Re: A Violent Realisation [Was: Preferences]

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

On Mon, 2002-04-29 at 08:20, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> >   There needs to be a violent realisation that empowerment through usability
> >   far exceeds the possibility of empowerment through gimmickry. [1]
> 
> This is a nice thesis Jeff, and it would work fine in a vacuum.  
> 
> Today people are trained in using existing systems, and when they look
> at a Linux desktop, they are looking at a viable solution to replace
> their desktops with.
> 
> And unless you can come up with a user interface that is not ten percent
> better, but two or three times better, you are not being competitive
> with other existing solutions (KDE for example).

I believe we can. Its not really that hard. The trick is that we have to
be designing for a narrower audience. Part of the reason WinXP, MacOS/X,
KDE and GNOME suck so much is that they try to be universal. I think
there's a huge market for an "operating system" that solves a specific
type of user's problems really damn well. But the problem is we'd never
be able to agree on what this target audience is, because everyone has
their own interests and goals for GNOME.

-Seth