Some guy called Wheels has been talking about how statements like KDE is about choice and choice is good are bad things. Instead, he’s advocating, for the KDE desktop, that the whole deal of allowing configurability all over the place is harming their usability. I couldn’t agree more. Gnome took this path some time ago, at least partly prompted by Havoc Pennington’s rant on free software UI, and I’d love to see KDE go down the same path. People over in the KDE camp are aware that this sort of thing is a problem; it remains to be seen whether those people can pull the project back from the precipice it’s on, but I’d love to see KDE as a real competitor to Gnome in ease-of-use and innovation. At the moment, for me at least, it isn’t even close. Again, there are people over there who are aware of this, and are thinking of ways to change it. I wish them every, every success.
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Comments
ssta
mrben
I think the main issue is not whether or not you allow configurability, but rather how you allow it.
The majority of users don’t need a million and one options – those options can maybe still be there, but for them to be in the face of a new user is asking for trouble.
There also needs to be creative use and new innovation of different ways of configuring things, to make it more intuitive and less complex.
Sorry, I think you’re so wrong you come out of the other side of wrongness into a land of utter wrongosity!
I like configurability, I like being able to choose how it looks, how it feels, what it behaves like.
What you appear to be advocating is a one-size fits all UI desktop environment. Sorry, this is utter arse. The minute KDE go down this road I’ll abandon it, grab the source to fluxbox or something and go on an expand outwards crusade. Until I have a UI I can configure however I like again.
I totally reject the notion that allowing configurability harms usability; if anything it’s the opposite (for me at least).
BTW, like the auto-preview thingy. Although a little confusing in that changes don’t appear until you’ve typed another character…