A Sticky, GUI Mess - More Form Over Function

Richard W.M. Jones, a programmer who works for Red Hat, had a quite interesting blog entry today. You can find it here:

http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/windows-8-worse-than-gnome-for-usability/

In few words, he gives the new Windows 8 "Metro" user interface a real bashing, saying that "it's even worse than GNOME for usability." If it's worse than GNOME 3, we're all in big trouble. Those who have regularly followed my blog for the last few months know what I think of GNOME 3. GNOME 3 is unusable on my laptop, though the same quad core machine runs Windows 7 with all its graphics just fine. Richard indicated that Red Hat will include the new GNOME shell in its upcoming RHEL 7 release, and expressed his concern that they may lose some loyal users over this decision. Let's hope Red Hat will actually clean it up its implementation of GNOME so it works properly.

Microsoft Office 2010 - Tied Up In Ribbons:
Lately, I've been using a borrowed computer from work to complete some assignments. The machine is running Windows 7 and MS Office 2010. I'm using it to edit some Word documents with the "track changes" feature - which isn't, to my knowledge, duplicated in Open Office. The work machine has what Microsoft calls its new "Fluent User Interface." I haven't seen this "Fluent User Interface" on my own laptop, which is a year old yet came with Windows 7. Their "Fluent User Interface" consists of a new "ribbon" which runs across the top of the application window, replacing the usual and customary toolbars that Windows and LINUX users alike have grown to recognise as standard. It's not just a feature of Office, the 'Paint' program I used for saving the screen shot below also has it.














The thing I noticed immediately while using Office 2010, besides their new ribbon, was that I couldn't find spell check. There is no "Help" dropdown menu, and no, not even an "Edit" dropdown menu, either. The "Help" dropdown menu has been replaced with a little blue question mark that I didn't immediately notice in the low contrast coloring of the ribbon. Eventually I found the Spell Checker in a very non-intuitive place: A dropdown menu called "Review".

So, as GNOME did with their latest creation, Microsoft had to take something I previously could access in a fraction of a second with ONE mouse click and make it into an operation that now takes several seconds and two or more mouse clicks. After a considerable time getting acquainted with the new regime I can now, more or less, get my work done.

What's The Rationale For All This?
I spoke with a colleague at work who has worked in IT for many years. His comment was that "all the 'old school' folks who have written all the stuff we have used for years are all starting to retire. All the twenty-somethings who grew up texting on their iPhones are now getting software development jobs and starting to impact the industry."

All I have to say about that is I hope and pray that some companies will consider those of us who do NOT want their PC to look like an iPhone, and who simply want to continue to get their work done.

Have Fedora and Ubuntu Left You Stranded? Here's Some Guidance

I use a removable "drawer" system on my home lab computer - one drawer contains Fedora 14 and the other contains Ubuntu 11. Both are behaving badly, though in different ways. Ubuntu 11 will not allow me to install ANY software - whether it be through the graphical software manager or via the command line "apt-get" utility. This happened after another partially failed automatic update. Fedora WAS working OK, except my Kdenlive video editor got irrevocably corrupted with the recent Firefox update debacle I wrote about a while back. See my posts during July-September 2011 for more details on recent LINUX and GNOME 3 issues. Yesterday, when attempting to burn a data DVD, the Brasero DVD burning utility crashed. No amount of re-booting or cajoling will make it work. I believe this also happened due to a software update, as it DID work shortly before Fedora issued a bunch of updates a couple days ago.

Thoroughly fed up, I am shopping for a new LINUX distro. I had planned to buy a Red Hat Enterprise LINUX (RHEL) or a Novel SuSE subscription to get away from the instability of what I have been using. I figure that what is geared for the corporate user would meet higher quality standards; at least I would have a phone number to call rather than spending hours online trying to find answers. As a grad student on a very tight budget, I find the $180+ price tag for a one year subscription a bit steep right now. And so I started looking anew for a suitable free replacement.

