Why the BAD design of WINDOWS hurts LINUX desktops

I'm a Linux user and I haven't used Windows as a daily driver in more than five years which means that when I look at it I look at it with the eyes of someone who's not used to it anymore and when you're in that situation you can't help but notice all the ux and architecture problems of that operating system so today I'll go over the reasons why Windows ux is bad and why unfortunately it also impacts the Linux desktop in a negative way unlike our sponsor which impacts your internet connection in a very positive way this video is sponsored by savings portmaster portmaster is an all-in-one tool to easily take your privacy to the next level and it's a tool I use myself on all of my Linux devices portmaster lets you automatically block all trackers and malware in every application you run on your computer not just your web browser but everything you run it's easy to use with defaults already in place that lets you just set it and forget it but if you like to configure every Rule and every 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occupies a small corner of your screen is not great you get less space you get smaller icons harder to aim for and you have to focus on a very specific small part of your display it made sense when display resolutions were pretty low the menu occupied a sizable space nowadays that's not the case anymore and this applies to Old traditional menus that follow the window style and I know a lot of people will disagree with this and that's fine ux is not a completely objective perfect science it's a set of principles and everyone interprets them in their own specific way but for real there is no reason to have your menu and your apps in such a small corner of your screen when you're not going to do anything else with your screen or your computer while you try to open an app the reality of things is that people are now just used to it most people have used such a menu for a long time now and so moving to something else is very difficult because they have years or Decades of muscle memory to forget and that muscle memory is hurt badly in Windows 11. the centered menu is a disaster the first problem is that it moves around it's never in the same reliable position as you open apps it shifts to the left which means you always have to aim for it but you can just press the Windows key to open it though yes you can and in that case it actually makes more sense than the traditional Windows menu in the bottom left corner because opening in the center of the screen doesn't generally force you to move your eyes too much to read what just opened they will naturally be looking at the center of the screen where most of your content already is which makes the windows 11 menu better for people who use the windows key but worse for people who use a mouse and once that menu is open it's just a bad launcher on Windows 11 you can pin apps to the menu to start them faster and that works well but the all apps view to start something you haven't pinned it's a nightmare there's no organization at all apps are sorted willy-nilly and you can't create any folder that you could build muscle memory upon and then there's the use case of opening multiple apps in a row with the windows menu you need to open it as many times as the number of apps you want to launch if it's just one that's fine if it's more it gets annoying compare this to gnome's app launcher sure it requires two key presses to open it you press the Windows key twice or Supra plus a and you can remap that but once you're here you have the ability to reorganize apps in whatever order you want to make folders and thus build muscle memory and you can open multiple apps from that view by just dragging them to the virtual desktop of your choice so you can get your work session started by opening this grid just once so if you don't use the keyboard to type the name of the app you want to launch and then press enter the windows menu Paradigm is just bad and if you do use the keyboard it works but it's still less efficient than having a middle of the screen launcher that is centered horizontally and vertically but people are so used to it by now that solutions that seem more efficient actually feel worse to users the issue is this bad menu design affects Linux desktops because Linux is the underdog on personal computers it's got a fraction of the market share of Windows and so most people who would use Linux come from Windows and as such many distributions or desktops don't want them to run away because their system would be totally unfamiliar which is why most Linux desktops have moved two-way Windows like menu xfce KDE lxq or lxde cinnamon they all use a Windows style menu at that point only gnome and gnome 2 inspired desktops have moved away from that launcher start menu Paradigm in Chrome you have got the app grids and in mate for example which is based on gnome 2 you've got a three menu design which I would argue is also not super efficient but way better than the general integrated menu and whether these desktops use this kind of menu because they're more familiar for Windows users or because the desktop developers prefer them the reality is they're really here because people got used to them no matter how inefficient they can be the next issue is the massively disjointed Windows interface and yes this also affects Linux desktops we all know about this Windows core apps that ship with the OS don't seem to share a design language Windows keeps backwards compatibility as much as they can which is not a bad thing but it means every new version just adds a bit of lipstick over a program that has nothing in common anymore with the rest of the system that's why you have duplicates like the control panel and the new Settings app with two completely different user interfaces same goes for system utilities for the file explorer and text editor the title bars are varying height the buttons of varying Styles the menu bars in some apps but not all of them it's a giant mess of old stuff repainted to look like the new stuff and you can put a goat in a tuxedo it's still going to be a goat and I'm not saying goat as in Windows is the goat I'm talking goat like the animal that's got a Simulator game the real problem with this mismatched interface is that people are now completely used to it it's been a Windows thing since the Windows Vista days which means a lot of people coming to Linux have no issue using a completely disjointed system and the problem it creates for Linux is that UI or ux in general is generally not considered very highly by people who work on our desktops or applications because if your users don't care why should you and we can see that with efforts to unify design languages in various desktops on gnome libid Vita is that effort and it works gnome apps look more like a coherent Suite than any other desktop has ever managed but a lot of users don't like libid Vita because liberta makes it harder to theme your apps and it doesn't matter if theming your applications broke them all the time because users are are so used to using a disjointed Windows operating system that they might actually prefer using half broken apps that are themed than a fully coherent nice looking desktop that can't be themed next let's look at how apps are installed on the system on Windows while the store is progressively getting better the main way to install a program is still to head over to its website download an executable and run it then click next a few times pick a location and let the program install itself the files are stored in a single folder usually with all the libraries the program needs and the program itself in its own directory structure that varies from program to program some go into program files some go into programs the user data is stored willy-nilly in any directory the developer thought was cool at the time and the libraries are either there or stored somewhere else there's no coherency and this is a