Okay, lets begin with a little introduction.
Who Is This Guy?
I am a GNU/Linux user from Finland and started experimenting with linux in 2006 with Ubuntu 6.06. Not everything worked out of the box in those days but I could immediately see the great potential in open source computing. Everything is transparent and if you don’t like the way your desktop behaves you can customize it, change to a different desktop environment or just use a window manager with additional components to add functionality. You can’t beat that kind of freedom!
Ubuntu 6.06
Interest in open source has also taught me about sharing and freedom in general. That is also why I advocate The Venus Project and The Zeitgeist Movement. The direction they promote in general seems more reasonable than a society where people are basically money driven. I probably start another blog about that but…
…To the Point Already!
That is enough about me.
Linux desktop is changing and evolving (some conservative users might say it is devolving). There has never been as many choices than what we have now. We have the more familiar desktop environments (DEs) such as XFCE, LXDE and KDE. We also have interfaces that are willing to change the way we interact with our desktops, primarily GNOME Shell and Unity.
The new interfaces have been received as controversial and people have been jumping ships to more traditional environments. Are the new interfaces really worse? Are they taking freedom away from the users? Are they dumbing down the desktop experience? Is commercialization of Ubuntu and GNOME Shell for the good or bad? What is the right workflow or is there any? These are the questions that came into my mind when Ubuntu 11.04 came out with Unity and GNOME Shell was shipped in Fedora 15.
Gnome Shell
They say that progress is always faced with resistance and in the physical world that seems to be the case. Idea about the earth revolving around the sun was faced with criticism. The theory of evolution was just blasphemy and in some religious circles it still is even today. When people rallied against racism in the US their buses were burned and they were beat up. Even the fight for women’s rights was a struggle. These are some harsh examples but I believe you get the point. It is all about cognitive dissonance where old information contradicts the new. Even if the new information is perfectly logical it still won’t be accepted by the majority until time passes on.
Is this what the flame wars against new interfaces are all about or is it something else – such as common sense?
This blog is about examining the approaches used in new desktop environments and talking about the idealism of open source in general. This blog is a project I have wanted to start for a long time and I hope that in this way I can contribute to the Linux community in some way – at least give food for thought. This is also a good way to fine-tune my English skills.
I hope you liked reading my ramblings because there’s more to come. Here’s a little video to officially open this blog:
Personally I use Xfce because I have an older laptop and I love how little of my limited resources it chews up, but, that is in part because I do have experience with Linux and feel comfortable running a more minimal GUI.
I think that the new desktops are a huge step in the right direction. Back in the old days the hardest thing about advocating Linux was trying to figure out how to tell someone who just wants to be able to surf the web and check their e-mail and so on that they should switch to a system that they are going to find less intuitive to use. We’ve already come a long, long way since then. Every year the install and configuration process gets easier, the desktops get a little slicker and everything just runs a little smoother.
See, that’s the thing a lot of people who advocate GNU/Linux forget, the majority of people out there are not nearly as experienced with technology as you would naturally think they are. If Linux wants to win over those masses, it needs to be every bit as easy to set up and use as Windows or MacOS ever thought of being.
I also like XFCE – a lot actually. Currently it’s probably the most suited DE for real work: it is light, incredibly stable and doesn’t make big changes between releases.
Linux desktop is surely going in the right direction when it comes to casual users. For example the Ubuntu installer is pretty much as easy as it gets and you don’t pretty much even have to touch the command line if you don’t want to. Steam is available for linux so if you want to play games, you are covered. It’s interesting to see how things are even in 2014.
Oh, except Unity’s default settings still cause it to share information about you with Amazon. That’s a step in the wrong direction considering that Ubuntu is so often suggested by experienced Linux users to new users who are less apt to go play with the settings and turn that feature off.
I agree. The idea of searching everything in the dash is a great concept but the feature should probably be off by default and give the user the choice to turn it on with a disclaimer noting that the feature will send information online. But then again if the search wants the search results to be adapted to the user’s needs, gathering information from the searches is essential. It is the price you have to pay.
It’s the same with Google searches; your and your friend’s search results may differ from each other depending on what the search engine believes you are interested in. I believe it’s called “the filter bubble“.
The amazon search has started sort of a shit storm in certain circles, so it may be that the feature will evolve to something that everyone is happy with – I hope.