12 Feb
2012
12 Feb
'12
2:02 a.m.
Timothy Pearson wrote:
What triggered this was a new salvo from KDE4 claiming
that 4.8 is the
best desktop ever, and that those backwards TDE luddites should just use a
minimalist window manager if they don't like KDE4. I'm trying to prove
them wrong. :-)
Draw a graph of Usability vs Features. It should look something like a parabola.
Too few features has low usability, because the interface is dumbed down.
Gnome has a tendency to dip down into this "our users drank lead paint as
babies" area too often.
Plus it has one of the most hideous and least usable file open/save dialogs in
the known universe. There are alien species in distant galaxies that interact
with their computers by flinging fresh excrement (a bit like YouTube
commenters) who have a better file open/save interface than Gnome's.
Too many features (or perhaps I should say, "features" in scare quotes) also
has low usability, because it's too damn hard to use, and requires too much
computing grunt for useless eye-candy and poorly thought out functionality
that sounds good in principle but isn't in practice. KDE 4 spends most of its
time hanging around there, probably waiting for Akonadi or Nepomuk to finish
whatever pointless task they're doing so the computer will become responsive
again.
Somewhere in the middle is a happy medium, where you have the maximum
usability from all the features you actually need and none of the cruft that
you don't -- that was KDE 3, and that is TDE.
--
Steven