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Free software scares normal people

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Re: Free software scares normal people

#461

Post by int_19h »

Andrex wrote: post #321
sfRattan wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GNOME 3+ developers put themselves in the inevitable (and unenviable) position of defending every decision to death because they limited the user's ability to make many, many decisions that were possible in previous versions . There's nothing wrong with an opinionated desktop environment or even an opinionated Linux distribution. But, prior to GNOME 3, the project was highly configurable. Now it is not. When people s…

Ideally you'd want to add selectable options for users in a way that's sustainable long-term and not just panic-adding things all over the place because of user demands. That's how you get the Handbrake situation that OP article is complaining about. Gnome 3 was a big update and adding options, which does happen, is not free. There were changes from Gnome 2 and 3 and adding some options "back" from Gnome 2 is really…

Gnome developers also have a habit of telling users (and other developers who try to integrate with their DE) who ask for those missing features that they're "holding it wrong" etc. Quite often this is justified along the lines of, "we did a UX study and you don't really need to do X so we made it do Y instead!"

After dealing with this kind of stuff for 14 years, it shouldn't be surprising that you don't have a lot of folk left who are willing to extend good faith to Gnome devs.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#462

Post by ktosobcy »

shevy-java wrote: post #460

I am not sure if I agree to the statement made, but one problem I found is that many people don't even understand the problem domain. Microsoft trained their brain to accept that they must be cashcows for them, so they don't understand that there may be alternatives. And let's be honest: Linux is still WAY too complicated for many elderly people to use.

Anectodal: just the other day I put Fedora KDE 43 on "new" (well, second-hand after lease) computer for my father as the old one was on it's last legs and... it works just fine.

The machine came with Windows 10 by default and what he needed was Firefox and FreeCell, and FreeCell on Windows10 was atrocious.

He likes it a lot and the only thing was that I had to put same wallpaper as he had on Windows7 and icons in the same places.

The "linux is to complicated" argument just doesn't hold true anymore! It's nice and easy, including the installation (even I was surprised)

Re: Free software scares normal people

#463

Post by int_19h »

ido wrote: post #156
meanfield wrote: post #147

There are literally thousands of wrappers for ffmpeg (other examples: imagemagick, ghostscript) that do exactly that. E.g. all commercial and dozens of open source video converters. So there is no lack of simple software for people who know little about the problem they're trying to solve (e.g. playing a downloaded mkv their shitty preinstalled video player doesn't accept), the problem is rather one of knowing that o…

Does it? I often ask ChatGPT such things and specifying I want free software options is enough (it often mentions which options are and aren’t free on its own).

It's great if you already know enough (or know how to read the manpage) to verify that what it tells you is really what it does. Given that e.g. LLM coding assistants sometimes end up doing things like reverting code they didn't write or deleting "useless" files, I wouldn't trust any LLM-generated shellcode without a thorough review.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#464

Post by int_19h »

a96 wrote: post #423
mbork_pl wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that specific to FOSS?

It's one of the main features, just incoherently rambled and backwards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition#T... > The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. Free software can be audited for backdoors. Closed can not. Their backdoors will stay there indefinitely.

Access to source code does not translate to "written by some random people". Many F/OSS projects have a tight circle of contributors, sometimes even outright closed as for e.g. SQLite.

That aside, OP was complaining about software written by "random people". Thing is, people working in companies that write proprietary software are equally "random" in that sense. We know that some of them are North Korean agents, for example.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#466

Post by swader999 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #336
makeitdouble wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> creating good interfaces (for people that aren’t developers.) This is the part where people get excited about AI. I personally think they're dead wrong on the process, but strongly empathize with that end goal. Giving people the power to make the interfaces they need is the most enduring solution to this issue. We had attempts like HyperCard or Delphi, or Access forms. We still get Excel forms, Google forms etc. Ha…

I have nightmare stories to tell of Access Forms from my time dealing with them in the 90's. The usual situation is that the business department hires someone with a modicum of talent or interest in tech, who then uses Access to build an application that automates or helps with some aspect of the department's work. They then leave (in a couple of cases these people were just interns) and the IT department is then cal…

This legit triggered me. I'm thirty years in now and only two failed projects. My first paid work was an access project for a small business and it failed and I didn't get paid. Luckily I kept trying.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#467

