On Sat February 11 2012, Steven D'Aprano <"Steven D'Aprano" <steve@pearwood.info>> wrote:
> 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.
That's a good point on the Usability vs. Features graph. Never thought of it before, but it does seem to be true.
Alternatives ... much to my surprise, I saw a previous reply mention still using OS/2. I guess I'd investigate that, or look for my old FVWM config files.
Douglas
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