A Call For KDE To Fully Embrace Simplicity By Default, Appeal To More Novice Users

[MadeUpName]

I don't see any issues with what Nate is saying. But I would say that if you want to chase the more mainstream user then the documentation needs to improve a lot. There are lots of applications that have zero documentation. It's free as in beer as well as speech so fair enough. But chasing the masses is bound to be a losing preposition with out it. That is a shame as the KDE documentation frame work is actually quite good.

[MadeUpName]

Something that not enough people bring up is application names.

What the hell is Kate, for example? Why isn't it called anything even remotely recognizable as a text editor? This whole thing where everything starts with K is Kool and all but it doesn't do wonders for newbies.


That's not just KDE. GIMP is another example.

Kate - KDE advanced text editor
Gimp - GNU Image Manipulation program.

Seems pretty straight forward when you use their full name.

WTF is Excel? Or power point? The fact that Microsoft was able to get a trade mark on "Word" in violation of US trademark law isn't KDEs fault.

[Danielsan]

The problem with KDE is the same for Gnome: it is for many but not for all.

KDE has several design defects: just the simple assumption that it must have sane/good/great defaults is the symptom that something wrong in going on.

I can't stand on KDE no more than two hours, the only fact that it resemble/remind me Win absolutely pisses me off.

Not sure why KDE needs, wants or aims to dominate the *nix Desktop Space but trying to make it better for all certainly will make unhappy a lot of people.

[Nocifer]

as long as standard desktop Linux is only available by default on a handful of power user and developer targeted computers and niche devices, it really honestly doesn't matter how friendly it is towards people who aren't power users or developers, because people outside those groups aren't going to use them.

This fails to take into account two IMHO major points:

a) We have an opportunity here to prepare KDE (and Linux in general) ahead of time so that if and when the time comes and Linux is named the Holy Grail and users flock to us by the thousands, it will be ready to accept them as an already rock-solid OS instead of its devs having to hurriedly implement knee-jerk fixes to core components like e.g. apt because Linus managed to uninstall half his system due to a failing of his system's package manager. Why waste that opportunity?

b) When Windows first rose to power it was pretty half-baked as a product, but the hardware vendors didn't question it much because there wasn't a good alternative. We can't do the same with Linux, because nowadays there is a good alternative, namely Windows. Therefore, if we want to be able compete, i.e. if we want to make the hardware vendors want to sell their mainstream products with Linux instead of only Windows (and thus make Linux available by default to more than a handful of power user and developer targeted computers and niche devices) we have to be if not better, then at least on par with the status quo, namely Windows. And we'll never be on par with Windows if we're always chasing its tail in the UX department because "nobody is using Linux but power users so the UX doesn't matter". UX and quality in general must come first; the users will (maybe) follow.

[Bobby Bob]

It will never cease to amaze me how quickly everyone starts panicking when someone starts talking about improving the UX of software in the world of Linux. As if somehow there's this unspoken assumption going on that making software easier to use could only make it worse.

Better defaults, cleaner UIs, clearer labels, simpler structures for menus and dialogs, will do nothing but improve the experience of using KDE for all users, both average users and more advanced users. There's nothing to panic over.

[Ironmask]

It will never cease to amaze me how quickly everyone starts panicking when someone starts talking about improving the UX of software in the world of Linux. As if somehow there's this unspoken assumption going on that making software easier to use could only make it worse.

Better defaults, cleaner UIs, clearer labels, simpler structures for menus and dialogs, will do nothing but improve the experience of using KDE for all users, both average users and more advanced users. There's nothing to panic over.

To be fair, every single UI rework in history has been a complete and utter disaster. GNOME3, Firefox, YouTube, Twitter, Windows 8. It's not that people simply hate change, it's because every time someone does change something, they seem to intentionally make the worst decisions on everything they possibly can.
At this point I think it's reasonable to get angry at someone who wants to redesign their UI to make absolutely sure we're going to be insanely pissed if they screw it up like everyone else does.

[Luke_Wolf]

This fails to take into account two IMHO major points:

a) We have an opportunity here to prepare KDE (and Linux in general) ahead of time so that if and when the time comes and Linux is named the Holy Grail and users flock to us by the thousands, it will be ready to accept them as an already rock-solid OS instead of its devs having to hurriedly implement knee-jerk fixes to core components like e.g. apt because Linus managed to uninstall half his system due to a failing of his system's package manager. Why waste that opportunity?

You're presuming that desktop environments are in a bad state or at least an unacceptable state to the average user. That's not really the case. It's far from perfect but then these same users we're talking about have also been perfectly tolerant of Windows 10 even with the situation of having two completely different settings panels, among other paper cuts, and I've yet to see an indication that Linus has had a problem with KDE itself.

As to managing to uninstall half his system due to the package manager. Okay sure that's a problem, but that's not a desktop environment problem that's a distribution issue which is unique to Pop_OS due to a peculiarity of how they packaged steam. It shouldn't have happened but what does KDE have to do with that as opposed to the professionalism of that particular distro?

b) When Windows first rose to power it was pretty half-baked as a product, but the hardware vendors didn't question it much because there wasn't a good alternative. We can't do the same with Linux, because nowadays there is a good alternative, namely Windows. Therefore, if we want to be able compete, i.e. if we want to make the hardware vendors want to sell their mainstream products with Linux instead of only Windows (and thus make Linux available by default to more than a handful of power user and developer targeted computers and niche devices) we have to be if not better, then at least on par with the status quo, namely Windows. And we'll never be on par with Windows if we're always chasing its tail in the UX department because "nobody is using Linux but power users so the UX doesn't matter". UX and quality in general must come first; the users will (maybe) follow.

Hardware vendors will never just change to Linux no matter how much UX polish you put on it. There is no magic "If we build it they will come" threshold to OEM adoption. The only thing that will drive OEMs to adopt Linux is if they see market demand for it, and the only way to get market demand for it is for someone else (Valve) to risk a substantial amount of money to make a big push into the market, at which point they'll test the waters themselves to see if they should follow suite. OEMs stick to Windows not because it's great but because it's the safe bet that will run all of their customer's software and it's what their customers expect to have on it.

Valve may change this situation with the SteamDeck and SteamOS 3.0 but even so that's a slow drawn out transition where OEMs target gamers and then slowly introduce it into the mainstream.

[krzyzowiec]

I know of course this will get a lot of hatred, but Nate is right. Simplicity and sane defaults must be a priority or new users will be lost. I’m an advanced user and I still prefer this approach. I want something that will stay uncluttered and out of my way for 90% of my common tasks, and where the defaults aren’t suitable, I’m fine going into some advanced menu or tweaking things.

Presenting all the features to the user out of the box can be overwhelming to a new user or just distracting to an experienced one. This is an art more than anything else, as the balance between simplicity and effectiveness is a difficult one when you are trying to appeal to a range of experience levels or subjective preferences. I wish KDE luck. I think it has significantly improved since the original release of Plasma 5. I can’t wait to see what they have in mind for the future.

[Bobby Bob]

To be fair,

Considering the first three words of your reply, that was possibly the least fair interpretation of the field of UX/UI design I've ever read.
You're focusing on all the examples of BAD UX/UI design. The good examples you probably don't even notice because good UX/UI is never noticed when it works, it's transparent when it works and only visible when it doesn't.

[Sonadow]

How about fixing the godamned bugs in Plasma before fucking around with design choices?

From KDE 4 up till today I have never been able to right-click a panel without having the context menu disappear after hovering over an expandable menu entry. That's > 10 years of experiencing the same bug, you think that's fucking funny?