Topic: The 7 Irritations of GNOME and KDE

[sam]

Life in an Olympics-occupied city has left me grumpy. Ordinarily, I'm a tolerably contented desktop user, spending about three-quarters of my time in KDE and the rest in GNOME, with occasional forays into other desktops. But in the last two weeks, I've been noticing irritations in every interface I've used.

I'm not talking, you understand, about new features that annoy simply because they are unfamiliar. I'm always curious about innovations -- even failed ones -- and I know that some can take a while to appreciate. For instance, KDE's Folder View, which initially seemed a needless complication, now seems to be a structure that allows greater flexibility and customization. I suspect I will have the same sequence of reactions about GNOME-Shell when GNOME 3.0 gets released.

Instead, I'm talking about inconsistencies in the interface, design elements that are awkward or reduce users' abilities to customize their desktops. These irritations range from the minor to the major, and exist equally in both KDE and GNOME. Probably, some will always be present unless I have the chance to design my own desktop.

http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/7000/1/