Hi folks,
From some-one who has embraced Open Office since ever - 'cos it's not Uncle
Bill's, I'm happy that it opens and keeps most of the formatting of MS docs. I use it in preference - but for 'serious' work will use a page setter. Much easier to place graphics and have them stay put on page, so 'Office' is not an imperative. I get docs (from Scout Leaders) using stone age pooters with Office 3 (or so it seems) down to Cub Scouts who really are on top of things with the very latest! Compared with 'doze. 'ux is too complicated for a pointy pressy clicky user but I can cope with 'ux and OOo. God forbid that 'ux and OOo should be clones of doze but 'ux ain't doing much to win doze users over (in my humble opinion of course!) The desktop looks a bit enthusiastic amateur to me - probably why you guys like the command line so much! Personally, I'd like an OSX type desktop - seems cleaner somehow - and it works. Of course, now that clever clogs has ported OSX to PC!!!
Cheers,
Bob Dove.
On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 09:22 +0100, Bob Dove wrote:
Compared with 'doze. 'ux is too complicated for a pointy pressy clicky user but I can cope with 'ux and OOo.
Part of that complication is down to unfamiliarity. *nix does some things differently and in a way that is difficult to present in the same way as Windows (I am thinking about things like software installation and drive letters vs mount points here)
A lot of it comes down to the distro of choice...I am betting that a SuSE distro can be configured and operated without ever resorting to a command line, that's even almost doable in ubuntu. One thing that is sort of lacking (YaST aside, but that has it's own problems) is that the GUI tools to do these things aren't always grouped together in the same way that Windows does with its control panel.
God forbid that 'ux and OOo should be clones of doze but 'ux ain't doing much to win doze users over (in my humble opinion of course!) The desktop looks a bit enthusiastic amateur to me
I have always felt that KDE looks that way a bit (I used it with SuSE, at the time the only viable option on SuSE for about the first 4 years of my linux exposure) But I think that gnome looks a bit more polished. Again the distro can have a huge affect on how the desktop is initially presented.
- probably why you guys like the command line so
much! Personally, I'd like an OSX type desktop - seems cleaner somehow - and it works. Of course, now that clever clogs has ported OSX to PC!!!
For me the using the shell doesn't reflect any inherent design weakness in the GUI, it's just that some things are easier or quicker if you can pipe a couple of small tools together. Even in Windows there are a lot of things I do from the Command line because once you understand it they can be done quicker.
for example if you know the name of a service in Windows that you want to stop, going to the command line and typing net stop servicename is quicker than hunting down the services control panel, finding the service in the list and selecting stop from the right click menu
OSX may run on a PC, but you will never get the same Apple experience because that experience is a combination of hardware and software. OSX is easy to use because Apple already know all about the hardware it is supposed to run on and a good percentage of the peripherals are also Apple approved. Put OSX on a PC and it is no better (and in some ways a bit behind) Linux
The Apple GUI may be pretty (and to my mind is one of the better graphical interfaces available) but I still drop down to a terminal quite frequently when I am working on a OSX box.
Bob Dove wrote:
Personally, I'd like an OSX type desktop - seems cleaner somehow - and it works. Of course, now that clever clogs has ported OSX to PC!!!
It's been possible for a long time. Greetings from GNUstep, which shares a common ancestor with OSX. www.gnustep.org
Hope that helps,
On Sat, 2006-06-10 at 07:27 +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
It's been possible for a long time. Greetings from GNUstep, which shares a common ancestor with OSX. www.gnustep.org
Foundations aside, I think Gnome now has more in common with OSX in terms of look and feel than gnustep, even down to some of the administration panels. In fact with Gnome if you installed the compiz Dock plugin, put a quicklaunch icon for the hard drive in the top right of the screen that lead to an applications folder containing symlinks to some whatever software you want to run. Then you have created a user environment that any Mac head would instantly find their way around (although not necessarily administer)
OSX is considered easy to use because as long as you stay within the confines of what Apple intended you to do with it, then it is fairly easy. However stray too far outside those or start wanting too do something a little unusual and it is actually harder work than Linux. However for the majority of users this would be considered a easy to use OS because they will never be in that situation.
On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 09:16:39AM +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Sat, 2006-06-10 at 07:27 +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
It's been possible for a long time. Greetings from GNUstep, which shares a common ancestor with OSX. www.gnustep.org
Foundations aside, I think Gnome now has more in common with OSX in terms of look and feel than gnustep, even down to some of the administration panels. In fact with Gnome if you installed the compiz Dock plugin, put a quicklaunch icon for the hard drive in the top right of the screen that lead to an applications folder containing symlinks to some whatever software you want to run. Then you have created a user environment that any Mac head would instantly find their way around (although not necessarily administer)
Bing - wrong. Don't suppose that you've noticed that OS X has it's menu bar *always* located across the top of the screen for the current app, then? Gnome doesn't do that, Gnome apps don't do that. For that matter, niether do GNUstep apps, but the consistency is there, menu appears in the bottom left, IIRC. If someone was really bored they could make the GNUstep libraries work very similar to Aqua... then you'd really have a 'drop in' replacement - ish.
OSX is considered easy to use because as long as you stay within the confines of what Apple intended you to do with it, then it is fairly easy. However stray too far outside those or start wanting too do something a little unusual and it is actually harder work than Linux. However for the majority of users this would be considered a easy to use OS because they will never be in that situation.
Personally I found OS X to get in my way far too often, expect me to like large icons, and provides an awful terminal by default. But then, I'm not much of a person for whizzy flash bang interfaces, I like simple, clean unobtrusive window management that "just works" (tm), I like to get between windows in a predictable manner - this is why I use ion3, I know what to expect, and a new xterm is only an F2 away.
Cheers,
Wayne Stallwood ALUGlist@digimatic.plus.com
On Sat, 2006-06-10 at 07:27 +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
It's been possible for a long time. Greetings from GNUstep, which shares a common ancestor with OSX. www.gnustep.org
Foundations aside, I think Gnome now has more in common with OSX in terms of look and feel than gnustep [...]
I'd agree with that if you only said "look". Both Gnome and OSX are pretty flexible eye-candy interfaces these days and you can make them look similar. The GNUstep "look" changers like Chameleon are still pretty early days so far, IMO.
I think I disagree about "feel" especially if you start extending the desktop with other applications and your own programs. Gnome doesn't have a *Talk scripting system and most of the applications seem pretty different to OSX ones.
GNUstep's incomplete in some frustrating ways, though. More eyeballs, please ;-)
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Bob Dove -
Brett Parker -
MJ Ray -
Wayne Stallwood