Make. It. Simple. Linux Desktop Usability

I don&#x27;t like the macOS-style global menu, it gets confusing when you have multiple windows open on the screen. But I do agree that a menubar is a great option for a lot of applications.<p>That being said there are also a lot of applications where the menu is used rarely enough that exposing the first level of menus isn&#x27;t worth the screen space. In this case I think a hamburger menu is fine. For example in Firefox I rarely use the menu. Most things I do are keyboard shortcuts, or the couple of things I have moved to the toolbar. And I often wish I could see more at the same time. I think the main issue with Firefox is that the menu is basically impossible for a new user to find. I believe the only ways to bring it up (on Linux at least) is tapping Alt or Alt-&lt;m&gt; where m is a mnemonic that you would have needed to see the menu before to know. I guess this is their way of slowing killing it off in favour of their hamburger menu, but I find the hamburger menu has way less options and is way harder to browse. It feels more like a place for frequent options rather than a full menu. As much hate as there is for 3-level menus the actual browsing UX was quite good.

Does anyone know what&#x27;s going on at Gnome? It seems they prefer the 1% of computer illiterates above the 99% professionals who might actually use Linux. I&#x27;ve never heard anyone except gnome designers say anything positive about the dumbification of the UI, yet every version gets worse. Have they some research showing some kind of advantage for someone?

&gt; Is there a secret plan to cripple the desktop experience by infecting it with less suitable UX concepts invented for mobile phones?<p>Maybe not a secret plan, but MS sure seems focused on making sure no one understands how to use the local file system.

I concure. XFCE gets the job done and gets out of your way. decade. Don&#x27;t care about fancy 3d animations. Happy user for close to a decade.

Where did the ribbon come from? Office is basically one of the 2 or 3 pillars that drives MS Earnings. On what basis of research did it come from? I hate it too.<p>The fashion in UI is so horrible. Since Windows 95 I&#x27;ve basically watched UI fashion as pure churn for change&#x27;s sake, to the detriment of all users.<p>Computer UI needs a cultural foundation, so software can be usable by many many generations.<p>But with the state of desktop OSes, with OSX in an increasingly walled fortress, Windows still doing the horrible dual-desktop with tiles and other insanities, and Linux just... failing, we regressed it seems around 2005-2010 and now nothing will fix the sad state of affairs.

I find very disturbing that not mentions KDE&#x2F;Plasma even when it had global menus since eons. Plus it&#x27;s the only DE that allow to have a global menu plus a hamburger menu on the window title.

I don&#x27;t really like this kind of inflammatory article. It usually starts from the premise &quot;My UX preferences are universal and whatever tradeoffs the developers are trying to optimize are irrelevant because they should focus on X Y and Z instead&quot;, and expands from there.<p>I used to re-enable the menu bar in Firefox and Atom all the time, until I realized I never used 95% of it and the remaining 5% could be accessed from elsewhere, saving me some vertical space.<p>I don&#x27;t like having a menu bar on top. I prefer the Windows-style UX with all the OS widgets and windows list tucked in a bottom bar. (I tolerate the top bar in Pop Shell because its great tile management means I don&#x27;t need to use the mouse too much for navigating).<p>I do agree with the author&#x27;s point about discoverability, though. There&#x27;s a lot of room to improve there.

Really interesting article. I&#x27;ve read the first two in the series and was eating it up. It&#x27;s also nice to see more criticism about visual design on Linux desktops instead of worrying about the underpinnings.

Unity had many of these done right. My favorite de of all time.

Please MS, give us your Lindows! Modern Linux with the win2k pro DE.<p>ps. I know of the original Lindows :D. pps. q4os w&#x2F;Trinity DE is really close

I&#x27;m so glad Apple has kept the Mac the Mac and not succumb to the UI craziness that is plaguing other operating systems.<p>There&#x27;s a menu bar at the top of the screen with, ya know, menus. Applications can have one, more than one, or ZERO windows open. UI conventions, keyboard shortcuts, etc are consistent.

Linux Mint is #3 on distro watch, ahead of all but MX Linux and Manjaro so I guess quite a few people,mostly developers, can tolerate its desktop.

(2017)