2d ago

BuT I CaNT MaKE cIrCLeS in GiMp!

Audio Engineering @lemm.ee

AstralPath @lemmy.ca

1d ago

bUt MuH BeAt DeTeCtIvE

233 comments

Downplaying the importance of UX is one of the reasons the year of the Linux desktop still has not arrived.
- Its close but when gnome is still saying "lmao bro you're supposed to know how to use terminal to make empty files bro" and "nonono you are too stupid for mmb paste toggle" in the same breath, it will be a while.
  
  The average user doesn’t need empty files
  Also
  mmb paste toggle
  What’s the issue with this
- I'm sure having all computers in existence come by default with window and offering free stuff to students has nothing to do with it.
  /s
- If by importance of UX you mean "your program should look and behave exactly like this other program made by a corpo, because I've learned that one already".
  In reality The Year Of The Linux might never arrive, it doesn't have a multibillion corporation spending multi billions in order to make Linux a default software on every computer you buy. (to pedants: Android doesn't count)
  
  Not necessarily, but humans are creatures of habit. If your app doesn't follow existing patterns, you better have a good reason for it.
  It is true however that UX research is pretty poor on Linux, outside of say Gnome, but I think Linux apps could also take notes from market leaders and see what works from them and why.
  It's not always just a spreadsheet comparison of features, it's considering the UX for different screens and user journeys and comparing them to one another.
  
  That is NOT at all what people are saying. They're saying that glueing together 15 different UX paradigms into a program is not as intuitive as something designed before it was coded by people with expertise in exactly that. Design is real no matter how much you don't want it to be. This attitude is directly hurting open source software.
  
  Now you're just saying words.
  
  No. Importance of UX simply means advance users can customize their workflow while making it easy to use for casual users.
  Kinda like Krita or Blender. Both are not perfect, but the dev are working on it, together with the community.
  Even GIMP dev also working on that, they have GIMP UX issue tracker here: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/GIMP/Design/gimp-ux/
  "your program should look and behave exactly like this other program made by a corpo, because I've learned that one already"
  Oftentimes established workflow is already simple. There's no need to reinvent this from scratch. Example: Npainter and AzPainter are heavily inspired by PaintToolSAI. Inochi Creator is a clone (with unique feature) of Live2D Cubism.
  
  Ehhh flexibility is a good feature to have, but it's not a requirement for good UX. Good UX should work for both beginner and advanced users, whether you do that through a single UI, different presets, or customizable panels depends on the use case and features available. A good music player for example doesn't need a highly flexible UI to have good UX.
  If anything, a good UX should know what tools people use most and how the rest of the market does theirs to have something that's transferrable but also that works well with your feature set and brand vision
  
  Oftentimes established workflow is already simple
  Not in the example we're talking about though. Photoshop isn't simple, nothing in it is. And for the software that is, it doesn't mean you can't come up with the better UX. We shouldn't discourage people from trying to invent something better just because it isn't what we already have.
  
  I believe when majority of people saying "Photoshop has this, we should do this as well" are not actually saying GIMP should create a total carbon-copy.
  People loves easy to use interface, not carbon copy of Photoshop, even if they don't say that. They just don't know how to articulate their frustration better.
  When Affinity Photo emerges as actual Photoshop alternative, no one complains regarding "not being Photoshop clone" because the interface is actually easier than Photoshop, while still being advanced software.
  New GIMP user complaining about interface "not being Photoshop clone" is indicator that GIMP interface is not easy to use and intuitive enough.
  
  Great insight Nasi!!
  
  when majority of people saying “Photoshop has this, we should do this as well” are not actually saying GIMP should create a total carbon-copy
  And I see with my own eyes how some people are saying exactly that. Sometimes they wrap it into something like "photoshop is intuitive industry standard that takes zero seconds to learn and everyone is born with perfect understanding of it, and everything that isn't that is an affront to god and actively violates all my senses". I'm paraphrasing a bit.
  
  I think the difference is with their software you can play around the UI and figure out things by intuition and trial and error
  The same thing is not enough in FOSS in many cases. Like for ex, drawing solid shapes in GIMP
  
  For three years I worked teaching computers to adults, and for four years I was a system administrator/helpdesk for a big office.
  I can absolutely assure you, from my experience, there is nothing inheritly easier or harder to figure out in close source software vs foss, in windows vs linux, in gui vs console, in Photoshop vs Gimp.
  The only difference is, what did a person encountered before. The idea that you can give a person photoshop and they will draw you a sold shape, but you give the same person gimp and they will not be able to never stood up to my experience with probably thousands of people.
  
