Open Source Amiga OS

[Manu]

Well, a reimplementation of the API anyway.
And after all that trouble, what would you have?
An open source variant of an OS over two decades old?
Doesn't sound all that usefull.

What wrong with using the closed source version that makes you interested in this idea.

What's wrong with having it open sourced so people interested can join easily? There's no
BIG money to make in the "Amiga" OS business anyways.

Also AROS isn't just two decades old, there's lots of new stuff there too. So it's as useful as any of the three AmigaOS 3.1 clones.

[Manu]

Hahaha, you don't know freetards do you.

What do you mean exactly?

[Manu]

Inskcape and Gimp, Blender is very cool programs. Takes a few turns to master them, especially Blender but complaining about UI's is like complaining about other peoples rugs. They might look awkward to you at first, but have another look at them and you may start to like them.

[Manu]

No. Just no. Blender is insane, though at least they're making efforts to get better. GIMP is just wretched. I've gone over it in detail in another post, but really it's just inexcusably bad. It doesn't even know where its own windows are. That's braindead. GIMP displays every symptom of having its UI hacked together by programmers who really only care about the backend functionality and only include an interface as a begrudging concession in order to get people to actually use their software, and while it's an extreme case that's really true of the vast majority of Linux software to one extent or another.

Blender is hard to master no doubt about that. But I didn't expect a 3D application to be easy to learn at all. Imagine on Amiga was hard at first too. Only after a few tutorials one could get satisfying result. It's all about how hard you want to learn or not. Complaining abut UIs just because you don't have time or will to learn is pointless.

I could also complain about the syntax of C, or C ++, I never really learnt how to master coding in C. It must be because the language is too complicated, right ? It has nothing to do with my desire wanting to code, has it ? Had I cared enough then I'd learnt it is my point.

You can put some Photoshop look on GIMP if that's what you long for. That wouldn't do any good for me cause I never had the time to learn Photoshop. Guess it must be because Photoshop's UI sucks :-)

[Manu]

I might buy that if 3D Studio Max and even friggin' Moray weren't a hundred times more intuitive and sensible.

So who said there couldn't be differences. Once you learn how to do things you get along with it. Take a look what they accomplish with Blender. They wouldn't have done half of what they've done if it where 100 times harder to do. You make it sound like it's no point in using Blender. Of course it is, just because you have a hard time learnin how to use it doesn't automatically mean your neighbour has too.

And here we go again with this line of argument that "you're not allowed to complain about something being overly complex and unintuitive because it just has a steep learning curve and you must not want it hard enough."

And here we go again with commodorejohn telling the utter thruth so there can be no other truth. If you haven't manage render one image with blender yet then you haven't tried hard enough. That's just it.

You've got it backwards: it has a steep learning curve because it is overly complex and unintuitive. C is fundamentally intuitive and easy to understand once you grasp a few simple principles like pointers that are ignored in most of the "teaching" languages; the same cannot be said for Blender or the GIMP.

You see problems where there's none. I don't say GIMP is the sharpest tool in the box but you can do lots of nice things with it. And since it's free why don't learn to use it. The same with Inkscape, it's really simple to use and makes amazing results. And it doesn't cost a dime for you to learn. Many times I use PaintNET instead of GIMP when I don't need the features GIMP has, when I need less work done. Again PaintNET an excellent tool, free to use. Just learn how to use it.

If you think that making one program look like another program equals changing its interface, you will never understand the difference between good and bad UI. It's not how it looks, it's how it behaves.

No I must be dumb then because I thought User Interface meant the Interface, buttons, sliders presented to the user and how to activate/combine them to get desired results. Instead we seem to be talking about rendering alogritms and god knows what then.

[Manu]

Contrariwise, just because my neighbor invests an assload of time in learning Blender's arcane interface doesn't mean that it was a good use of time and he wouldn't have been better served spending that time to learn his way around the actual functionality of a program with a saner, cleaner UI.

You're grasping at straws here. Prove it

The fact that people can use a tool for something doesn't make it necessarily a good tool. Political prisoners have written on cell walls with their own crap; they still would've been better off with a pen and paper.

Ahh come on, if don't have anything to say why even try.

This is like saying that if I haven't managed to break through a wall by banging my head against it, I just need to bang harder. Strictly speaking it might be true, but wouldn't it make more sense to use a sledgehammer?

And what kind of reasoning is that ? But hey that may be just what you need to do. Bang your head against the wall a few times and sit down in front of Blender and learn something new. In your case the sledghammer in Blender was there all the time you just didin't search long enough to find it.

I never bad-mouthed Inkscape, because I've never used Inkscape. But the fact that you can accomplish good results with the GIMP means only that its backend functionality is good, which I never disputed. It's still a giant pain in the ass to use.

Pain in the ass only matters in how often you do something. Of course I cannot know what you need to get done in GIMP from time to time basis but in my case after a few years using it quite often it's not hard at all. It takes me somethimes a a quick google to refresh my memory if I need to do something that I did a year ago and don't quite remember.

What. I was never talking about algorithms or backend functionality of any sort. What I said was that skinning GIMP to look like Photoshop won't make its UI behave like Photoshop. It'll still be a half-assed, incomplete clone of Photoshop's UI.

I can't argue because I'd never would want GIMP to look like Photoshop, in fact I run circles  around Adobe products if I can. At work I have had to use InDesign or Illustrator. Often I eneded up doing it in Inkscape insted because that's the tool I used more and the UI i know better thus I worked faster with it.

My point is you can cry all day long about how good A is to learn instead of B, but at the end of the day what matters is how often you have use of the programs. Try to use Illustrator once a year and see how easy that is to use. That I call a pain in the ass.

[Manu]

You prove it.


The irony that this would be your response to an actual argument is rather staggering.


The fact that you've trained yourself around a crap UI does not make it not a crap UI.


Why? There are perfectly good alternatives out there, and it would be far less of a waste of time to use them instead than to try to fix a project created by a culture of people who never cared about good design in the first place.

LOL!  Oh the irony of your replies..... I knew your would take it like a pissing contest.

Ok you won. Feel better now.