Thanks to all of Valve's effort with Proton, Steam Deck and their funding of people working on various other bits of Linux code like GPU drivers - the Linux share on Steam as of March 2024 bounced back to a near multi-year high.
I reject the premise that just because more people use Windows, a Windows UX must be the most intuitive and alternatives must appear more complicated to use.
There are more households that drive cars than ride a bike - is a car therefore a more intuitive to use transport tool than a bike?
That’s a crazy take though.
Everyone knows that what you’re most familiar with is way more intuitive than something you’ve never touched in your life.
There are more households that drive cars than ride a bike - is a car therefore a more intuitive to use transport tool than a bike?
How intuitive something is only affects the initial experience. This is why driving a car usually takes a year to learn in most countries - it’s not very intuitive. If you know how to drive a car, however, you can learn to drive a bus much faster - it’s now intuitive because you already know how to drive a car, which is similar.
So of course whichever DE replicates windows the best is going to be the most intuitive. Doesn’t mean that it’s better once you’ve gotten used to it though.
I reject the premise that just because more people use Windows, a Windows UX must be the most intuitive and alternatives must appear more complicated to use.
That’s one hell of a ‘heavy lift’ to create a non-Windows UX experience that is more intuitive and easier for Windows user to adapt to that is completely different from the Windows UX experience they know today.
Not saying it’s not possible, but I think you’d have better success in pulling people over from Windows to Linux if the UX experience was similar, since they’re already dealing with a retraining issue (Linux) that is a barrier they have to overcome when transferring over.
There’s no need to add more obstacles to that transference process.
You’re again assuming that being a windows clone will intrinsically make a DE more intuitive.
Yes I am, and I base that on my observance of human nature, and how a level of complexity of learning something new is a barrier that affects adopting something new, as well as my own personal experience as a UI/UX software developer for some decades.
An alternative UX would have to be incredibly intuitive to overcome that. And, with respect, Gnome is not that.
I don’t think that’s true at all.
Well we’ll just agree to disagree then. Appreciate the discussion though.
I reject the premise that just because more people use Windows, a Windows UX must be the most intuitive and alternatives must appear more complicated to use.
There are more households that drive cars than ride a bike - is a car therefore a more intuitive to use transport tool than a bike?
That’s a crazy take though. Everyone knows that what you’re most familiar with is way more intuitive than something you’ve never touched in your life.
How intuitive something is only affects the initial experience. This is why driving a car usually takes a year to learn in most countries - it’s not very intuitive. If you know how to drive a car, however, you can learn to drive a bus much faster - it’s now intuitive because you already know how to drive a car, which is similar.
So of course whichever DE replicates windows the best is going to be the most intuitive. Doesn’t mean that it’s better once you’ve gotten used to it though.
That’s one hell of a ‘heavy lift’ to create a non-Windows UX experience that is more intuitive and easier for Windows user to adapt to that is completely different from the Windows UX experience they know today.
Not saying it’s not possible, but I think you’d have better success in pulling people over from Windows to Linux if the UX experience was similar, since they’re already dealing with a retraining issue (Linux) that is a barrier they have to overcome when transferring over.
There’s no need to add more obstacles to that transference process.
You’re again assuming that being a windows clone will intrinsically make a DE more intuitive. I don’t think that’s true at all.
Yes I am, and I base that on my observance of human nature, and how a level of complexity of learning something new is a barrier that affects adopting something new, as well as my own personal experience as a UI/UX software developer for some decades.
An alternative UX would have to be incredibly intuitive to overcome that. And, with respect, Gnome is not that.
Well we’ll just agree to disagree then. Appreciate the discussion though.