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Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go?

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zridling:
"Most" people confuse -- and stay confused -- Linux desktop environments with Linux itself. KDE and GNOME are the two most popular environments for the big distros and provide intuitive, attractive desktops. They offer a large array of editors, multimedia software, games, administration programs, network tools, educational applications, utilities, artwork, web development tools, etc. These two desktops focus more on providing users with a sleek environment with all the bells and whistles featured in Win7. But there are many others built for low spec, netbooks, or older machines such as Xfce, ROX, and LXDE among others.

With version 6.04, Ubuntu was notable for putting GNOME together in an attractive and coherent way for first time users. And even as simple as it was five years ago, someone like me had to unlearn several things that Microsoft had burned in my brain, e.g., software installation -- "You mean it updates all my programs at the same time?!" My biggest attraction to openSUSE has been its advanced integration of KDE. It's been a lot of fun and the progress in just the last two years has been impressive.

zridling:
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols confirms 40hz and weighs in with other distros that fell out of favor and have come back:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/loving-ubuntu-linux/8310

For years there was a site called Boycott Novell, now called Techrights, which pounded on Novell for its Microsoft partnership and related issues. Back in 2004, I wrote about why Linux users hated Red Hat. The reason then was that many Red Hat Linux users felt betrayed by Red Hat leaving its personal distribution behind for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I could go on and on, but you get the point. FOSS fans tend to be passionate. They don’t dislike something, they “hate” it. They don’t like anything, they “love” it. To which I can only say, “It’s just software people!” Without Ubuntu I know many people who never in a million years would have touched Linux. It was too strange, too techie. Ubuntu has made it possible for pretty much anyone to use Linux.

_______________________
Q: How can a man have a hyphenated name? I see male athletes now putting hyphenated names (Smith-Jones) on their jerseys. Someone please unstupify me.

mahesh2k:
Ubuntu did experiments from release 7.10 onwards i guess. Apple like window theme skin was one experiment they still continue to do. It's just me or every software after some time tries to come up with more complexity than simplicity, in the name of feature richness.

40hz:
It's just me or every software after some time tries to come up with more complexity than simplicity, in the name of feature richness.
-mahesh2k (February 24, 2011, 05:21 AM)
--- End quote ---

It not just you.

It's a problem that has been dogging the entire end-user software industry for about 25 years now.

But it's mostly our own fault it's happening.

A little history:

Back around 1990, PC Magazine and others began what seemed to be an editorial policy of hand wringing over "feature bloat."

No matter how good or bad a product was, the reviewer always felt the need to wrap up by bemoaning how big and bulked up the product had become since it's original or previous release.

This went on for a couple of years until "bloat" started to become an industry buzzword. By the mid-90s almost everybody was complaining about feature bloat.

I'm not 100% sure who finally called them all to task in a guest editorial. But it was one of the biggies. I think it was Jim Manzi of Lotus Development Corp. (Everybody remember Lotus 1-2-3? They were bigger than Microsoft once!)

What he said was that software developers were caught between a rock and a hard place because the trade press and its readers were sending mixed messages. If a developer didn't add features to a new release, it got slammed in it's review. And that meant it received a lower 'ranking' than a product that had so many features it risked bursting its shrinkwrap. However, if a developer went ahead with a big "feature release," they then got slammed for feature bloat.

Manzi pointed out they couldn't have it both ways.

For those who don't remember the "golden age of computer magazines," maybe I should point out that this was a time when product showdowns and shootouts were a very popular type of tech article. Back then, receiving an Editor's Choice or Top Pick designation by a major magazine had a huge impact on sales. Especially if it was a "corporate" (i.e wp, spreadsheet, database) product you were selling.

Manzi went on to say that while everybody compained about bloated apps, it didn't actually seem to bother them all that much. Sorta like how most people tell TV polls they want more cultural and educational programming but rarely watch any of it once it's on. He also went on to say Lotus' sales research found that when given a choice between more features or less, customers picked the product with more features every time. Even if it meant paying more.

He wrapped up by saying products would stop experiencing feature bloat when the press and the people stopped penalizing the developers for not putting more and more in.

Shortly after that, feature bloat fell out of vogue as a soapbox issue for most magazines.

Unfortunately the bulk of the buyers still veer towards huge feature sets because "you just never know" when you're going to need something. That's one of the reasons why so many people still buy a full office suite when all they really need is a simple wordprocessor or basic spreadsheet. Same goes for servers. Tons of small businesses bring in a full server when all they really need is some network storage and a decent backup system.

I think the software market will eventually reach a higher level of sophistication and start moving away from huge products and opt for a more snap-in type computing environment. One where the end-user decides (and buys) what will be in there. In-app purchases are one manifestation of that trend. But it will be a while before it becomes the generally accepted way to purchase and install software. Customers are leery of being nickle-and-dimed. And the developers are hesitant to make any structural changes that could adversely affect sales or screw up their development roadmaps.

It will all get worked out eventually. But until then, "bigass apps" are something we'll have to live with.

Paul Keith:
It will all get worked out eventually. But until then, "bigass apps" are something we'll have to live with.
--- End quote ---

Is this specific to corporate software?

From my personal knowledge as well as the software I have tried, I can't help but think there aren't any bigass apps anymore.

This doesn't mean there aren't any bloated software but setting aside "secret, only if you know about it" software like MS Office - I can't help but complain that often times all the bigass software I've used are well... not bigass but just wrongly bloated.

What I mean by this are things like project managers. I can't help but bang my head at how some programs like Chandler sell themselves as a suite but they can't even offer such basic features as how RemembertheMilk works. This is especially glaring because a more featureful free version that is bigass compared to RTM is Toodledo and yet all they needed to do was add "sub-folders".

Here's another example, Outlook and Thunderbird. Good apps but if Gmail had a cloud version with the same interface + some of the lab add-ons they have - which is the more advanced desktop client? That thing with it's flags or that thing where you can change the color of the labels and treat them as tags?

PIMS - which is more advanced? Simple applications like TreeSheets, InfoQube and Surfulator that revolve around one idea or ...well... name any other powerful alternatives that not only confuses you without really giving a way for you to replicate those apps' full simple features.

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