Re: This list, suggestions, frustration

[Frederik Nnaji <frederik nnaji gmail com>]

On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 02:12, Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com> wrote:

On Tue, 2010-07-06 at 01:33 +0200, Frederik Nnaji wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 22:43, Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com> wrote:
>         * You aren't a representative user. (How do I know
>           this?  Because you are reading a mailing list on gnome.org;
>         which
>           puts your interest in technology and motivation well beyond
>         most
>           users.)
>
> could you expand a little on the logic of this assumption?

For close to 10 years, the philosophy of GNOME has been to design for
the general case - to build a desktop not for us, but for our customers,
friends, and family.

Now, no user is completely typical - an general office user doesn't use
the computer the same way as a graphics artist, who doesn't use a
computer the same way as a teenager chatting with their friends.

But we can make some generalizations that cover 90% or so of users,
among them:

 - Mailing lists aren't normal forms of communications; they require
  a lot of sophistication to set up, and a lot of sophistication
  to use in a useful fashion. IM, web forums, Facebook, and personal
  email are more common communication forms.

  (That isn't to say that the normal user isn't on a mailing list
  or two, that goes to their inbox, unfiltered. But they aren't
  on 20 or 30 mailing lists, as most of us are, at a minimum.)

 - Users don't distinguish the parts of the user interface, or the
  parts of the operating system. They may know the names of their
  applications, but the text at the top of the screen is just
  something that's there in "Linux"

Since you aren't conforming to those rules, you probably are atypical in
other ways, perhaps:

 - You use the terminal a lot
 - You customize your environment heavily
 - You have multiple web browser extensions installed
 - You understand of the difference between windows, applications, and
  processes.
 - Etc.

This doesn't disqualify you has a GNOME Shell user. As I said, we are
designing for the general case, and the power user / enthusiast is part
of the general case. But as power users, we have to remember that what
works for us doesn't work for everybody, and a change that makes things
worse for us occasionally makes things better for someone else.

thank you for your response, i understand the intentions even clearer now.

is it either black or white here?