Is KDE really usable?

[Kimmo Sundqvist]

On Monday 23 October 2006 00:43, Lex Hider wrote:

> Thanks for the feed back. The most appropriate action to take is to file
> bugs for the problems that you find with KDE.

My two cents on this.

The name of this mailing list has a some kind of holistic ring to it. "If 
there is something wrong or odd in the whole KDE, on the overall KDE 
experience, but you can't put your finger on it exactly, then this is the 
list to discuss things out and find names for problems."

The reusable component architecture in KDE is really considered one of its 
strongest selling points. It has to do with power, meaning what the users are 
able to do with it. But it is also easy to forget the user experience in all 
those possibilities.

I recently used OS X for a couple of minutes. Compared to Kubuntu, what I felt 
using it was the level of integration. OS X Finder feels like one well 
thought out piece. It feels powerful because everything is easily accessible, 
and the user feels that he can try things out and not do anything damaging or 
end up in a situation where it is hard to get back.

Rule: the user should be encouraged to try things out.

Rule: whatever user is encouraged to try, he should easily be able to get back 
to the exact previous state he was in.

Rule: the things to try out should be easy to classify, compare and place into 
a wider context.

Rule: the user should be able to easily enough grasp the limits of his 
possibilities. And he should be able to easily see the possibilities.

It does not matter how much more powerful KDE (konqueror) is under the hood. 
It makes me feel helpless, and I use it only when I must to. Having used OS X 
only that one single time, and only those ten minutes, it immediately felt 
like I had the thing in my hands, and I could easily find my way around.

KDE is integrated, technically. But user-experience-wise, it is not. Neither 
is Gnome. I only use Gnome on my day to day system because it has the feeling 
that it gets less in my way. It has less of a personality than KDE. I can use 
it if I have to, and so could I use KDE, but Gnome is easier to forget when 
you don't want to be aware of it.

Do not say "KDE can do thing x" or "Gnome can do thing y" or "OS X can do 
thing z." Say instead, "desktop a feels easier than desktop b, but desktop c 
feels like it is a seamless extension of my thoughts, whereas a and b are 
only different levels of difficulty."

UI design and "putting interesting pieces together" are opposites. Evolution 
and design are also opposites. Like the linux kernel, all open source 
software "evolves" in a way that it is being designed bit by bit, and then 
these pieces of design are "evolved", i.e. thrown together.

When the said open source project has "evolved" too much or too far, it is 
time for a rewrite, and that really, emphatically means, redesigning it. Qt4 
is, in essence, a redesign of qt3. GTK2 is, in essence, a redesign of GTK1. 
Linux kernel 2.x is a redesign of kernel 1.x and I could go on forever.

I'm not saying anything else than that we should all acknowledge the meaning 
of design. And that, by saying that "linux has not been designed, linux has 
evolved", Torvalds was at least half wrong.

Imagine what Finder would look like with NFS and CIFS and whatever 
connectivity included. Imagine, what would be same, what would be different, 
compared to Konqueror? I expect musings on this, as I still think this is 
the "holistic" all around feel and experience mailing list.

If this is not, then please, do find (start) one. An open source feel and 
experience GUI thinktank mailing list. And rename this list to 
kde-dev-beginner if it really means that.

I am sorry if I offend someone with this, though that would only prove that 
the someone was not listening to me.

-Kimmo S.