  I for one have never used Photoshop but I used to use Gimp occasionally for some semi-technical markup and annotation. I remember being baffled by how to make a hollow circle, as opposed to a solid one. I kept forgetting the process so I had to look it up every time. Nowadays I just use canva since I don't want to analyse menus and tool options every time. I don't have to use Photoshop to say that Gimp's UI can be better. Anyway, I also use Audacity extensively and although it's not as outstanding of a case as Gimp, the older versions were a pain, nowadays it's much better but still plenty to improve (I have not used other audio editing softwares)
  Then again I learn software by intuition and exploring menus (rarely I go to read the manual, as do majority of the people I imagine), if I was taught how to use it by someone like you, maybe things would be different, but I doubt that's how most people interact with software.
  
  Every editing software that I ever touched, no matter what it edits, images, video, audio, had me baffled about some of decisions, small and big. For my own sanity I just accepted it as a part of life, like a bad weather.
  
  There are definitely a lot of little things in gimp that make it hard. The lack of a shapetool is one(yes yes it's not a drawing app but a basic edition helps) and other things like adding text with a black outline or shadow. After literally decades they finally added in a way to make it easier to image macro text in. The old way involved several submenus and I know I couldnt figure it out on my own without a guide.
  I know sometimes people come into an opensource ecosystem and complain that everything is worse because they arent used to it, but at the same time there are a lot of open source programs that are very rough around the edges and the developer cant see it because they know the program inside and out so of course it's intuitive that this feature is burried in here and this feature way in there.
  
  no, we want the tried and tested workflow that works well for pros to use.
  take it as someone who used photoshop professionally in the past.
  
  That's what I mean. You used photoshop professionally, you are used to its interface, you want everything to have the same interface so you don't have to learn a new one. It's normal, we all are like that. The problems start when you try to hide it behind words like "intuitive", "industry standart", and "good for everyone"
  
  say what you will about adobe and you might be right, but photoshop was perfected over years for an efficient pro workflow, and the industry coalesced around how similar software works.
  to the point GIMP is not an effective tool. I would excuse them for trying to make it actually "intuitive", but as it stands, its neither "industry standard", nor "good for everyone".
  this is my point. wanna come up with something better? please do, but its not close.
  
  But that's like you know, your opinion, man.
  What Photoshop is, is a more feature-full app, that's fore sure, but all the claims of it being better at workflow only come from people who learned it already. It might be true, but it also could be Stockholm syndrome, there is no way to evaluate that, really. 20 years ago I was shit at coding, now I can do in an hour what I was able to do in a month back then. That's because C++ perfected its workflow, and for no other reasons.
  I am not a graphical guy, I only use Gimp for a number of limited uses, but I used it a lot for that, and I'm very efficient in what I do with it. If I open Photoshop, it will take me 20 times more time to do the same. But I know for a fact it's not because of some inherent beterness of one over the other.
  
  i used to literally use it for work. its not just my own opinion, and its slightly supported.
  of course the landscape could have changed in the meantime, but that was the consensus among professionals at the time. you couldn't send your delivery with anything other than a .psd, and gimp must have that success if we are to use it in lieau of other foss tools like krita at least.
  i want things to be better in that respect and i know gimp has the potential to disrupt the crappy status quo if it had a better ui.
  
  When are language models gonna be able to help there - a couple are doing such a good job regurgitating aesthetically acceptable draft web designs (stolen though they may be). They even figure out some logic along the way.
  Anybody know of any existing LLM-driven UX enhancement plans on any open-source projects?
  
  thats more a lack of people to do the things we need to be done problem, than some secret formula of how to make good UX.
  LLMs won't help here, we need an attitude shift away from excusing GIMP just because its FOSS, and the money to execute it.
  if the good folks at Blender did it, we can do it too if we really wanted to.
  
  Yep. I use Gimp, digiKam and Darktable for literally decades now. I am utterly lost on Adobe software.
  
  Valve sells all of its computers with Linux on it, no?
  