bad design First for security reasons storing executables and libraries and data in a single folder is a Surefire way to have badly set permissions on these files that would let attackers modify whatever they want or stuff they shouldn't be second it makes finding the files you're looking for difficult you need to learn each program's directory structure and look online to find where the data is stored and this bad design on Windows does affect Linux negatively because to this day I still get users that will tell me it's easier to install a program on Windows than on Linux seriously for some people it's apparently easier to open a web browser to type the name of the program to click on the legitimate website find the download button click it wait for the download to end then open that file go through the installer with its 2 to 5 to 10 steps and then delete the installer file compared to opening the App Store typing the program name clicking on it clicking install and you're done there's no comparison here even adding a repo if the app isn't available out of the box is easier than downloading an installer you literally copy paste a URL but the reality is that a lot of people don't understand how to install programs on Linux because it's different they're so used to downloading them manually that they try to replicate this and get super confused because they downloaded a dab when they use Fedora or they downloaded an app image on Ubuntu which doesn't run these out of the box it basically confronts newcomers with the huge diversity of packaging formats on Linux which they should not have to care about because the default way the simple way with the graphical app store is easier and simpler than what they know but this pre-existing knowledge makes their Linux experience worse and a lot of newcomers to Linux just don't understand where the files or program users live because they're used to having them lumped into a single directory so when they want to access one of the program's files they look for a folder named like the app itself which might or might not exist on Linux and if it does probably won't have of what they're looking for and the better way to look at it is what type of file am I looking for if it's a library it's stored with the other libraries if it's a config file it's with the other config files if it's an executable it's generally with the other executables and your user data is always in a hidden folder in your slash home directory you have to learn One Directory structure for the OS not one per program now it's no secret that system updates are dreaded by a lot of Windows users just looking at the recent streak of Windows updates surfaces so many problems taskbar not Auto hiding anymore file explorer crashes or even just updates failing to apply or adding so-called features that you never asked for like ads for a Microsoft account or office or adding a weather widget an AI powered search field or even forcing a reboot while you're trying to work Windows updates have always been problematic super slow to install they require a reboot in most cases and they can make your system worse than it was so it's no wonder that many users are wary of these I mean if each the possibility of breaking my system I would be scared too but thankfully I don't run art Windows app updates are also handled separately from system updates Windows store apps update through the store and apps that don't come from the store each have their own update mechanism or don't have built-in updators at all this is bad design on Linux system updates just work sure I'm not going to pretend that each update is extremely smooth and creates no issues that's not the case but you apply them when you want they apply to all your apps and all your system from the same place they are very fast to install and in a lot of cases they don't require a reboot this way of handling updates is better than on Windows and still people moving from Windows to Linux will keep this fear of updating their apps or their system because it's been drilled into their heads that system updates make your system worse and let's not even talk about major version upgrades which always are a nightmare on Windows and this negatively Linux desktops because you'll get plenty of people who don't apply their updates and then ask for help about a bug that's been fixed already or who stick to insecure software that has patches available it makes the work of maintainers and developers harder and this brings us to the conclusion the bad design of Windows makes Linux desktops worse because Windows is the most used desktop OS in the world so most users that might come to Linux come from Windows if they are developers they might bring their habits with them and develop things that follow the convention Windows established whether they're good or bad if they are users they will expect things to work like they're used to because it's the only thing they know and so developers tend to cater to that and try and make a system that can be used by the bigger number of potential new users which is absolutely not a bad thing I mean at some point if everybody is used to a certain way of doing thing even if it's not the most efficient you might as well keep it because anything else will turn into a bad user experience for these users in terms of ux as someone who has worked in that field for more than a decade gnome as it is today is much more Intel Legend than Windows if you live in a vacuum and no one is used to anything else but since people got used to the Jank and the bad ux of Windows all efforts that stray too far from it are considered unusable and this inherently limits where we can go with our Linux desktops because if we always adapt to the lowest common denominator then will always be perceived as a cheap Windows clone something today's sponsor can be accused of because if you're looking for a laptop and you plan to run Linux on it tuxedo is your guy I left a link to their store in the description below they make laptops and desktops that run Linux out of the box they are based in Germany but they ship to most countries in the world and they have a huge selection of devices from the affordable laptops to the giant gaming towers and everything in between every device is super configurable when you purchase it you can change the CPU the ram the ssds you can pick between various GPU use you can even have your own logo engraved on the lid or choose your own custom keyboard layout and all their laptops are openable repairable and upgradable so if you need a new computer and you're planning to run Linux on it stop buying Windows devices buy something that runs Linux from Tuxedo in the link in the description below so thanks everyone for watching the video I hope you enjoyed it if you did don't hesitate to like to subscribe to turn on notifications and to write a comment and if you didn't which is also very likely because I basically attacked the whole menu concept well dislike it and tell me why in the comments as well and if you really enjoy the channel and you want to support it well there are plenty of links in the description below as well for patreon Libra pay PayPal YouTube memberships YouTube thanks you know the dream so thanks everyone for watching and I guess you'll see me in the next one bye [Music] thanks [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: The Linux Experiment

Views: 172,329

Keywords: linux, open source, distribution, linux distro, linux help, linux tutorial, linux 2023, opensource, linux tips, linux for beginners 2023, linux tutorial 2023, linux vs windows, windows bad, why is windows so bad, windows ui evolution, windows ui design, linux design principles, linux ui design, linux vs windows 11, linux vs windows 10, linux vs windows battery life, linux vs windows meme, linux vs windows 11 gaming, linux vs windows speed test, linux vs windows performance

Id: GkxAp2Gh7-E

Length: 17min 57sec (1077 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2023