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Make Linux "Gorgeous," Says Ubuntu Leader
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Oct 30, 2006 02:50 PM
from the also-crash-less dept.
from the also-crash-less dept.
OSS_ilation writes "They say beauty is only skin deep, but when it comes to Linux and the free software movement, people like Mark Shuttleworth think looks have an important part to play. On his blog and an article on SearchOpenSource.com, Shuttleworth and a slew of open source end users say that the look and feel of open source is also a matter of wider acceptance among enterprise players who are used to Windows, yet crave Mac OS X and the functionality of Linux. 'If we want the world to embrace free software, we have to make it beautiful,' Shuttleworth said. "We have to make it gorgeous. We have to make it easy on the eye. We have to make it take your friend's breath away.' With the early success of Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, Shuttleworth and company may be onto something."
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Technology: What Really Happened To Ubuntu's Edgy Artwork? 297 comments
angrykeyboarder writes, "Many Ubuntu users expressed surprise, dismay, and disappointment when Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl) nixed the popular community-developed artwork during the beta phase of Ubuntu 6.10 ('The Edgy Eft'). Some Ubuntu community members were downright shocked, and many were ultimately dissatisfied with the final product. What exactly happened? Short answer: the Art Team was less disturbed than some other community members were. Linux.com has the scoop." Slashdot and Linux.com are both part of OSTG.
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Imagine... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Imagine... (Score:4, Insightful)
So essentially, Mark Shuttleworth is right. It's not enough to be just barely the best in anything when the market leader has almost all of the market. You have to truly jump miles above the market leader before people will notice. It's unfortunate but true.
How do you think the Apple iPod worked so well? When it came out, nerds said "less space than a Nomad, it's shit." But what happened? If you really compare, the iPod blew the Nomad away in terms of ease of use and beauty. Not to mention marketing, but that's a different story altogether.
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The one that finishes booting first?
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Another thing that's needed is something similar to Apple's original User Interface Guidelines, so that all of the applicatons on the platform are consistent from both a usability and visual standpoint.
Having consistent dialogs, button placements, menus, and so on tend to make a platform a LOT more accessible.
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Mark Shuttleworth said that the problem that Linux didn't look good enough.
That's not really entirely true, it looks OK. But the ergonomics still suck really hard for
many things. It works reasonably nastily.
Comparing to Windows isn't remotely good enough.
When it starts to be an ergonomic horse race between Mac OS X and Billionaire
Linux, then that's progress. We're about as far in that direction as Afghanistan is sending turbaned men to Mars.
In fact
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Not enough TurbanWare makers in the districts of the appropriation committee congressdroids.
Re:Do or do not. There is no try. (Score:5, Interesting)
The opportunity that the open source community has is to leverage the capacity for development that has made FOSS a viable contender for hard drive space to develop something entirely new in computing. Projects like Open Office and the GIMP are great, offering alternatives to commercial software where options weren't available before. And development of those products should continue, but to what end? Sure, there's value in being able to provide a drop in, no training required replacement for the Microsoft software stack if it can be done with open standards and security. But if all you're doing is following the development of major software vendors, you're relying on them to set the pace of innovation. Even the venerated Linus Torvalds made Linux because he wanted to have a Unix-like system running on his commodity hardware (yeah, yeah, let the hatemail come).
So, tell me, where is the group that comes along and says, "Here's a new way of using a computer. Everyone come help us build it, it's gonna be great" ?? Why, after all these years, am I still forced to use the paradigm of paper-based documents (PDF, RTF, e-mail, web) to communicate most information, even if it never hits paper? Why do I have to gather information by reading text, line by line, down a page? Where's the visual depth to our digital world? Where's the alternative information delivery?
And I'm not calling for a bunch of new input or output devices that will change the way we work with a computer, though those are needed as well. Given what we have (mouse, keyboard, monitor), we ought to be able to come up with something better.
