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/
“your program should look and behave exactly like this other program made by a corpo, because I’ve learned that one already”
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.
Oftentimes established workflow is already simple
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.
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
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.
dude if your ui is unusable you’re gonna hear about it.
you can’t make an open source car that has two joysticks instead of a steering wheel and talk about industry standards and vendor lock ins when people say it sucks.
I mean it’s cool that it exists for non drivers who sometimes want to jump on an open source car for a quick trip but if driving is your job then the joysticks being technically functional won’t cut it.
that doesn’t mean you have to copy everything 1:1, if people are looking for alternatives one reason might be that not everything about the standard car is great. affinity has some great differences in tools but they’re designed in a way that makes sense to pro users.
I’ve said this before but there’s a severe lack of designers in the open source space. there should be a platform that enables designers to relatively easily contribute to open source projects without learning git or whatever the fuck.
Open source software design sucks because they don’t have desginers (who know git) because they can’t attract designers (who know git) because they don’t have money (free and open source) because they don’t have big userbase (which can lead to more people donating) because oss software design sucks.
