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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

That's why Ubuntu became so popular, and Mint after it. There was a cohesive vision that a Linux OS can be more than a collection of text processing utilities. That's also why Ubuntu is so reviled in some Linux circles, because they dared to make a choice for their users, dared to try something new, dared to implement something that wasn't a direct continuation of decades-old software. Once they proved it was possible, others started jumping on board, giving Linux the freshest coat of paint it had ever seen. It was a serious contender for the year of the Linux desktop, especially with the rise of netbooks.

But then politics happened. If it doesn't work the same way it did in 1968, it's not allowed in the OS that was the child of the 90's. Pulse Audio, Unity, Gnome 3, systemd (along with anything else Poettering has touched) are evil because they're new. Unix never did it, so Linux can't.

GNU's Not Unix (yet... we'll get there someday though!).

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> Pulse Audio, Unity, Gnome 3, systemd (along with anything else Poettering has touched) are evil because they're new.

At least for Unity and Gnome 3 (including GTK3) I'd rather say: Great ideas but they're evil because they are badly designed, full of bugs that don't get fixed due to complexity, constant API changes, almost no documentation or only wrong and outdated documentation and a lack of flexibility that annoys even the casual Desktop user.

Nobody is against progress - most people love to use OS X as a UNIX GUI these days... it's not perfect but it's not that bug ridden mess GNOME became.

>Nobody is against progress

You'd be surprised. Just listen to the arguments against giving Linux a more logical directory setup (somewhat like OS X's).

Change is not the same as progress. A lot of people are against change, for reasons both good and bad. I'm not familiar with the arguments over directory setup, but I'd almost bet money on them centering around tradition.

Personally, I think the various flavors of directory setup are already so divergent that tradition no longer holds massive value, but that's not something to be proud of.

How is OSX's directory setup more logical than the traditional Unix one? Be careful not to confuse your familiarity with one system with it's inherent qualities. I have switched between BSD an Linux as my main desktop OS a few times and had this "damn, this is so much clearer in x" feeling in both directions.

> Great ideas but ...

The problem is the comparison point.

When original Gtk/Gnome came out, it was a WAY worse BPOS than Unity or Gnome 3 are today.

The trick was that when Gtk/Gnome came out there was no existing solution. So, even a bad one was okay.

The problem is that the new solution is competing against an existing solution that has more than a decade of development behind it.

It would take a Herculean effort to win that comparison.

> The trick was that when Gtk/Gnome came out there was no existing solution. So, even a bad one was okay.

There were existing solutions, e.g. Motif or Athena widgets if you wanted a GUI library, or FVWM if you wanted a desktop environment. Of course, GTK/GNOME was a significant improvement.

Mogrief was a non-starter due to license. Lesstif was a pile of fail forever. Athena widgets? Are you trolling me? See Xfig for an example of how bad those are.

Qt and Gtk were a breath of fresh air. And Qt got everybody's dander up due to 1) license and 2) C++ requirement.

So, Gtk basically stepped into a vacuum.

"That's also why Ubuntu is so reviled in some Linux circles..."

I sometimes wonder if good visual and interaction design can succeed in the open source model. In software development, tasks can be parcelled out in a modular way to many developers. But this model doesn't work well for visual and interaction design. If you want all the parts of an Operating System or piece of software to feel consistent and cohesive, you need a more focused approach. And that means handing design tasks to a designated design team and entrusting them to make the UX decisions. But with open source projects, we all want a say in the UX (me included); thus the endless (and often bitter) discussions about how a piece of software should behave.

The model of open source code has influenced and inspired countless companies. But who can point to examples of visual and interaction design from open source software that has had a similar effect? I see the influence going much more the other way i.e. open source software often follows ideas or conventions from commercial companies. I'd love to see this change. But how?

In my opinion, parcelling out software development in a modular way doesn't work that great neither if you don't have guidelines, api definitions – community enforced styles of doing things.

I think, the same thing works with visual and interaction design. But you'd need a small group of people to make the basic UX decisions and write concise guidelines others can follow. Like Apples «Human Interface Guidelines»[0].

This isn't really purely democratic, but I think it's almost impossible to find the "one way of doing things" if everyone has their say in every micro decision.

For me its much more important to have consistent user experience than the details of it. Its like tab vs spaces in programming or semicolon vs no semicolon in Javascript. I have my personal preferences, but i'm fine with either one as long as it is consistent at least within the project.

[0] https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/Documentation/UserEx...

I would suggest it is democratic - there is and always has been a tension between our elected officials bein our representatives and our delegates.

The same goes for any democratically appointed UX team.

Yes your right. But i'm swiss, so a lot of countries dont really feel democratic to me:) Not enough power for the people – too much for those elected.

On the other hand, we, the people are soon to vote whether Switzerland should terminate european human rights contracts. It's insanely democratic and it scares the shit out of me because it might actually get a majority.

You can shoot yourself in the foot with too much democracy.

I thought the UK was the only one insane enough to think human rights were a pick and mix. I recommend Conor Gearty on why the Uk should not pull out (LSE podcasts on iTunes)

We're not directly voting against it. The referendum is carefully titled "Swiss law before foreign law" which would include the human right convention among every international law. The Advocates emotionally argue that the swiss should never be dictated by foreign judges, we can perfectly handle everything ourselves. Unfortunately a lot of people in Switzerland live on ivory towers, thinking their better than everybody else on the planet and agree with that statement.

The right wing fear machinery fed with millions of donation money has really poisoned the political climate over the last decade. Whether you agree with their points, a system like ours, where basically every citizen can trigger a nation wide vote about almost anything (e.g. reintroduction of death penalty) only works if the debates are driven by reason, not populism. The other parties recently jumped on the same train, saying it's the only way to defend against those scare mongers … sigh

I still love our system, it gives the people not only power but also a sense of responsibility. It's not the government that fucked things up – you did. But it doesn't make a country completely immune to dedicated actors with enough influence and money like many believe.

The modern marketing machine has indeed done a number on democracy. And with marketing being related to money, and money invariably congregating on the right, well...

Perhaps the reason pulse and gnome were disliked has something to do with distros that don't support the old versions after a new one comes out and foisted unfinished buggy releases on their users before either was ready for prime time?

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