Take, for instance, the Civilization IV interface as a model for systems administration. Replace cities with servers, continents become networks, nations become domains, etc. Pan and zoom around your network, click on users to see what they're up to, double click on servers to look at their configuration and make edits to it, adjust automation, etc. etc. User apps have other opportunities for data navigation, communication, resource location, etc. But we've got to get ourselves off of the paper paradigm first. How do we do that?
Parent
Re:Do or do not. There is no try. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most sites or interfaces that try to overlay reality with other metaphors fail, usually because the metaphor doesn't communicate (why is the home page the "Town Hall"?) and because most graphical systems aren't as dense as text. To take your example, do I want to navigate a virtual building trying to find Fred's desk, or is it faster to find Fred in an alphabetic list and click on it.
I actually expect search and metadata (aka Spotlight) to take us further than 3D spinning virtual worlds...
Parent
Re:Do or do not. There is no try. (Score:4, Insightful)
How about how if you open your browser, a single click on a hyperlink follows to the links URL, but the file-manager that looks just like the browser needs to double-click the links (shortcuts)?
Here's a good one how about downloading an executable to a user's desktop, then right-clicking and run-as admin, ever try that it don't work, Windows says admin has insufficient privileges! Then you get sneeky and down-load it to a shared folder, and run-as, but that still doesn't work, you have to copy it into the shared folder, I've pleaded with every windows guru for 3 years to tell me how to do that, nobody knew! as far as I can tell I'm the only one! This is so unintuitive, admin is untrusted and to make a file shared, it has to be moved into a shared folder, and downloading into the shared folder doesn't count!
I don't want to to things the "new" windows way, I want some sanity, I want the old tried and true, rational, expandable Unix way!
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try WinObj and see what drive letters really are.. (Score:3, Informative)
Deep inside the Windows NT/XP kernel, it maintains an object namespace very similar to a Unix filesystem. You can use WinObj from sysinternals.com [sysinternals.com] to navigate this object namespace. Notice that under the 'Global??' folder you will find the entries 'C:' and 'D:' and so on symbolic linked to the appropriate file system. Also, '\Device\*' in the object namespace is very much like '/dev/*' on Unix.
It is evident that drive letters under an NT kernel is just a DOS compatibility after-thought. The kernel doesn't
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You are aware of the tiny historic fact that the animated "click here to start" thing that appeared in the task bar of windos 95 after a fresh install was put there as a last-minute hack because final tests on a new user group, totally new to the system, resulted in the shock finding that none of them thought about looking for Applications in a button called "Start" ?
The phrase "starting a program" is geek-speak. It's not how your mum thinks.
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Wow, and accurate assessment! (Score:5, Insightful)
IMO - Microsoft doesn't dominate because it is better, it dominates because of great marketing and ease of use (even for groups such as the disabled). My grandmother can use XP Home, but if I have Linux up, she completely freezes. Sure, there's some grandmas that know perl scripting, but who wants to jump in and start compiling code just so they can play bridge with their friends over the net?
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Re:Wow, and accurate assessment! (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is great for beginners. And its perfect for experts. But it doesn't work very well for those people in between... the "Power Users". They get on a linux box and the first thing they say is "where's the C drive?" Then next its "where's Program Files?" Then they bitch about when stuff is installed it gets spread all over in places like /usr/bin, /usr/share, /usr/lib, /etc, etc. (see what I did there?).
For beginners its great. "where's My Documents?" "How do I get on the Internet?" "How do I log out?" After a few minutes they figure these things out and are on the way.
The experts get to the console and type ssh, rsync, grep, sed, find and the like and they're in heaven.
But the "power users" have so much knowledge of registry hacks and all the little things that you have to do just to make windows work. They know that the hard drive is C: and if you have more than one hard drive, the second on is D:, if not then D: is the cdrom. Apps are installed in their own folders under C:\program files\ (unless you specified something else in the installer) but you can't remove them by just deleting the folder, you have to go to add/remove programs in the control panel. If that doesn't work then you nuke the app from the registry and then delete the folder in program files. To all the "power users" out there, that is how computers are supposed to work. Show them anything else, then they are just as helpless as the beginners. They don't want to give up all that windows specific knowledge without a fight.
