applications to work and have the most common functions easily accessible. I am sure most users of chrome don’t ever need to delve into settings and are happy with the minimal set of options presented to them and that user testing backs this decision.
Re: Make. It. Simple. Linux Desktop Usability
#7I implore everyone to read the rest of the series.
Re: Make. It. Simple. Linux Desktop Usability
#8To be fair to firefox, this has changed recently.
Re: Make. It. Simple. Linux Desktop Usability
#9Global menus only make sense in an environment where only one application is on screen at once. This is especially true when you throw in "focus follows mouse"and you have to cross another application on the way to the global menu.
What I really hate lately is the iconification of menus, be it ribbon or that firefox abomination. Having to learn a different set of hieroglyphs for each application is a terrible UX. This is taking the form over function approach that has long plagued media players (still does with spotify and netflix) and bringing it to all applications.
Humans are much better at scanning through justified lists of text, this was our fast lookup method long before computers existed.
Re: Make. It. Simple. Linux Desktop Usability
#10I don’t understand a lot of the criticisms at modern ui/ux patterns in this post. Ex: complaining about the hidden settings menu in chrome. Most people just want their applications to work and have the most common functions easily accessible. I am sure most users of chrome don’t ever need to delve into settings and are happy with the minimal set of options presented to them and that user testing backs this decision.
Yes, and browsers are specifically about the content you're viewing whether that be a simple page or a web-app. How often do you really use the application menus of a browser in the first place, and does that justify giving them center stage over and above the tab list at the top?
There may be arguments in favor of global menus, but browsers are not one of them. Personally, I detest global menus like the plague because it really disconnects the list of actions from what I'm going to be acting on, especially if you have e.g. focus follows mouse. (But I'm sure we're just supposed to let go of that too...)
EDIT: ... and since nobody asked: The problem with the Linux desktop is mostly lack of consistency across applications, IMO.