Re: Disliking gnome 3

[Pasha R <pashar ml gmail com>]

On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 5:57 PM, Adam Tauno Williams
<awilliam whitemice org> wrote:
> On Sun, 2011-09-04 at 09:15 +0300, Pasha R wrote:
>> > I concede that our solutions are not meant for everybody, as there may
>> > be people with different conflicting requirements, but we're still
>> > convinced they apply for the vast majority of our target user base. On
>> This is my first problem: what is your target user base? I don't think
>> it is "advanced" users, since they usually want to customize their
>> systems much more than allowed by current design.
>
> -1 : on the continued implication of the correlation between "advanced
> users" (those performing sophisticated tasks using a workstation) and
> "tweakers" (those infatuated with playing with UI configuration and
> dressing it up with eye-candy).  As a system and network admin for 20
> years with hundreds of users - these groups have little overlap.

It is your definition of advanced users. By advanced users I mean
those who set up their system to their convenience, not eye-candy.
Those, who install add-on in firefox, or (in Windows) install
alternative browsers, text editors etc.

>
>>  It is also probably
>> not "novice" users - for example I don't see my mother typing
>> application name anytime soon, and she will definitely feel lost in
>> all these icons thrown into overview.
>
> Stop insulting joe-six-pack / "novice" / "average" users.  They aren't
> stupid.  They don't have any issue at all pressing a few keys to perform
> a task.  Once the principle is explained to him joe-six-pack takes to it
> like a fish to water.  Assuming end-users are 'simple' is why we do
> *not* have set-top-boxes, web-tops, thin-clients, etc... in any
> significant number; as all those platforms underestimated the
> sophistication of the end-user and how they interact with their data.
> I'm probably close to loosing my cool if I meet one more hacker bitchin'
> about the "bloat" of LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, platform-X, who in
> the next sentence says,  ....drum roll...... that they never user a word
> processor.  Who in that scenario is the simpleton?   I just want to ask
> him: OK, how to I insert a foot-note in vi?  And just wait for him [it
> is always a him] to tell me that *I* don't need footnotes.  Wow, thanks
> for clearing that up for me;  all these years I've wasted effort
> complying with decades of coherent document structure!
>

Novice users are not stupid, they are just not technically inclined.
Like people that had flashing 12:00 on their VCRs. And yes, many such
users are afraid or unable to type few letters, or just can not
express what they want in letters. Just one example: small children
require  immediate visibility. If you say to a child "press here to
launch your game", he has no problem to launch it. But if he has to
move mouse to a corner, then type name, it is much more difficult.
Elder people are often in similar situation (for different reasons, of
course).


>> Options probably have a huge cost, but lack of them has huge cost,
>> too.
>
> A sensibly limited number of options approaches perfection!

G3 is very far from that.