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* Where should I save my work ?
* How do I read files from a CD ?
* When I install programs, where do they go ?
* Speaking of which, how do I install something ?
Windows provides answers to these questions in form of GUI. I can click on the CD-Rom icon, I can pick programs from the Start menu, I can add/remove programs using the GUI tool, and I can save my files pretty much anywhere
Some answers but why change? (Score:3, Informative)
In your home directory sorted in whatever way makes sense to you - or on an NFS share used by a lot of people for collaborative work named after the project, division or whatever - not F: M: or whatever windows shared drive which may differ between desktop machines.
If you get something that isn't available with the distributions package manager it depends on what it is. Local stuff only to be used on that computer goes in /usr/lo
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Not only not knowing where stuff goes, but they also need to find suitable replacements for everything. Visual Studio? Learn other editors (vi/emacs), IDEs, debuggers and compilers (gcc?). The windows APIs we're used to? Gone. The widgets (winforms/winfx/whatever)? Gone. The frameworks? Gone. C#? Learn another language. Scripting languages you know? Learn perl instead. SQL Server? Learn anothe
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eg: I'm very experienced with both Linux and Windows, but still get lost and confused w
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Well, that's all part of it, isn't it. If I want to listen to music on a Windows machine, and I don't like WMP, it is easy for me to find out about Winamp, iTunes, or other good, highly polished apps. I can then go to the website, look at screen shots, read reviews and feature lists, etc. When I see one that looks good I click the big friendly download button. If I'm a complete novice and running IE, when the download starts I click the "run file" button when it asks to start the download, otherwise I
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As backwards as it sounds, I really think the Linux world needs to find some inves
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Correct. Gnome has made significant progress in creating an easy to use desktop. Pre-2.12 I could not tolerate using it more than a few days (I was a KDE user since early '99). 2.12 is what made me consider switching from KDE. 2.14 convinced me to do it. With 2.16, I now have no desire to use KDE at all. I've even dropped the few KDE apps I used for Gnome ones (amaroK->Exaile, Quanta->Bluefish+CSSED, K3B->GnomeBaker, etc) I'll give 4 a try, but it will have to be really
Don't make it beautiful, make it Just Work (tm) (Score:5, Insightful)
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From TFB (the fine blog):
not much "hard to use" as "horrendously buggy" (Score:3, Interesting)
The previous is to show you pissed off I *am* of Microsoft offer
sjobs - design is not just veneer (Score:5, Interesting)
Fortune Magazine: What has always distinguished the products of the
companies you've led is the design aesthetic. Is your obsession with design
an inborn instinct or what?
Steve Jobs: We don't have good language to talk about this kind of thing.
In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating.
It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be
further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a
man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers
of the product or service. The iMac is not just the colour or translucence or
the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible
consumer computer in which each element plays together.
On our latest iMac, I was adamant that we get rid of the fan, because it is
much more pleasant to work on a computer that doesn't drone all the time.
That was not just "Steve's decision" to pull out the fan; it required an
enormous engineering effort to figure out how to manage power better and do
a better job of thermal conduction through the machine. That is the furthest
thing from veneer. It was at the core of the product the day we started.
This is what customers pay us for--to sweat all these details so it's easy
and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good
at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for
them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely
like it.
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/2000/01/24/app6.ht
Re:sjobs - design is not just veneer (Score:4, Interesting)
I wish I had mod points for you, because that was exactly my first thought. There is a huge difference between software that looks beautiful and software that is beautiful. A well designed application need not have visually fantastic features -- in fact, often the most "beautiful" applications have very simple interfaces, but they are very intuitive and a joy to use. I have not actually used a Mac in over a decade, but I am tempted to get one just because of the care Apple seems to take in everything that they do. In Windows Vista, Microsoft is doing exactly what Mark Shuttleworth has called for. They are trying to cover up the flaws and problems with Windows without actually redesigning the system.
