I haven’t used #Windows as a daily driver in more than 5 years, so when I look at it, it’s with the eyes of someone who is not used to its weird, or, frankly, bad, design. I’ve worked in UX for 10 years, and some decisions Windows made are really sub-par.
And still, the bad user experience of Windows has a negative impact on #Linux desktops. Here is why!
@thelinuxEXP absolutely agree with most the points in this video. After a decade of using smartphones, a lot of the way things are done on my Windows PC are just archaic. I don't want "one interface to rule them all", but there is still a lot Windows (and Linux distros) can learn from android/chrome. I'll especially take an appstore over EXEs and DEBs anyday.
@onestar Yeah. I’m pretty sure desktop systems will have to adapt to survive, because a lot of people use phones way more than computers, and will expect the same type of experience.
@thelinuxEXP Libadwaita is the reason why the Linux desktop has been broken for the past many months. No offense but I feel like the Gnome-centric people do not understand this. We work with XFCE for our custom distro and so far our distro is the most UI conistent that I ever tested. GTK, QT and their versions, even some flatpaks, respect the system's theme. Yet when they released libadwaita all of that broke entirely. We have to use a patch to make these apps work. That's terrible, unless you think Linux is Gnome. Gnome broke the consistency on ALL of the other desktops because of their libadwaita, regardless what their intention was.
Gnome also destroyed the classic menus that were so useful. They implemented that hamburger menu that requires multiple clicks to be used, and does not work with the Heads Up Display, a super useful utility for everyone, more so for people with disabilities. A unique feature allowing anyone to search through menus. We still have that for our distro and the only apps that are not playing well are, of course, the "gnome apps".
So if anything, Gnome created a desktop that looks ok (if you like 2 shades and a few color choices) but only for the specific gtk+libadwaita apps. The rest is a complete mess. Fonts, icons, dark/light, themes overall, window buttons, nothing is coherent. I have a Peertube channel where I look at these in more detail videos.trom.tf/c/lut/videos
Mind you I have tested thousands of apps. We have our own apps library for TROMjaro, so the sample size is quite big. That's where my conclusions come from.
I stand behind what we did for TROMjaro where pretty much everything looks coherent. Themes, fonts, icons. Cross libraries.
@tio Theming QT and GTK apps will never make them into a coherent UI. They don’t follow the same guidelines, they don’t look the same.
On the surface, maybe, but when you use them, they’ll never feel like part of the same coherent ensemble. Trying to do that is a lost cause. They’re not made the same way, they’re not designed with the same goals in mind or even with the same principles. It’s a recipe for a complete mess.
@tio@thelinuxEXP the fact that you prefer traditional menubars to hamburger menus kind of proves that having different desktops with different design philosophies and guidelines for apps to choose from is a good thing...
@thelinuxEXP@tromino I understand, but I am talking about compatibility and usability. It's not really about the burger menus as it is about the ability to have them "exported" so that the system knows that's a menu. That's how it used to be. That means someone with disabilities can use a program that can easily search, read, and act on any menu items. And for those without disabilities like me, make it 100 times easier to use complex programs because with the press of a button you can search for any menu item, without navigating through dozens of menus and submenus.
It is simply a lot more useful to have separated menus that the system can interact with.
Lastly, hamburger menus can never replace the menus for most programs out there that have more than 3 menu categories. You can't hide so many items under a hamburger menu. So Gnome too will always end up with at least 2 separate menu designs.
@thelinuxEXP
When I switched to Linux years ago, I stumbled over some things just because of Windows habits. With a little discipline, you get over the entry hurdle. And then you wonder how you ever found the installation path on Windows easy.
But any change of habits means effort. Even if it leads to the better.
That's why I absolutely agree with you that Windows also slows down the UX development of Linux.
@thelinuxEXP
I'm finding in Plasma, I've moved away from actually using the menu, to just using its search.
I should probably just try to start using Krunner for that. I'm just afraid of forgetting what I have installed, so I never get rid of the menu. 🤣
@thelinuxEXP Further to your point... I just found out that Plasma 6 will be setting double-click as the default. Basically to appease users coming from other desktops.
@greggex Yeah, the reason behind the change confirms my points: no one that made the decision likes double click, but they’re still going to do it because that’s what users know!
Great video. I've been using PopOS for work for several months now and can't imagine going back to windows for work. I've even ordered a System76 for my personal daily driver.
@thelinuxEXP Episodes like this is why I subscribe via Patreon. This episode cut through so much mental cruft like a hot knife through butter.
#1 thank you for making the scales fall from my eyes.
#2 I haven’t used Windows as a DE for (over) two decades, but I realize I still put up with stupid UX inspired by Redmond, WA., without even knowing about it.
I dug Gnome while I used Pop_OS!, maybe it’s time to give VanillaOS a try.
