Syncing in real time is really something file systems don't seem to handle well. But that's more an issue with real time collaboration, not with syncing some documents and settings across a few devices.

Thanks for pointing out this freudian language glitch!

This actually sums up what I want to say. Most data could be stored and synced fine inside of files, even unicode text files most of the time, no binary. I don't need my chat logs in a database, I don't need calendar or contacts in a database. Especially if it is one that is running outside my user space and is not affected by backing up my home directory.

I wonder what became so difficult about syncing data that it has to be re-invented all the time?

I was happy using tools like rsync, diff and unison for a long time, until the moment when even Linux desktop software is too posh to store their data in files.

Now every software uses another database, at one time even Amarok used a MySQL backend. What is better about this than just putting the data in a file? Or at least making this file the Single Point Of Truth? If you need the database for speed, you can check if the file changed since the last time and then update the database from the file's contents. But simple files have been syncing and merging and everything perfectly for ages. Now it seems like every software needs its own syncing service.

Is there any reason for this, except brading the most simple things (like copying a file), or making money with cloud storage?

The order in which people opened their windows is very difficult to remember. And those who found out that they can move the taskbar buttons around are spending too much cognitive energy doing it :) The taskbar is a terrible interface, which does not mean there are no worse ones around.

True, unless the title is also shown in the bird's eye view as well, which i believe compiz is doing. If drag and drop between bird's-eye windows would also work (like it does on MaxOS), it would be tremendously useful.

I like your example about Vista, which looks as if consumers suddenly exercised power by "voting with their wallets". The other interpretation is that Windows7 is also a piece of crap, its just better than Vista so in comparison one can more or less accept it. The same happened with Gnome 2. People hated its "simplicity", but compared to the starting out KDE4 it looked like the revelation. A lot of this is about what history has brought in front of users and what we have learned to use.

The desktop metaphor itself has lots of problems. Not surprising, it has been around for more than 30 years and was developed by Xerox for a computer to create graphics that should be printed on a laser printer. At the moment, designers seem to be bold enough to try something new. Even in FOSS. That is quite a new situation and as it seems the FOSS world is not prepared for it. Developers, users and designers need to work this out, or FOSS will become a "product" like commercial software.

The users' part in my opinion make a useful contribution. One part is to identify the problem that interfaces without text, based on gestures, have bad discoverability, like you did. Don Norman also points this out in this article: http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/gesture_wars_20272.asp Users have to acquire the language to describe their tasks and interfaces, deeper than "i don't like it" or "cannot get my stuff done". Telling the developers and designers that they're drunk will not help, because they aren't crazy. Maybe Steve Jobs could pull that off, but the FOSS community should strive for a better work model.

So, while I agree that Unity is rough and Gnome3 is lacking stuff from Gnome2, hating is not the answer. Identifying the good ideas therein and analyzing what should be changed is better. IMHO.

Tomboy is actually great and I do not even know of any commercial alternative. It has fantastic UI design. I could live with gnote, but also know that it lives off of Tomboys ideas.

> If your shiny new UI is going to make me click the terminal button on the task bar and scroll through a list of 14 different terminals to get to the one I want, we're not going to get on.

Interestingly, this is exactly what happens to me when I am using classic KDE or Gnome. At one point, the task bar is full of terminal windows that seem to be arbitrarily arranged (because i am supposed to remember the ORDER in which I have opened them) and suddenly they are all hidden behind one single button with the name "Terminal". The same with Windows, BTW. If that doesn't suck, then I don't know. :)

Gnome3 is not perfect, but at least it tries to address this problem by making window positions persistent and using a birds-eye view to remove the overlapping of windows. I really like this approach and am convinced that the task bar is bad for managing more than 7 windows.

The designers of the interfaces everybody hates now are not idiots, and if you think they didn't test any of the design changes with users, you are wrong. E.g., by testing with only a small group, the canonical design team clearly pointed out the problems with the Thunderbird interface that Mozilla doesn't seem to be able noticing. The problem with the "grand scheme" of UI design today is that it tries to balance "emotional response" with usability. I agree that this plainly sucks, but I doubt it was the motivation behind Gnome3.

Indeed, users do not have much to say about how they want their interfaces. At the same time, on contrary to developers, users are not at all organized, usually cannot really express what they need, start shitstorms over small UI changes, in most cases suggest hideous fixes that are worse than mystery meat, and, usually, after a few months, just use the new stuff without complaining and wait for the next change to rage again. (This is not directed against you, SaussageOfDoom, just the impression I got over many years. And I am not even a developer.)

But democracy is hard and a lot of effort. FOSS users need to form organizations just like developers, staffed with designers that have community credibility and collect feedback, create interactive mockups (not the typical "i tried to balance eye-candy with simplicity"-screenshots popular in the community that are nothing but skinning), do actual testing instead of guessing what's best, etc. And then developers will probably accept this as valuable input. I have never met a developer who would not react positively to a well thought-out design or re-design concept, or would at least be willing to start a meaningful discussion on base of that.

If you wouldn't care, you wouldn't hate it :)

It is not proven that Gnome3's or Unity's approach is perfect yet. However, the problems of the taskbar/windowlist is, that they are grouped by no order at all. Minimizing a window leaves no trail where to find it again, except the 0.3 second animation with shrinkboxes or some compiz effect. Users might remember that for some time, but not much.