The problem with Linux for me has been its clunky feel. Most of the applications felt like hacks. There was no coherent organization for system tools, or there were multiple collections of applications that seemed to do the same thing but with slight differences (equivalent of two apps to change the screen settings, but one sets the resolution and background and the other the background and color settings). The applications felt poorly designed and half-baked with inconsistent interfaces. Now granted, it has been a couple years since I last touched a Linux distribution, so things may have changed since then, but somehow I doubt it. Installing new software was a chore, and was never as simple as it should have been. It seemed that most applications were even worse in Linux than in Windows for scattering files all of the file system. Many applications required edits to text files for configuration which while making some configuration possible to automate from the command line does not make things easy to use for the casual user (where was the config file again?).
Really, from what I understand of OS X, Apple came much closer to what really needs to be done -- a complete revamping of the structure of Linux. Create a consistent, simplified and enforced directory structure to make application and driver installation much easier to manage. Replace all configuration with graphical tools while leaving the power of the command line available for those who wish to tap into it but out of plain view. Create a consistent user experience with well thought out conventions that create an atmosphere of familiarity throughout all applications that run in the system. Unfortunately, I am not sure that this is possible in the open source arena because you almost need a more totalitarian organization system to enforce it. Transforming Linux into a real competitor with OS X and Windows will take a great deal of organization and cooperation -- something that Linux seems to lack, especially when you consider how many flavors of Linux there are. Unity has never been their strong suit, but to accomplish what Mark Shuttleworth is suggesting, they will need a unified effort from the core systems all the way to the MP3 player to make it happen.
Parent
They say beauty is only skin deep, but ugly... (Score:5, Funny)
resolution independent (Score:3, Insightful)
When you buy that ridiculously high resolution dell laptop, all the icons and text doesn't shrink to the size of warnings for health meds.
how about making Ubuntu Gorgeous (Score:5, Funny)
So, while I would agree that Linux needs some beautification, I don't trust anyone at Ubuntu to do it!
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So when I upgraded to ubuntu dapper for my parents back home, I made an effort to set up a better color scheme.
To my surprise, when they began using the computer, they were disappointed that it didn't come with the ubuntu color scheme they love so much. And no, they have had other os'es and distros setup in their computer Win2k,XP,Mandrake,Debian.
So, maybe it just boils down to people's preferences.
Re:how about making Ubuntu Gorgeous (Score:5, Funny)
I will attest that the wide variety of browns coming from our unit, including orange-brown, matches the Ubuntu theme very well. Close enough that I can almost smell Ubuntu.
Parent
Doubtful (Score:4, Insightful)
In practice, it's not what makes people switch. They will switch when there is an overwhelming need for something that is not provided by their current PC.
Otherwise, they don't switch.
Despite Apple's temporarily high visibility (pre vista media onslaught) these days, they know from experience getting people to switch even -if- you have a beautiful desktop and good advertising marketing budgets is tough.
Ain't gonna happen (Score:5, Insightful)
-1, Doesn't Get It (Score:5, Interesting)
You need to think about every element of the UI not in isolation, but in relation to all the other elements. Mere eye candy just doesn't cut it. Shuttleworth sort of admits this in the blog entry, but bulldozes over it earlier on, when he says I'm not talking about inner beauty, not elegance, not ideological purity... pure, unadulterated, raw, visceral, lustful, shallow, skin deep beauty.
Sorry Mark, but you're starting at the wrong end here. You need inner beauty, in the shape of e.g. a consistent framework, and at the most fundamental level, just plain consideration of how the user interacts with the application, before you can start working on the skin.
And that is why Linux distributions as we know them will never compete with OS X. You'd need to toss X and its bazillion GUI toolkits, and replace them with something new. Then you'd need to organize a Human Interface Police, whose job it is to kick developers who don't follow the guidelines. And I suspect that won't go over well among the Linux developer community with its "free to do whatever the hell I like" mindset.
