Piestar

First they had proprietary drivers, bioses and hardware, then proprietary browser plugins (Flash etc) and now celebrations that Steam looks like it might, maybe, possibly, sometime in the future be available on Linux.  Add on the fact that you constantly get calls for Photoshop to be made available for Linux and it leaves me wondering what the point in even running Linux is?

You get the Linux zealots ranting about freedom constantly but if your freedom is becoming a more and more narrow slice out of a stack then, really, why bother?  If you put down more money in a weekend on Steam than the cost of a Windows license then all the claims of ‘freedom’ (both kinds) simply evaporate.

Also once you remove the ‘ethical’ and ‘freedom’ arguments from the table that form the main thrust of the pro-Linux argument it leaves virtually no compelling reasons to actually use it.  An unstable system with constant breakages and regressions in it’s aim to stay ‘free’, yet running proprietary, locked down, drm infested apps.  The worst of both worlds!

On a side note Steam for Mac is out now and if you register (or even sign in) you’ll get a free copy of Portal (and I think it applies to Windows users too), which is exactly the sort of game the FOSS crowd should be making (innovative, polished, clever) rather than knocking out Quake 3 clones repeatedly.  I guess being able to work full time on something rather than occasional unpaid evenings and weekends does produce better results.  Who’d a thunk it?

Edit, lol:

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Here we go again.  Another 6 months, another ‘revolution’ in Linux usability.  I am tempted to take a photo of myself now and submit it to the Wikipedia article for ‘underwhelmed’ as it would make a perfect example of the state.  It’s amazing how the FOSS community like to mock Windows 7 as ‘Vista SP2′, conveniently ignoring the fact that no less than six releases of Ubuntu were made in the same time frame it took to go from Vista to 7.

As a developer I believe in two main approaches to software development – solving problems at the correct level and keeping things as modular as possible.  If you wanted a new fuzzy dice for your car you wouldn’t replace the mirror, or the windscreen.  If you wanted a new chopping board in your kitchen you wouldn’t replace the sink.  So why, when looking at the change notes for Lucid does it appear to be almost entirely of things that have absolutely nothing to do with the OS?  You hear the FOSS brigade freak out that MS dares integrate a browser into it’s OS yet what amounts to a bunch of applications is somehow core to a whole new OS.  I can get DirectX not getting backported to XP and while a bit of a dick move it’s understandable, being a core system API.  But a music store?  A software store?  A new theme?  Is there anything here that actually warrants a new install?  And of course with every episode of the BiannualForcedDeathMarch™ they manage to break stuff that used to work.  There is a very good reason every sane developer uses a (preferrably well documented) API to communicate between modules – and is one of the reasons for the rise of OOP.  This problem has been solved long ago – can someone please tell them that?  If things randomly stop working each minor revision that is a serious problem that needs to be addressed.  It is not – and should not – be the status quo and is a waste of everyone’s time.

And lets face it it really is lipstick on a pig.  I covered this over a year ago and the substance of my argument dates back much further than that.  It’s still crappy Gnome, you still have to manually unlock, move and re-lock each and every item to move things about (global lock is for pussies apparently), it’s still Windows 95 split onto two bars.  I mean not only have you copied a UI that is nearly 15 years old you’ve actually managed to make it worse.  Amazing!  Check out the screenshot for yourself comparing Lucid to Windows 98 after spending 5 minutes rearranging things and if you still think it is somehow different or innovative then you are seriously deluding yourself.

The same crappy bugs have still not been fixed – you can’t actually access the help on any game starting with a K – you’d think since this has been an issue for two years that it would be fixed, but no (see screenshot).  Alignment issues are everywhere as usual and guess what, the new fantastic ‘left hand side’ window controls are on the left, but not entirely on the left, thus handily defeating Fitt’s Law once you have sacked off the top bar.  Genius.

So in summary it’s the same as before (and it always has been) – Windows 95 tarted up a little bit with a few more programs installed and a whole load of stuff broken.  If you think Ubuntu is fantastic, you’ll probably like 10.04.  If you don’t then there is absolutely nothing new here.

*snore*

P.S. I want to punch who came up with that tooltip thing that appears everywhere and states the obvious while covering up whatever you are looking for.  Usability is about making things intuitive, but typical to FOSS fashion they approach it by throwing documentation at it, albeit Twitter style.

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