[lkiux]

I started with amiga, windows (from 3.1 to 2000) and I've been using Linux as my main development and OS since more than 10 years now. I no longer use any other OS. I consider myself lucky I basically never interact with windows anymore. For the cross-os work that I have to do, python with qt covers me to the point that I just perform final testing. Amazing.

I used OSX around 10.4 for about four years, because it seemed like the best of both worlds: nice UX with an unix backend. That is, indeed, why OSX appealed to most geeks, right?

I became tired of OSX after a couple of years. What apple dictates might look good, but it's far from functional. It's eye candy with little substance. On the surface is pretty, but Finder under OSX was essentially a crapshot. Under Linux I could have virtual desktops, but not under OSX (that only arrived years later). Tweaking, even slightly, any default behavior is hard. That is also the reason why Gnome doesn't appeal to me. The basic OSX desktop doesn't offer anything beyond a current Gnome release. Things change if you need commercial programs, but the desktop itself is not inferior in both behavior, looks and general interaction. Gnome is, performance wise, slower, but the people that use gnome do not seem to notice.

Not to mention that what every developer does on OSX is install an external package manager, and by and large replace every single userland utility and library with an up-to-date variant from Brew, MacPorts, etc. This was a massive burden. Any linux distribution is far superior in that regard.

I don't think that Gnome today is far away from OSX. Sometimes OSX is smoother, sometimes Gnome actually is.

But, my desktop today is nowhere even remotely comparable to what gnome offers. I'm using a tiling window manager with pretty much any program customized to the point of being unrecognizable. It's incredibly efficient compared to a pretty desktop. I'm aggressively disabling eye candy and animations everywhere. I'm often using CLI versions of GUI programs because the actual user interface is superior. Some TUI programs have no rivals in GUI form.

The fact is, is that if you use your computer professionally and switch to linux, you start to understand what user interface efficiency is. At some point, eye candy becomes a second, third, fourth priority. This doesn't mean the program is any less usable though. I still value presentation. I'll take a nice UI any day over a crappy one, given the interaction is the same.

I've witnessed the same happening to many people that I've suggested linux. Many of those still use windows or mac, but with completely different habits.

[stinos]

The fact is, if you use your computer professionally and switch to linux, you start to understand what user interface efficiency is

That highly depends on what you do with your computer professionally though. So it might be a fact for some, but completely false for others.

I'm using a tiling window manager with pretty much any program customized to the point of being unrecognizable.

I played that game for years but gave up afterwards. Maybe I was doing it wrong but I spent just too much time to my liking on it. Now I'm more in a mindest of 'if you can't build me software which I can use almost as-is, I'll look for something else'. Not always ideal either and sometimes there are no alternatives so you'r stuck with crap after all. And yeah maybe I'm not using my computer as efficiently as possible (looking at some collegues though, I'm a wizard compared to their 'let's use a mouse for everything and double-clik to make sure it hits'-style), but I'm getting work done.

[profsnuggles]

Obviously do whatever works best for you. You don't have to spend a lot of time configuring your system to end up with something unrecognizable though. I've been running linux full time since 2003 and my $HOME directory can be traced directly back to then. Things start out as-is but then something would be mildly annoying so I'd spend 5 minutes reading the man page and change a setting. After a decade of that my environment evolved to suit me perfectly and even someone who knows the software I use would have trouble sitting in front of my PC and using it. However I never really spent days configuring anything. It was more of an accident.

[soulbadguy]

>The fact is, is that if you use your computer professionally and switch to linux, you start to understand what user interface efficiency is. At some point, eye candy becomes a second, third, fourth priority. This doesn't mean the program is any less usable though. I still value presentation. I'll take a nice UI any day over a crappy one, given the interaction is the same.

Very true. Before starting my current position, i was a Visual studio die hard.While i still think it's the best single IDE, one thing thing i notice using linux CLI and vim in particular how much faster is it to do thing. And i seem to remember better how to do stuff instead of being lost in menus .

I think the current trend in UX is toward making them more intuitive (which i think linux/CLI could read do a be job at), but sadly we are sacrificing efficiency in the process.

[DanBC]

I agree with your post.

> Tweaking, even slightly, any default behavior is hard.

I understand why they want to restrict tweaking - it makes support easier. Hide the tweaks in config files, make it clear that you're not going to support tweaked systems. But don't ban tweaks.

[K_REY_C]

> I'm often using CLI versions of GUI programs because the actual user interface is superior. Some TUI programs have no rivals in GUI form.

I have my own list here, but I'm curious to hear yours to potentially add to my list. Thanks for the great post.