Gnome 3's approach: When there is no way to minimize a window, it keeps its position. Keeping positions of objects is a powerful cognitive concept that Windows and KDE seem to have completely dismissed. And after pressing the funky key, users can see all the windows, not-overlapping, from a bird's-eye view and select much larger surfaces to access them. That is actually much more "efficient" that scanning a list of minimized windows that is arranged in a random order, or rather, in the order they happened to be opened.

Another good idea in Gnome3 is creating virtual desktops semantically instead of having a fixed number of them. So if a user is starting a new thing to work on, they can create a new desktop and fill it with the applications that they need for this task. This actually solves problems.

Removing many functions can be very "efficient", if efficiency is what "power users" are after, aka, doing things fast. Many great configuration options in for example KDE are totally pointless. I know I love changing stuff around a lot and have another checkbox to set some weird option, but since I changed to Gnome2.x, which was at the time laughed at for being dumbed down the same as Gnome3 is now, I am able to work much more, and more relaxed. My mind doesn't wander off by going through hundreds of tabbed config dialogs. I don't check the network traffic with an applet. I don't get a message popping up when a file finished being copied, along with a history of all file copy operations of the last month. Gnome is sparse. Which is great as long as it works well and you can be sure that the reason for a problem is not Gnome. In rich-option-environments, that, in addition, don't work well, you'll always feel anxious that some option you have changed might be the cause for the issue, and then try remembering which one that was.

Not directed against you, MrNiCeGUi: many people claiming to be "power users" and needing a lot of config options, are in fact wasting time and are just feeling to be productive by staring at pointless data diagrams or actually designing their own UI by moving stuff around, very likely making it measurably less efficient.

Hobbyists that love to fool around with their computers should be honest and say so, not stating "efficiency" as a reason. People who's job is to monitor computer activity, do maintenance or create work environments for others, might want and actually need loads of of options. But don't call that the peak of efficiency. It would for sure be more efficient if this work could be done with less configuration. In general, hating an interface without stating what it is used for, is quite useless.

BTW, iphone users also love their dumbed down touch interface because they feel more efficient with it. :) Of course a phone with a real keyboard is measurably more efficient, also the UI in my age old Palm Treo with PalmOS 5 can register dates and contact data much faster and more convenient than an iPhone. But it *feels* clunky because it looks like crap :) In the same way, powerusers might not feel like power users anymore when they have to do things that are commonly regarded as "consumer".

Why does it seem that people agree that Gnome3, Unity and iOs are *exactly the same*??? They aren't! in fact, Gnome3 and Unity are the first time the Linux community develops UI ideas of their own.

And, "task bars", or "window lists" that everybody is loving so much, don't work well. They are okay if you have like 5 windows open. We should be happy that designers are taking on the Linux desktop and are trying to develop solutions.

While not being a fan of Unity myself, an important point is that efficiency is not a goal in itself. Also, it has nothing to do with what keyboard shortcuts people have been using for 15+ years. And in general what is efficiency? Many "power users" cram their screen full with processor temperature displays, tiny network traffic graphs, hard disk data throughput applets, calling that efficiency ... and Unity apparently takes away too many pixels away from these toys? :)

Well, I totally approve of this power user lifestyle, I love it. But wasting time by configuring pointless stuff is almost the same as the perceived time waste of clicking around in a nice looking interface and watching the window animations. I say "perceived time waste", because what really,measurably, wastes time is constant context switching. That has nothing to do with processor speed or 3D acceleration, but with the mind having to adapt to different tasks in too short intervals.

No matter if you hate Unity or not, Ubuntu deserves credit for stirring up the UI landscape in Linux, creating an unique identity for the Linux desktop, instead of imitating Windows or Apple or Next.

I have to admit I was just raging.

However, my frustration with scroll bars has nothing to do with Opera, I just needed an outlet.

As usual, Don Norman has more insightful things to say about this topic: http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/gesture_wars_20272.asp

Isn't it like a speech input for an Infocom game?

Some of these games also were able to understand pronouns like "it", "him", "there" ...

It seems to be trendy right now to emulate paper in all possible places.

The first step is to get rid of the scrollbar, although it shows important information at a glance, not like "page 3 of 26". It can even show where to find search results, see e.g. Chrome's scrollbar. But, hey, it doesn't look "minimal" so let's just get rid of this UI element that was developed for like 30 years and still has room to improve. Let's make it more "attractive to interact with", more "fun"!

The next step is to go to page flipping, because, well, that really improves orientation inside a document and navigation speed. NOT! People hate PDFs for a reason. The kitschy ways of flipping through pages on the iPad is a nice graphical gimmick, but beyond the fast fading novelty, it is very unpractical. How to skim a through document, how to quickly find an image that you have seen there? By flipping through all the pages again? Flipping pages would bring of course back new possibilities to solve problems with new crappy UI widgets, like a overview of images or a button to jump to an index, overlay it transparently over something ... too bad this problems already have been solved by the scrolling document and the scrollbar.

Browsers should enable people to read more, not slow them down and read less. If I want to look like an idiot while reading on a screen I will find another way of doing so, I don't need the UI to be fiddled with to optimize livestyle.

The blogpost mentions a "familiar MySQL environment" ... that's not much SQL.

Yes, and that is fine, but it is definitely not possible to turn it off!

People, it is an illusion that you just can turn stuff off everywhere. You can turn off things up to the level of how the system was designed. And KDE is now designed for over-componentisation, over-information and over-configuration. It needs a consistent narrative. Maybe it will develop one. This is needs something that would be good to turn on, not off. :)