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Comment by Jedd | Hacker News Reader

The author unfairly attributes adequacy (or at least consistency) to the Microsoft desktop environment.

Start Microsoft Windows, open up File Explorer, remove the ever-present 'Type' column (because if you're old school you'll have suffixes enabled), then go to Options and say 'Save this view format for ALL Explorer instances'.

Within an hour you'll have a Type column back in some new Explorer window, to inform you that your file.pdf is a PDF file type.

Any and every version of Microsoft Windows file explorer has done, and continues to do, this. It's hugely frustrating.

If you're using Gnome then it's a relatively easy (free, ethically sound, painless, etc) process to switch to, say, KDE, and enjoy pleasant file explorer/pickers.

If you're forced to use Microsoft Windows (say for work) then you are stuck with this particular broken toilet.

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I don't think the author attributes universal consistency to Windows? They just say that this particular issue has been 'solved' by Windows since 1998. It's been raised as an issue in Gnome since 2004 and still hasn't been fixed.

I agree with most of what they say, and I think the point is that we're uniquely bad at addressing these issues in the open-source world.

We accept a degraded UX experience (which I think this unarguably is from a normal user's point of view) because at least it's not proprietary lock-in. But it's a big reason why desktop GNU/Linux doesn't crack 2% usage. Inversely, I think this is _the_ core value proposition of Apple's ecosystem. They pay particular attention to consistent, unsurprising integration, and the Apple experience offsets their iron-grip over your device for most users. It's easier to convince someone to change how they do a task if you consistently deliver pleasant UX.

I recently had the opportunity to help a _very_ 'normal' user with their computing, and it was remarkably eye-opening watching them interact with their machine (Windows at the time, but they also use a Mac). Indeed, they hated Windows because it wasn't as consistent as a Mac, but Windows was dealing with their ambiguous interaction remarkably well I thought. Much better than a GNU/Linux DE would have.

If we want a world where normal people can use free software for their everyday computing needs this is something we need to get much better at. Forget 'normal' users even, these projects (and threads on HN) are full of _developers_ arguing back and forth that they find it infuriating/unusable. And unfortunately not many of us have the time and money to contribute code or fork projects to increase competition and spur improvements.

(also, hi again Jedd :) )

In the sense the author was saying 'Gnome is a bit bad, but Microsoft does this much better, which is why it wins' I was intuiting that the author believes Microsoft does not have extremely frustrating, long-lived, bugs within their basic OS suite.

Cue contra-example.

I've used Gnome perhaps for a dozen hours in the past twenty years - none of those (the dozen hours, not the two decades) were especially pleasant, but not because of this missing feature enhancement. So perhaps I'm not well positioned to cast judgement there.

Anyway, any claim that an operating system is intuitive is subject to much discussion. I endorse the early 90's (perhaps predating even then) claim that the only intuitive interface is the nipple, beyond that the necessary interactions are learned.

And - hello again, yes - I'll weigh in on the somewhat plaintive 'if we want normal people to use free software' rejoinder with a marginally cynical observation. Normal people can understand how computers work, and adjust their expectations, behaviour, and workflows to suit - worst case they'll acquire the necessary skills to file bug reports or fix it themselves.

Average people, on the other hand, are less likely to be satisfied.

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