From: Karl Kurbjun <kkurbjun_at_gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:02:12 -0600

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 6:47 PM, Jonas Häggqvist <rasher_at_rasher.dk> wrote:

> Jonathan Gordon wrote:
> >
>
> Put simply, my take on this issue is that I want more GNOME, and less KDE
> mentality. I may use 30 out of 200 settings. Now if we say that was cut in
> half, to 100 available settings, I might lose 10 settings. Would I miss
> them? Probably at first, but in my experience (from using GNOME through
> the slimming down of options), I'd quickly forget that I ever needed it,
> and frankly, taking away some choices from has made me focus less on the
> environment, and more on doing actual work.
>
> It seems, though that Rockbox developers, on average have more of a
> KDE-style mindset.
>
> --
> Jonas Häggqvist
> rasher(at)rasher(dot)dk
>

I completely agree with Jonas. I think that there is too much focus on what
can be customized rather than basic usability. Making /sane/ defaults for
users is not such a bad thing.

I do think though that gnome does a good job of having quite a bit of
flexibility for power users that want to dive into gconf which leads to
cause for having a separate plugin or application for "advanced" settings
beyond the basic options. I think it is an excellent compromise between
simplicity and power.

The biggest complaint that I hear on Rockbox from non-techies is the
usability; adding more settings does not solve the problem.
Received on 2008-10-28