  They don't sell all-purpose computers, they sell gaming systems that run Linux underneath. The regular user never has to interact with the OS
  
  They also don't sell that many of them.
  Some quick googling says that Valve has sold nearly 4 million decks, which is pretty good.
  Lenovo sold ~62 million computers last year alone. And they only make up ~1/4 of global market share
  
  I guess all valve has to do is release steam machines again and then what? Suddenly the year of the Linux desktop isn't here?
  
  We're talking about regular users having Linux as their operation system, not what happens under the hood of specialised machines. Steam machine user doesn't run Linux, they run Steam.
  
  They don't run Windows they run Explorer.
  Linux is a kernel. They run Linux.
  Or do you mean "they don't run KDE/Gnome/LXDE"?
  
  What I mean, they don't interact with the OS. They only interact with Steam app, and it basically doesn't matter what it runs underneath. When we're talking about users adopting Linux it doesn't count.
  
  That sounds like the majority of users. I'm trying to think of how many times I needed to "use Linux".
  I interact with Firefox, IntelliJ, and a few other applications and IntelliJ hides all of the CLI so I don't have to know git, and I don't have to know where my files are.
  My mother wouldn't know how to install a driver in Windows, or even how to navigate to a file in Explorer. Does that mean she isn't a Windows user?
  I think you are being overly pessimistic about what counts as a user.
  
  It's not like you are or aren't interacting with the OS, it's more about how easily can you do it if you need one. The distinction is, is it a general purpose personal computer, or a single purpose device. You can use general purpose one to only run one app 99% of the time, but it's a general purpose personal computer you're using.
  Like, if you use automatic terminal at a fast food restraunt, you actually are using a computer with probably Windows on it, which runs Chrome in headless mode, that runs a web app. But you wouldn't call yourself a Windows user, even if you do it twice a day. Even if you know how to make the webapp crash and show you the desktop. That's my point of distinction.
  
  Ah you're right, it just cannot happen with a steam machine.
  
  The year of of the Linux happened long ago. However we fail to recognize it, because wasn't exactly what we were expecting. Most super computer is TOP500 as well as servers and majority of portable devices in the world are powered by the Linux kernel.
  If the definition of Year of Linux was based on having astonishing UX then, this is probably something that will never happen.
  
  We're talking about home computers, regular users running their personal OS.
- Nonesense. There is no easier to use and more functional desktop with great user experience than Linux. Been that way a long time. People are just used to poor UX and want more of it.
  Edit: I would love to hear from the downvoters how windows, with its constantly changing interface, ads, poor file manager and poorly thought out workflow design is somehow better than linux. And stick with win 11 as that is the standard now.
  As for Mac, talk about confusing. Where are your files? What is happening at full screen, what menu is doing what? I will say macs are great when you get used it, especially if you use keyboard shortcuts.
  More downvotes for the truth. I have taken people who have barely used a computer before and tried them on Linux or windows. Windows is always a mess and does things in unsuspected ways or is missing a basic feature.
  Linux works just fine, and out of the box from any current distro the environments are pretty much ready to go. That is just the truth.
  
  I've used MacOS for about 20 years, and it's a shit show. But...
  Where are your files?
  They are in my user folder, same as every other OS. I can see them all in Finder. Root is hidden, but that's options "tick box to display disks".
  What is happening at full screen
  So what you would consider maximise is "move to new dedicated virtual desktop", but you can also cmd+click maximise, drag to the top to traditional maximise or left/right for half screen.
  I will say macs are great when you get used it, especially if you use keyboard shortcuts.
  I'd say the opposite. How do I move this window to the next desktop using shortcut keys? You have to display desktops and then drag or to the desktop you want. No real shortcut for a basic feature.
  Emoji picker also seems to be broken, so when adding something on a chat I have to navigate with keyboard because clicking on the emoji I want works about 50% of the time, they rest of the time it just closes the window.
  
  There is no easier to use and more functional desktop with great user experience than Linux.
  Ignoring the fact that you make it sound like Linux has a single unified desktop experience...
  I'd love to hear your reason for thinking that. I'm a Linux fanboy and even I'm smelling the bullshit.
  
  True. But each of them are more or less polished enough for any user.
  I mean pick one.
  Give me the argument that this isn't true.
- Naaah, it's just companies like Adobe, Autodesk and Microsoft shitting on Linux users each time they can.
- Lol

233 comments