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Comment by freyrs3 | Hacker News Reader

> Design is about usability and understanding the user

Here's the point you're missing. The overwhelming majority Linux users don't give a flying hoot about the average user or mass adoption. They just want a system that gets out of their way and let's them do their technical tasks. Linux succeeds and excels at this because it is precisely designed for that niche and curated by its end-users.

There are however people who do care about mass adoption, i.e. Canonical, "Linux Advocates". Generally they're either emotionally invested in Linux for some reason or they get a paycheck for their work. These people are the minority of Linux users.

Saying the culture doesn't care about design is absurd, it's the non-technical user we don't care about. Let's not conflate the two. Looking at a piece of software like XMonad or TMux it's hard to not appreciate the elegance in it's design. It's just different form of design that say iTunes or Photoshop.

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> They just want a system that gets out of their way and let's them do their technical tasks.

That's precisely what Linux fails at. Most minor UI/desktop-related tasks that are hassle-free with Win7 or OSX take far too much time. Time that most people don't have and don't want to invest.

Example: doubleclicking on a .ttf file in the Xfce file manager (plain Debian Xfce) does nothing. Right-clicking offers various unrelated applications. Copying the file to an appropriate font directory does not "install" the font so it is visible to applications. No, I have to shut down all terminal windows and restart them to be able to use the font. Do you see an advantage in this? I don't want to spend time doing (or even researching) this when I could be developing instead (with the best console font known to mankind please!). Desktop Linux just lacks basic functionality and wastes people's time.

Sure, I was fine developing with fvwm2 or twm 15 years ago and did not mind using xfontsel and "xset fp rehash" back then, but today it feels like an unproductive waste of time when Win7 and OSX (esp. OSX) do not "get in my way" in any conceivable meaning of the phrase when I just want to develop stuff in an environment that I can adjust to my liking.

If you think Linux on the desktop hasn't failed for and abandoned by most technical users, you're delusional.

And for every anecdotal UI problem you bring up I could also come up with a corresponding anecdotal pain point with Cygwin on Windows or BSD/GPL header file craziness on OS X.

Personally manually rebuilding a font hash doesn't irk me so much as not having the ability to rip the guts out of my system and fix things when doing low-level system development. Messing with virtualization and vendor enforced settings seems much worse than Googling for a shell command or manually fixing a package.

> If you think Linux on the desktop hasn't failed for and abandoned by most technical users, you're delusional.

Yeah, I'm not delusional. I have a niche, Linux fills that niche. I have a lot of other colleagues who also fit in that niche. It's fine if you don't want to use Linux, I don't care in the slightest. But making broad sweeping statements about what "most technical users" do or don't need just makes you come off as uninformed.

Oh, for... Just drop the .ttf in your .fonts directory and be done with it. That you insist on mucking around in a GUI to do something as simple as placing a file in the spot where it belongs says everything you need to know about whether you belong in the "technical user who wants a system that gets out of the way" class or not.

There is no .fonts directory and this is a desktop machine - I want to install the font system-wide. Plus, the problem with half the running applications not seeing the font still exists.

So I'm not a technical user for you because I insist that such things should not require no more attention than a double click on the font file? Technical users aren't by definition masochists who take the longest route just because they can. I need to get stuff done - stuff other than installing fonts and learning the pecularities of a particular desktop Linux flavour!

Are you for real? In what universe is "mkdir ~/.fonts; mv .ttf ~/fonts" (or "sudo cp .ttf /usr/share/fonts" if you want them system wide) the "longest route"?

So fine, you didn't know this trick. No shame there. But you're willing to click around trying to discover the feature in your GUI (and expect the desktop to hold your hand trying to do it!) yet won't take 30 seconds to google for "install linux fonts". (I just did, by the way: the first two links tell you exactly what I just did).

So sure, the Linux desktop isn't for you. You want more polish and attention than it's willing to provide. Just don't pretend that your inability to learn a few facts about the implementation of your desktop and/or develop an intuition about how things might be done represents "hassle" that takes time away from your important work. Those skills are good to have, and those of us who have them are, quite frankly, better at our jobs than those who don't.

I get tired of repeating myself.

I found out what to do to install the fonts and it cost me precious time unnecessarily (~20 mins total until all issues were resolved - and by the way, Consolas with antialiasing still looks crap because Debian apparently ignores subpixel hinting [guessing]). That is the point.

Your proposed solution does not fix the (totally unnecessary) issue of running applications not seeing the new fonts. This is just broken.

My skills, memory, learning efforts are better spent developing stuff, not finding out what needs to be done in the current Linux FOTM's half-assed GUI to install fonts (KDE installs them on double-click e.g.). There is no "inability to learn" on my behalf involved, just unwillingness to spend time on things that can be and should be simple and straightforward and where the cumbersome Linux solutions are certainly no precious skill to have.

The rudeness and arrogance of you evangelists just drives away more users, by the way.

I'm a technical user who spends a lot of time using Linux, and it gets out of my way for doing development quite well.

Of course, that's because I exclusively connect to Linux machines through an ssh terminal on my Win7 workstation. I've personally abandoned all hope for using Linux as a desktop OS. I live in the terminal on Linux because that's where the design actually lives. Anything GUI related is an afterthought.

Double clicking a .ttf and then clicking the install button has been in Ubuntu's/Debian's default for years now.

I mean, you installed a stripped down desktop for some reason, of course it's going to be missing some features when you could have just used the default installation that has all of that already.

I actually ditched Linux as a primary OS as it didn't get out of my way, I had to spend way too much time burying into the system to get the results I needed. That can in a few cases be attributed to poor design, the thought process seems often to be "I get this piece of design fine, everyone else will".

Agreed. I do a lot of scientific computing, and many of my tools simply don't exist in OSX compatible builds. While the majority of the work that I do is remote, on servers running Linux, tools like Xmonad and aptitude are basically indispensable for me.

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