@thelinuxEXP It might just be because I'm used to iPad as my first device but after switching to GNOME I just love the way you open apps with the apps grid, I know that searching for apps might be more efficient but honestly it's not a huge different once you have your muscle memory
@thelinuxEXP its a shame because windows 7 was great, windows 10 wasn't terrible, but windows 11 just makes no sense, even from a brand recognition perspective its terrible as the start menu in corner is iconic to windows, why would they get rid of it
@thelinuxEXP One thing i liked about Unity, and now Gnome, is that they looked distinct from Windows. It helped set the tone that it would be different from Windows.
@thelinuxEXP
Thanks Nick for this great video. I fully agree with you. I never understood why the UX of MS products is sooo bad. Compared to their alternatives. Over decades!
And I never understood why user actively request for those bad windows features in other OSs.
@thelinuxEXP Can't say I actually like GNOME at all, I prefer KDE, but I hear what you are saying on the whole and Win11 is a real dog's dinner of different and random stuff. Looks like was designed by several committees all give different instructions...!
@thelinuxEXP
I quit windows about 10 years ago and went to Mac. Whilst I loved the OS, I can't afford it now. I tried going back to Windows before noping right out and trying Linux again. I don't regret it for a moment. I work on IT support, and windows is a mess. There are three different ways to do the same thing like changing a name, and if you don't do it on the right one, it doesn't propagate & causes more problems.
In Linux, it would be one line of shell script and done.
@thelinuxEXP my God! Thanks for this video! As someone who isn’t a Windows user but is having to use a Windows VM temporarily right now for a project and this video struck a chord.
@thelinuxEXP Should not have frontloaded the outright wrong hot take on this one, because the rest get progressively more reasonable.
Progressively. Taking up the whole screen to launch and application is outright worse UX, the reason Windows doesn't have an integrated app store is that MS was trying to Apple it and users outright rejected the idea, and keeping files structured per program or per file type is a bit of a wash.
No complaints on the updates and insane legacy system apps, though.
@thelinuxEXP I'll give you that the obsession of MS with trying to integrate their bad online search into their good local search makes for bad UX if you don't immediately get the result you're looking for when typing, though.
Less stupid variations on that concept work just fine and MUCH better than mouse clicking an a massive list of icons.
@thelinuxEXP I do kinda want to move back off Windows BUT OneDrive is too good. In my personal workflow I do need good cloud storage, & nothing does what OneDrive does including “files on demand” at such a good price. I use the family pack thing and it’s silly cheap.
There’s a few other Windowsy things I use a lot too, but OneDrive is the biggest thing that stops me reacquainting myself with The Penguin.
@thelinuxEXP I've used the Gnome DE for several years before switching to XFCE. For our custom distro TROMjaro we use both a clickable menu (icon, you click it, you see the apps and categories) and a centered window for when you press the Super key.
In my view that's the best approach for using the mouse and keyboard. If you use the mouse the menu follows that, not like Gnome where if you pressed the menu icon you'll get a full screen centered menu with apps. Some people are really used with the mouse and for that such a "classic" menu is far better. Your arguments make sense only for when you use the keyboard to open the menu. Also, to have a quick list of apps and categories is super useful when you are not sure what the name of an app is, but you know it is say in Multimedia. I have a bunch of multimedia tools and I want to see which one I am looking for.
@tio This centered app grid looks like the best of both worlds. With a mouse, having to navigate categories is a bad option though, to many mouse clicks and too much aiming.
@thelinuxEXP I think if you are used to using a mouse, it is easier to use that classic menu. Definitely not easier to click an icon in a corner of the screen, and have the menu/app grid in the center of the screen. That's dizzy in my opinion.
@tio It’s absolutely easier to have a full screen grid of icons with a mouse. Way bigger click targets, and a more focused experience. If you use the keyboard, you don’t really care about where things open. If you use a mouse, it’s much better to have along icons. Less aiming!
@thelinuxEXP You know I used to say the exact same thing when we were using Gnome for TROMjaro, and after we switched to XFCE and using the more classic menu, I like the classic one more. Granted our classic menu has a grid of apps.
With decently big icons.
It simply is faster and easier to not have to switch your attention and mouse cursor to the center of the screen after clicking the corner of the screen.
@thelinuxEXP@tio Who in the world is out there clicking on icons to launch apps in start menus in 2023? I would genuinely question whether having a list of icons is needed at all at this point unless you're on a touch device (and I use text search on my phone, too).
Kudos to Blender, incidentally, which has appropriated the "searchable tools through a quick search hotkey" thing and is insanely intuitive to use as a result. I don't even know where most things live in the toolbar at this point.
@thelinuxEXP@tio On a desktop PC? I'm gonna need some citation there.