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And I would also point out that Ubuntu does make a concerted effort to ensure the GUIs it uses operate off the same toolkit, and they do push for strong unified look & feel.
Apple needs HIG police, too, so says iTunes vs. Safari vs. Preview vs. Mail, for example. You're telling me that's the gold standard in uniform look-and-feel? My, we all have a long way to go, don't we? And that's just their in-house development, let alone goodies like MS Office
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Looking at the way things are, I would say it's rather the other way around at the moment. OS X is definitely more attractive than Ubuntu as far as looks
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Aside from nicking the discs from the office (do people still do that in todays IT-managed world?) for home use, the bulk of the apps on the net are for win machines. Maybe I should clairfy - the bulk of the precompiled apps are for win machines. [insert virus joke here].
Make all my stuff run on another platform, and I'm in.
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And someday, if they try really hard, OS X will be nearly as self-consistent as KDE is today. When the Mac equivalents of KIO slaves are universally supported, for example, I' d actually consider switching to OS X. Until then, it's too flaky and ad-hoc for me to take it seriously
Just for a the sake of a differing opinion.
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Why do Mac users go on and on about how useable and intuitive they are? I
The trouble with polish (Score:3, Interesting)
- Does Firefox work on most webpages?
- Does OpenOffice interoperate well with MS Office files?
- Does GIMP support 16-bit color/CMYK separation?
- Does Thunderbird interoperate well with our exchange server?
The really hard work is being done all the time by the people making fundamental improvements to their applications. What Ubuntu is doing with polish is more like maxing the performance for the Olympics. While it's important to get the most out of the foundation you have, it's the foundation that has to improve. Though I suppose this is a case where I'd like to eat my cake and have it too...
Sooo (Score:3, Insightful)
Better yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows and Mac OS sure didn't achieve their easily identifiable "looks" by promoting dozens of inconsistent GUI toolkits.
New paint on a crumbling building (Score:5, Interesting)
But it really bugs me when people talk about aesthetics while the internal structure isn't sound. I'm happily using Dapper Drake, but it wasn't trivial to setup correctly with some of the hardware I wanted to use. But there's the recent slashdot article that mentions the upgrade nightmare when going from Dapper Drake to Edgy Eft. And there are even more fundamental problems with Linux. The graphics system in Linux is held together with duct tape. It's just WAY too easy to break, and there is no kind of structure to it. There should be APIs and standard mechanisms for handling graphics devices in a general, but they just don't exist (and don't tell me about DRI -- it's only one step in the right direction). I'm told that there are many other facilities, like networking, that aren't a whole lot better.
Look at it this way: If Microsoft had gotten their shit together in the beginning and written a decent operating system, rather than cobbling DOS and some other crap together and sticking a GUI on top, then more of us would be using Windows. Instead, they shipped us crap, we figured that out, and we moved on to other systems. For a very long time, Mac OS (9 and before) was all surface, with an embarrassing OS under the hood. One of the few operating systems that was actually ENGINEERED well from the ground up was BeOS, but that didn't fair well against Microsoft's marketing.
The fact is, "Linux" lacks coherency. It's not "Linux." It's a Linux kernel, some GNU tools over there, X11 bolded on over here, GTK or Qt slapped on over yonder... No two groups actually get together and decide to come up with an elegant system. Instead, they compete with each other, end up working around each other's mistakes, and then leave it up to the distros to try to make it all work together. Ha.
I'll just tell you a dirty little secret from my experience with writing device drivers: The NT kernel's interfaces for handling devices like graphics cards, network devices, printers, and pretty much anything else you want to use, they put Linux to shame. NT may not perform as well, be as stable, or be as secure as Linux, but it's engineered with vastly more coherent internal structure. Linux is good code with poorly-designed interfaces, while Windows is lousy code with well-designed interfaces (actually, POSIX rocks, but I'm talking about kernel structure and device management).
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If you build an OS that is rock solid, but its UI is command-line or a crappy GUI, you may well have a successor to the mainframe on your hands, which would be profitable, but it was my impre