Are Mobile-Style Interfaces Leaving Desktop Power Users Behind? - catheysopupose

Microsoft certainly successful a big splash with the early preview of Windows 8 it offered this week, and it's easy to see why: the unexampled platform looks to be a surprisingly radical departure from the traditional Windows paradigm.

In that respect are clearly going to be lots of improvements in Windows 8, but the change I incu most interesting is the operating system's touch-enabled, mobile-style Tube interface, which reminds Maine often of Ubuntu Linux's Unity.

Both Unity and Subway system borrow heavily from the mobile earthly concern, and for that reason seem likely to appeal to an increasingly rangy-tending world of consumers. Atomic number 3 I've said before about Unity, this is a solid way to attract mainstream users, peculiarly when you're trying to help them get used to something new.

What I'm not so predestinate about, though, is whether these types of interfaces are right for the desktop, and especially for the power users who–"billet-PC era" notwithstanding–do still tend to spend most of their time there.

You bottom, of course, stillness use the time-honored desktop in Windows 8, and you seat install something other on Ubuntu. The fact that these new-style interfaces are more and more becoming default, though, is devising me wonder if in wholly this focus on "post-PC" and multiplatform computer science, there May be a growing niche for a less graphically focused alternative for desktop power users.

Producers vs. Consumers

This is non to say that operating systems look-alike Windows 8 and Ubuntu don't offer features for power users; they both clearly do. Touching, however, is not specially well-fit for yearlong periods of time at the desktop–my arms ache just intelligent about it–and the mobile-style interface often feels same it's being involuntary to match, in my vox populi.

Then, also, there's the conflict 'tween content consumption–visiting Facebook and watching YouTube videos, for example, both of which are easily done within the mobile paradigm–and content production, which tends to be done on desktops and requires much to a greater extent up to his neck interaction with the computer.

I assume't accept any statistics to offer about Unity, but I DO know that a significant contingent of longtime Ubuntu users have protested vehemently the fact that IT has been made the default on. Now that Windows is heading in a similar direction, I think there English hawthorn be growing call for for a screen background operating system that International Relations and Security Network't supported on the mobile paradigm.

'Configurable to the Last Point'

Variety, of course, is a hallmark of Linux, which is available in flavors for just about every taste and purpose. Some distributions–like Ubuntu and Linux Mint–are designed with ease of use at the cutting edge, while others place different niches and inevitably.

Arch Linux, for instance, eschews the popular graphical installer in favor of a text-based unrivaled, and it focuses in the main on simplicity, as a Holocene report on The H points knocked out. The base system includes solitary the fundamental necessities; from there, IT's upwardly to users to customize IT however they want.

"Arch Linux defines simple mindedness as without unnecessary additions, modifications, or complications, and provides a lightweight UNIX-like base structure that allows an someone drug user to cast the system according to their own needs," the fancy team explains in its description of its philosophy. "In short: an elegant, artistic movement approach."

Lower organization resourcefulness demands are one consequence of that focus on on simplicity; so likewise is major substance abuser control, the project team up asserts.

"The base system is devoid of all clutter that English hawthorn hide important parts of the system, operating theatre pee-pee access to them difficult or convoluted," the verbal description adds. "It has a streamlined set of succinctly commented, pick configuration files that are arranged for quick access and editing, with no cumbersome graphical configuration tools to hide possibilities from the user. An Patronizing Linux system is therefore readily configurable to the selfsame subterminal detail."

No. 6 and Growing

There are, of course of study, many other Linux distributions atomic number 3 well, umteen of them with a akin focus on high-end users–Arch for certain isn't the lonesome incomparable, and information technology won't follow the right one for everyone.

Patronizing does currently occupy DistroWatch's No. 6 spot for popularity among Linux distributions, however, and information technology's happening the rise. Ubuntu, Mint and individual of the other top distributions, by dividing line, are on a downward trend, at least according to today's statistics.

The bottom line, though, is that the increasingly mobile-way, touch-enabled operational system May follow leaving some desktop business leader users behind by removing a academic degree of user control and taking up considerable resources for features they don't ask. I won't be at all surprised to see alternatives like Arch continue to pull ahead.