I mean, on most OSs you'd pin your normal work apps to your taskbar, so no going into a menu of any kind at all in the first place, but if people are scrolling down a long list for the right icon (or worse, paging around) for less used apps then maybe the answer is to take out the icons altogether. That is a horrible way to find an app in a list with hundreds of them.
@MudMan@tio With custom folders to build muscle memory, bigger and easier to hit click targets, and a focused experience? No contest. Better than a menu.
@thelinuxEXP@tio All joking aside now, I think you're making the same mistake you're criticising: Flagging the flow you're comfortable with as the optimal flow.
With pinnable apps on a taskbar and text search you're now discussing the third best flow through the task, at which point I'd argue you're in fallback mode and it doesn't matter how much you optimize tools that deep down.
Not that I'm giving Win credit for the pinnable taskbar, that's what? A MacOS thing? It works, though.
@MudMan@tio Nah, I personally prefer typing and using the keyboard. It’s a matter of observing people using their computers over the past 10 years.
A lot of people using Windows don’t know you can pin anything, and even less know they can use the keyboard to launch apps. The general use case is to either use a desktop icon (bad, because hidden behind windows that are opened), or to click the menu. Pinning apps is actually the secondary flow, and typing the third.
@thelinuxEXP@tio Again, if you came to me with that premise I would need to see some testing about it, because that doesn't track with my observations for the same amount of time. Who doesn't know about pinning/unpinning and just lives with Edge on their taskbar despite using Chrome? That's not a thing.
And even, EVEN if you were right, I would argue that it's a problem of migrating users to the better solution, then, perhaps by removing the bad one altogether.
@MudMan@tio I worked in UX for 10 years. I never tested for this behavior specifically, but watching users use computers for that long, I can tell you a lot of users don’t know about these features. And why would they? The OS never tells you about them.
@thelinuxEXP@tio I've worked in the field for a decade as well and also never tested for it. I did work in an office with a ton of people from different disciplines using Mac, Win and Linux computers and if I had ever noticed a single one of them fishing for their Outlook or Photoshop icon from a start menu I would have had... questions.
@thelinuxEXP@tio
Anybody working with a computer 8 hours a day has a set of pinned apps. Not only does the OS actually introduce the concept, explicitly and implicitly but it's common UX on phones and has been a default piece of functionality since what? Windows 8? Which, incidentally, did have a (bad) fullscreen launcher menu.
@MudMan@tio You’re assuming everyone who uses a computer uses them for 8h a day. That’s a big reach.
Windows never explicitly tells you you can do that. You have to infer it from the fact that other apps are pinned, which isn’t exactly crystal clear. It also wasn’t a thing before 7, people using Windows before that didn’t know it existed. Sorry, but my personal experience confirms my points.
@thelinuxEXP@tio I use the Dashboard launcher on Plasma, which strangely, for KDE, is not customizable. I wish I could make it more compact so that I didn't have to move the pointer so far when using a touchpad.
Nick, you can probably relate: Everytime I have to use Windows (doesn't matter the context) I feel almost "dirty" due to all the tracking and the inconsistent UIs definitely DO NOT help 🤢
@thelinuxEXP i disagree, only one i agreed with or found linux to be better is first one and even then only reason windows is as it is because when they did introduce a start screen there was too much public outcry even tho it was better.
Updates on linux are equaly bad, with in general everything handled by one thing which shouldnt be the base os updates should be handles seperatly. Besides linux updates are more likely to break system then windows updates. Which is why i use silverblue
@thelinuxEXP lets be clear haing single pane of glass for updates is different then having single tool to handle updates like apt which makes it more error prone
@thelinuxEXP yes in theory, in practice its a bit different problem is we are talking about 2 completely separate problems which only way to tackle together using same software is to torture software and packaging technology to make it work. and have huge disadvantages at that.
OS updates should be handles completely deferentially then app updates. as you can see most of package managers system level handle everything more like app update. there is a reason flatpak needs to exist
@bigpod You take apt as an example. Apps, and libraries are packages. Apt doesn’t have to know the difference between them, which makes it more reliable, inherently.
As per Flatpaks, I’m a big fan, and they’re handled from the exact same software than your system updates, which is great, but not with the same package manager, which also makes sense. I don’t see any issue with that, and it has never been unreliable?
@thelinuxEXP
i have no problem about single pains of glass like software centers i have a problem with everything being handled by same package manager.
besides i have a seperate problem on technical level that libraries arent attached to applications but are separate entities again why i like flatpak
I have not used windows on a desktop for 10 years, have to put up with it at code club, tried to create a simple sign in word a while back, and gave up
I just wrote sign on piece of paper.
We have i3s with 4gb ram, they should really be quicker.
ZX spectrum can load a game from tape quicker than these computers boot up so they are ready to use.
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