The following two sites were very helpful for doing a quick comparison of different distributions:

tuxradar.com
http://tuxradar.com/content/best-distro-2011

distrowatch.com
http://distrowatch.com/

After reading these sites and visiting a number of online forums, I have picked out the following three for closer evaluation and testing:
CentOS 6.0, Debian 6.0.1, LINUX Mint 11

My criteria were stability, security, availability of the applications I regularly use, AND last but not least a conservative approach to development and updates. Here's a quick rundown of the choices I narrowed the field to:

CentOS 6.0: CentOS is a clone of Red Hat Enterprise LINUX (RHEL). It is supposedly intended for "business users who don't want to pay a business price." From what the guy at Red Hat told me on the telephone a couple weeks ago, if I bought RHEL and needed software that wasn't in the RHEL repository I still could get it from the Fedora repositories. The Fedora repositories are a riskier bet, but at least they are available if needed. RHEL 6.0 still uses GNOME 2.0.x desktop - I would ASSUME CentOS does also, but I don't really know one way or the other. I'll deal with that in a future post about CentOS.

Debian 6.0.1: Debian is well known for being "tested 'till destruction", to quote a couple sources I've read. It IS more difficult for the average person to install, but from everything I read it is robust, secure, and reliable. Many different distributions are derived from it and there is a huge software library for it. Debian still uses GNOME 2.0.x desktop, according to what I've read.

LINUX Mint 11 LINUX Mint is in many ways like Ubuntu, but it is also a competitor. Like Ubuntu, it is a Debian-derived distro. Mint 11 uses GNOME 2.x, though this might change next year when Mint 12 or 13 arrives. There is discussion on their site about either using GNOME 3 or maybe forking GNOME 2.x to something called "Mate" desktop that would (hopefully) retain compatibility with GNOME 2. We shall have to wait and see. Mint 11 comes "out of the box" with Java and Flash plugins installed so you can watch you-tube videos and access Java applications online. VERY COOL. I have already started initial tests on this one - more to come in my upcoming MINT post.

All I can say about the eventual use of GNOME 3 is I hope the above-mentioned distros clean it up before foisting it upon us as did Fedora and others.

Even the US Air Force has developed its very own LINUX distribution! Called "LPS" for "Lightweight Portable Security", it is intended to be kept on a bootable USB thumb drive and uses an encrypted file system. It can also be installed to a hard drive as with any other distro. It is also designed to prevent corruption of the essential operating system and software files, even if an online session does get hacked. It comes with Open Office and some other goodies pre-installed. I'll likely check this one out, too - I rather like the rationale on which it was based. Below is the link for more info and downloads:

Air Force's Secure LINUX Distro:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/the-air-forces-secure-linux-distribution/9618

Stay tuned for results of my testing of the above-mentioned distributions.

Meanwhile, here are some links to articles I thought were useful for securing your LINUX system:

Some inside scoop on security
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/73061.html

How to secure your LINUX system:
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/how-to-secure-your-linux-system-915651

Some Insight Into The Mindset of GNOME3 Developers

I have written about the GNOME3 desktop environment in a couple recent posts. Richard Jones, a computer programmer, wrote a short blog piece about GNOME3 today. He posted a link to an actual conversation between Owen Taylor (from Red Hat) and two GNOME developers. Definitely an interesting and eye-opening 10 minutes of reading for any GNOME user.

http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/more-gnome-3-inanity/


My $ 0.02:
What I come away with from Mr. Jones's and Mr. Taylor's posts is the GNOME developers are basically focused on how THEY use GNOME; they are not necessarily mindful of how the rest of us work within the environment.

College business and marketing professors have taught that businesses who ignored indicators of what the market wanted and was buying did so to their own peril. Personal experience and observations in the real world bear this out - one does NOT need a degree in business to figure this out.

Having taken computer programming classes in college, I can attest to the level of thinking acuity required to produce a piece of software. Building something as complex as an entire GUI environment - like GNOME - is no small feat. My hat's off to anyone who can do it.

These guys aren't stupid - I just hope they get the wax out of their ears, and soon.