this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2025
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Downplaying the importance of UX is one of the reasons the year of the Linux desktop still has not arrived.
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)
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/
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.
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!!
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.
That's why I said "majority of people."
There's always small group of people that prefer certain software and refuse to change, they might even hate when the software gets updated. Heck, some people even still use obsolete creative softwares despite the development company is dead for almost 20 years.
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
I'm talking flexible UI as relative to Clip Studio Paint.
The software is now an industry standard for manga, webtoon, 2D animation, and general ACG-related illustration in Asia. It was so good that there's no other alternative that have it. Not even Photoshop or Krita.
I read that Krita dev also agree that it will be nice to have it.
There's a ton of unique workflow only be possible with it.
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.
I guessed that, and that was the point of my comment. It's impossible to tell, do you and your fellow professionals like it better, or did you just got used to it so much and don't want to learn a new one. It's not impossible to imagine - because it happens frequently - that there is an app with measurably better UI, that people don't want to adopt. I'm not saying Gimp is that, personally I think all of them are terrible, all in their own unique way, and I don't know if it's possible to make a good one for this application.
When I worked as a sysadmin, I saw this happening all the fucking time. Hundreds of people prefer doing something in 50 clicks instead of using a new app that allows doing the same in 10, because previous way is ingrained in their muscle memory, and they absolutely, positively convinced that the old way is strictly unmistakably better, and they would fight me with deadly force so they could retain their old ways.
After that, I really don't believe in people's objectivity when it comes to that. I don't think people can tell what is "better UI".
Yep. I use Gimp, digiKam and Darktable for literally decades now. I am utterly lost on Adobe software.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 doesnβt need empty files
Also
Whatβs the issue with this
Out of touch.
Mmb to paste is a simple, easy to understand option that is a simple preference that some people might like. But it's locked away for no reason. It served as an example on how out of touch gnome philosophy is.
Did you just seriously say the average user doesn't need to make empty files?
When do they?
At the lowest they are making text files
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.
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.
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
Lol