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Desktop Environment User Interface Surveys

Submitted by khanreaper on Tue, 2005-03-29 12:28. Usability

Reading over GNOME's desktop-devel mailing list and KDE's Dot News, I stumbled across two sets of user interface and satisfaction surveys that inquire into users think about GNOME and KDE's offerings. The organization performing the inquiry is the Human Aspects of Software Engineering (HASE) group over at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

I have to be candid in saying that I am surprised to see that a link to the surveys never made it here to, so I am including the links below for those who are interested in participating:

Linux lover who wants same ease I used to have in Winblows

Submitted by Anonymous George on Thu, 2005-03-31 00:04.

I may hate Microsoft and Windows, but their UI is still much better than Gnome's unfortunately. There are just a ton of really small quirks here and there, that should be really easy to fix. Like for example, how come I can not just right click on my desktop and create a new shortcut to a file or folder? The "launcher" is just too complex; I should be able to just browse the file/folder I want and click on it, but instead I have to type in what program I want to open (like nautilis for example) and then some options, and then, finally, my file/folder name...I'm basically having to give it the comandline equivalent of what I want it to do, and isn't the whole reason I'm using Gnome in the first place because I don't want to use the command line if I don't have to? The default install icons and theme are pretty ugly and make you feel like it's still 1995. I don't need to have a "kandy koated" desktop, but it's just a little too plain... It's also way too much trouble to install a new theme or icon set. I should be able to just download a "theme.bz2" file or something, and go into themes and say use this theme right? doesn't happen...the only way to get it to work right is to unzip it and place all the files in their appropriate folders, and I won't even go into how much I hate unix/posix style folder layout b/c that's not gnome's fault. Anyway, to sum it up...I too love linux and open-source, and I want to tell everyone I know to jump on board, but I would just feel a little to guilty in saying that since it's still not that user friendly in comparison to WinXP and OSX. I have seen alot of improvements to many of my complaints over the last couple versions though. I am currently using Gnome 2.8.1 just for reference... can't wait till they put 2.10 in the portage tree at Gentoo. Don't let all my critism get you down though guys... With open source, it's not a question of if it will happen, just when. Keep up the great work Gnome Team! :)

-Derick Eisenhardt (zephyrxero-at-gmail-dot-com)

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