Liuw's Thinkpad

It’s SUNDAY! Time for ranting!

It may seem weired that I rant in English — anyway I’m not a native English speaker and the best rant always comes from one’s mother tongue. BUT there is no Chinese input method on this system, so I have to writing this down in English.

You can bet I’m on Linux now, yes, you’re right. I’m playing with Fedora 16 in a live USB key. The default desktop is Gnome 3 — another disaster for a long time Gnome 2 user. It seems that the Unity-like UI is getting more and more popular. Well, I can adapt myself to new UI. However, PLEASE do better design. The new UI is driving both ordinary users and developers (who use Linux as developing platform) away IMHO.

For new users / Linux noobs: Configuration ability is very weak — look at those few icons in the control panel. What’s worse, the default style of the desktop sucks — large portion of my screen is occupied by useless window frame and menu (take firefox as an example). I wish I could tweak font size to make it not so ugly, but I just can’t find a tool to do that. This will eventually lead to comments like “Linux is ugly and difficult to use”.

For developers: How can I tweak this system? I need my menu back! Those visual effects are good, but they don’t add up productivity. Grouping appications is a good move, but the big icons scattering all over the screen makes me feel bad. Searching applications? That works on the basis that your application shows up in the groups. In a word, they are not helping at all. My observation is that few of my friend (low level) developers will use either Unity or Gnome 3.

Well, some other suggestions include switching to Arch or Gentoo. But I’m not very into those two distros. My principle is “buzheteng”. I would rather focus on my job. I’m really tired of writing configurations line by line with my bare hands. I need a out-of-the-box distro.

How about switching to other desktop environment? KDE? No, I had very bad experience long time ago which effectively shadows me nowadays. LXDE and XFCE? They are just too light-weighted, I need full featured desktop.

Linux desktop is evolving, that’s good. I’m just too out-dated to catch up with its pace. I can not appreciate the new changes due to my out-dated tastes. I’m considering buying a Macbook now, seriously.

UPDATED:
To my surprise, KDE works much better than Gnome 3 for me. The UI is smoother than I expected. But (well, there is always a “but”) the concept of “activity” is driving me mad (What? I need to switch “desktop icons” activity to view my icons? Then switch back to “desktop” activity to see my applications?). Grouping applications is one thing, grouping activities is another. I don’t like the idea of switching among different activities just to separate what you’re doing, I would rather use different workspaces to achieve the same goal.

本来这个时候我应该在写论文，但是我还是忍不住吐槽一下：我觉得Google Group真是挺奇葩的一个产品。

好话先说在前头：Google大公无私，给大家免费做论坛，免费做邮件列表，让大家在互联网上的每一个错别字，每一句吐槽都（有可能）永世长存，真是了不得。这个精神我是很赞许的。

但是，我不爽的地方就是，Google Group是一个论坛和邮件列表结合的怪胎。我相信国内很多技术人员都是从论坛起步的，所以基本上都是把Group当成论坛用（即是在网页上回复），但是这样对于我这种把Group当成邮件列表来用的人来说就比较痛苦了。

这不是大家的问题，而是Group这个产品具有双重的定位。你说是应该使用邮件列表的标准管理还是论坛的标准管理？这是一个众口难调的问题。

要是按照邮件列表的标准管理，那么就有一些基本要求:

• 限制主题。这个自然不用多说。一些话题比较泛的Group，至少也要有对应的前缀要求（如OT）。
• 减少无意义的发言（比如说“多谢”、“顶”之类的在论坛中的习惯）。因为每一封邮件都是实实在在发到订阅者的邮箱中的，是会占用空间的。假如一个列表订阅人数众多的话，这些邮件就会占用很多空间，不够低碳。
• 注重线索化。只回复想要回复的邮件，而不是每次都在最后回复。随意回复造成邮件客户端线索是乱的，没办法看。这个问题在Gmail和Group的Web界面中不明显，但是对客户端是一个灾难。

就我看过的比较有限的几个中文技术相关Group来看，管理上还是比较“随意”的。当然这些Group的话题都是比较广泛的，要是以一些开源软件的development列表的要求去管理也不合适，我相信管理员也是很努力去管理。但是由于Group产品的先天定位，管理起来着实费力吧。

我每次看到一些邮件就觉得心里拔凉拔凉的，比如说：

• “收集了XXX资料”——用论坛模式看，有sticky操作，但是邮件是不行的。
• 带图或者其他一些不小的附件的邮件——再次强调不低碳啊。
• “谢谢”“顶”——前面解释了。
• 用html格式发出的邮件——个人爱好问题，但是就我经验来看，这种邮件基本上会把格式搞得乱七八糟。
• “XXX想邀请你聊天”等等的有意无意的SPAM。

好吧，那我用论坛模式玩不就没有问题了吗？不好意思，不是我死板，而是我实在没有精力每天都去开这么多网页慢慢找有什么更新，以及这些更新中有什么是我感兴趣的内容。邮件可以用filter分类，排除不少干扰。

Group的论坛模式降低了大家交流的门槛，还是很好的。但是鱼与熊掌不可兼得。人微言轻，我想我还是老老实实潜水吧。