Ah, but users aren't happy and developers seem not to care
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| cmost Apr 03, 2012 6:32 PM EDT |
My problem with DarkDuck's article is that he assumes that in open source, users decide everything. Not true and the Gnome 3 and Unity fiascos are cases in point. I agree with caitlyn that these developers have decided on a direction and they're hellbent on pursuing it to the bitter end. Their attitude is, if users don't like it they're free to look elsewhere. No wonder there is so much fragmentation on Linux desktops! Gnome 3 has fissioned off Cinnamon. Gnome 2 has given rise to MATE. Users unhappy with KDE 4 have continued the KDE 3 line with Trinity. Meanwhile we also have LXDE, XFCE, and E17 just to name a few. It's impossible to please everyone and that's why Linux is so fragmented and disjointed. While I'm all for choice, sometimes too much choice is bad business. |
| Khamul Apr 03, 2012 7:05 PM EDT |
Exactly right. Users determine, in the long run, if open-source software is popular or not, but as long as a bunch of developers care to work on something, it doesn't really matter if there's any users or not (other than the devs themselves eating their own dogfood). There's lots of FOSS software that's only used by a small number of people. The problem is that the whole "ecosystem" only really works well if the devs of the most popular (and also most "infrastructural") software are responsive to the needs and wants of the users. Otherwise, it just becomes a handful of geeks making their own esoteric project that no one else cares about, and the users going elsewhere, usually back to Mac/Win. There's usually nothing wrong with choice, but if there's no clear standards, people tend to run away. For instance, on an Android phone, it's possible to do a lot of wacky things (and this number is growing constantly): you can install the CyanogenMod firmware, and it looks like people are already making their own firmwares, etc. But how many users will do this? Maybe 0.1%; the rest will just keep the version of Android that came with the phone, or whatever updates pushed to them by their carrier/handset maker, since it's fully tested (supposedly) and shouldn't cause problems. The existence of CyanogenMod and others doesn't scare people away from Android, it's just an extra option for the less cautious and more curious users out there. This isn't the case with Linux desktops, as there's no clear standard, or even two clear standards, it's really a big mess right now with Unity, Gnome3 (Shell), Cinammon, MATE, KDE4, then XFCE, LXDE, E17, and then Trinity and who knows what else. There's no "mainstream" choice at all, and the two being pushed the most by the two largest vendors are also the most unusable and most radically different from the environments offered by MacOS and Windows which users are used to. To make the obligatory car analogy, imagine if you will that, instead of having dozens of car models all with almost exactly the same UI (steering wheel, gas pedal on right, brake pedal in middle, possibly clutch pedal on left), that we had 10 different UIs in cars: some had a steering wheel in the center console, some had a joystick, some had a steering wheel in the normal place but turning clockwise made the car turn left, some had a throttle lever instead of gas pedal, some had a knob to control the throttle, some had a small button for the brakes, and one even gave you a keyboard and asked you to type in the first few letters of whatever you wanted to do (i.e., "turn left", "turn right", "brake", etc.). Of course, with all these different UIs, and some of them being downright stupid and causing all kinds of fatal accidents (like having to type "brake" to activate the brakes and then being required to use a pull-down menu to select the desired braking force, and then confirm by touching an "OK" button, as a pedestrian crosses in a crosswalk in front of you), there'd be a bunch of fanboys insisting that these interfaces were "innovative" and that the traditional steering wheel and pedals were "dying". |
| Fettoosh Apr 03, 2012 7:07 PM EDT |
Quoting:It's impossible to please everyone and that's why Linux is so fragmented and disjointed Stick to one distro and Linux won't be fragmented any more. |
| ComputerBob Apr 04, 2012 11:21 AM EDT |
Quoting:Stick to one distro and Linux won't be fragmented any more.Are you joking? |
| Fettoosh Apr 04, 2012 11:58 AM EDT |
Quoting:Are you joking? No, but I should have said Stick to one distro and Linux won't seem/appear fragmented any more or as much Does that sound better? |
| ComputerBob Apr 04, 2012 1:20 PM EDT |
Quoting:No, but I should have said Stick to one distro and Linux won't seem/appear fragmented any more or as muchNot if you include Ubuntu. |
| Fettoosh Apr 04, 2012 4:02 PM EDT |
Quoting:Not if you include Ubuntu. Sorry again, not when multiple distros are based on Ubuntu, which in turn itself based on Debian. |
| ComputerBob Apr 04, 2012 5:03 PM EDT |
I didn't say "multiple distros that are based on Ubuntu..." I said Ubuntu. |
| Fettoosh Apr 04, 2012 8:04 PM EDT |
What I am saying is "I will not exclude Ubuntu when/because multiple distros are based on Ubuntu and because Ubuntu itself is based on Debian." If I were to exclude Ubuntu, I then have to exclude all others that are based on it and Debian which Ubuntu is based on. |
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