Post by KronisLV »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #411
KronisLV wrote: post #405

> It’s a bit like obscuring the less-used functions on a TV remote with tape. The functions still exist if you need them, but you’re not required to contend with them just to turn the TV on. For telling software devs to embrace traditional design wisdom, using TV remotes is an interesting example - cause aside from the commonly used functionality people actually care about (channels, volume, on/off, maybe subtitles/a…

I'd say it tells us that "good design" is stupid. Remotes are fine . Except the modern ones that have a touchpad and, like, 8 buttons, four of which are ads . People can handle many buttons just fine. Even one year old kids don't have a problem with this , which becomes apparent if you ever watch a small child play. The only people who have a problem here are UX designers high on paternalistic approach to users.

> Remotes are fine.

Maybe? But, like, what's the value added by a bunch of useless bullshit buttons that will never be used? Greebles to make the customers think they're buying something cool?

Just put a menu one in there for the 1% of the times when you actually have to use the functionality there and don't do the equivalent of putting 30 widgets in your weather homepage.

It's not like anyone is losing their life or finds TVs to be unusable due to the status quo, but it also feels like the equivalent of cutting off the ends of your roast when putting it on a pan because that's how your mom did it which she learnt from her mom, without either of you knowing that the real reason is that your grandmother just didn't have a big enough roasting pan and it's just habit.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#468

Post by swader999 »

analog31 wrote: post #270
cenamus wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust me, there are enough people here that believe that. Other engineering disciplines are simpler because you can only have complexity in three dimensions. While in software complexitiy would be everywhere. Crazy to believe that

There are many more than three "dimensions" if I may use the term loosely, in software or hardware engineering. Cost, safety, interaction between subsystems (developed by different engineering disciplines), tolerances, supply chain, manufacturing, reliability, the laws of physics, possibly chemistry and environmental interactions, regulatory, investor forgiveness, etc. Traditional engineering also doesn't have the op…

The top three are typically quality, budget and time. Usually a compromise is needed on one of these. You could replace quality with features in SW dev.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#469

Post by galagawinkle489 »

csin wrote: post #399
array_key_first wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inverse is also true. If you prioritize the first five minutes, your software is worthless in any industry that matters. And that's why designers are using Photoshop and not Microsoft paint.

See, I feel this is where programmers just don't "get" good UI design. Photoshop is good UI design. A normie can use photoshop the same way they use MS paint. Albeit it just loads slower. A normie doesn't need all the bells and whistles. They can just use photoshop like a glorified MS paint. You can't do that with GIMP. It's actually really fucking annoying, if you try to use GIMP to do a MS paint job.

Clearly this is not true. Photoshop is difficult to use. I have opened it and tried to use it many times. Its UI is super complicated. There are endless buttons and I have no idea how to do anything.

There are heaps of Photoshop tutorials on YouTube, which wouldn't be necessary if what you said were true.

I used GIMP to do MS paint stuff years ago when I used it fairly regularly.

GIMP is always a whipping boy for UI design on forums like this and I think it is pretty unfair. It is a pretty good program comparatively. If you want to see bad UI design a much better example is something like Visual Studio. What a mess.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#470

Post by scott_w »

nradov wrote: post #352
marcus_holmes wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is always the response. But it's wildly impractical - there are only so many developer hours available. The budget is limited, so not everyone gets what they want immediately. This should be obvious. Part of the problem is that the novices that create these applications don't consider all the edge cases and gnarly non-golden-path situations, but the experienced devs do. So the novice slaps together somethi…

In most organizations the problem is lack of urgency rather than lack of developer hours. The developers sit in isolated siloes rather than going out and directly engaging with business units. This is mostly a management problem but there are plenty of individual developers who wait to be told what to do rather than actively seeking out better solutions for business problems.

> In most organizations the problem is lack of urgency rather than lack of developer hours.

I disagree: it's a business prioritisation issue (not necessarily a problem). Ultimately, a lot of the processes are there because the wider business (rightly) wants IT to work on the highest impact issues. A random process that 3 people suffer from probably isn't the highest impact for the business as a whole.

Also, because it's not high impact, it makes sense that an intern is co-opted to make life easier (also as a learning experience), however it also causes the issues OP highlighted.

The problem is solvable, I think, but it's not easily solvable!

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