Shuttleworth: Open-source desktops need a facelift

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Shuttleworth is right...

...but he'll fail. And *this* is why:

"However, Taylor cautioned against the open-source movement taking too rigid a line with developers on usability requirements. "I don't believe we need one desktop to rule them all," he said."

Linux, for the most part, is developed by those scratching an itch. But its thier *own* itch--and that almost never includes usability, because *to them* it is perfectly usable.

This is what I predict will happen. Shuttleworth will hire his team, they will spend a year in design, testing, and all the other minutia that go into a great interface.

They will produce a design document, and it will probably be good--may even be great. Cohesive, simple, and all the rest.

And then the Linux community will adopt it as YAUI, and that will be the end of it.

Ubuntu will certainly use it--and maybe KDE and Gnome will cherry-pick some things they like.

But all the other distros (especially the programmer driven ones) will ignore it.

And it will be business as usual in the FOSS world.

Can Ubuntu catch the Mac usability in two years? Nope. For all the griping everybody does about Apple (and Windows) both interfaces have had huge amounts of time to polish, to tweak, and to have users absorb them.

Shuttleworth has a lofty goal. And a worthy one. But human nature will defeat it.

After all, the Linux credo for every developer is "I did it my way."

Posted by: wolf_z   Posted on: 09/14/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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