Color Theory

The many professions of my wife: interior designer, clothes designer, jewelry designer, Needlework designer... if you got the designer part, you get the idea.

My wife lives in a world of color and geometry, and is always trying to figure out what people like. She reads up on things like color theory, what works together, what makes people feel certain ways, etc. I think she may be trying to boil the ocean. I am starting to think the best thing to do is to design what she likes, and hope others like it too. There is no one thing that the ultimate "everyone" likes.

I think that Apple is better than any computer company I know of at figuring out not only what people like *now*, but what they might want. You can bet I want an iPhone.... In any case, their industrial design is second to none. Their cultural divining rod near perfect. And of course, you can theme your OS.X computer to suit you.

Settings

One of the very first things most people do when they get a new computer is to set it up the way they like it. Almost any computer lets you set things like color schemes and desktop wallpaper. Linux goes way beyond that, letting you pick desktop managers, screen savers, and the user interface paradigms that they use. Most popular there is of course KDE and Gnome, but there are many others. And now we have Compiz and Beryl on top of those to further extend their configurablity. Sometimes these things make no sense: Why would anyone run a screen saver on a laptop? You get X number of hours on the Cold Cathode Tube that is the backlight, and then it's gone. Running geometry across the screen uses CPU, battery, and shortens your away-from-the-wallplug time. LCD's don't burn in the way CRT's do either. Screen savers on laptops are illogical. But I see them all the time.

Linux is all about choice. If you are running Linux as your desktop/laptop already, you have made a big choice.  But those who have made the switch did not, one and all, make it for any monolithic reason. Here are ones I can think of for why people move to Linux from MS Windows:

1. Got tired of virus and worms
2. Hated the way windows lose focus
3. Didn't like  / don't trust Microsoft for whatever reason one might have
   
4. Read the EULA and could not accept it.
5. Could not afford it
6. on and on: 

I am sure the reasons are about as individual as the people themselves. And whatever list of reasons there are for leaving, there is another one for other folks about why they stay on MS Windows when clearly there are other workable options these days.

I don't get why people stay on MS Windows, others don't get why I left. Nor do I think people that still use MS Windows are "bad" or anything like that. Whatever. I am not going to figure that out here.

I do think it is more about preference than anything technical anymore. Whurley asserts that MS is afraid of Linux, and I guess maybe they should be. They know Linux "just works". They know from their battle with OS/2 that being the better OS is not the determining factor. All it has to be is "Good Enough" and Linux passed that a while back. And technology like AJAX and the other so-called 'Web 2.0" stuff make the OS even less relevant. MS's Active-X lock-in is fading, and with it, IE. In another recent post, Whurley asked at a day without Open Source would be like. I read it and thought what a day without MS would be like, and all I could think of was that my Active-X web page hastles would be gone, but those are few and far between anymore. I know certain PC gamers here that would be in deep mourning on that day. I just play solitaire on the computer, and that runs everywhere. But I digress....

Personal and Professional

I hope when I post here about things of personal preference that I am being clear about what is a personal preference, and what is a professional judgement. I talked about this a bit back in "Which GUI", but there are a few things that probably bear repeating here:

1. When I say I do not like SLAB, that is a personal preference. In point of fact, I have been playing with Mint's SLAB-like interface on 3.0, and I have found the menu-triage feature to be very handy. I might even convert to it someday.

2. When I say I think KDE is a better GUI for those first converting from MS Windows machines, that is a professional judgment. While I did start out using all KDE all the time, I am not equally at home in Gnome, and at this point do not have a preference. I mix and match my apps from either. I like Konqueror better than Nautilus, especially for doing things on the network like SMB:// or LAN:// browsing. I dislike a zillion windows open on the desktop, so I dislike "spatial mode" in any file manager. Hopefully obviously, that last part is personal preference, not technical judgement. I have no time/motion studies to inform why sorting through a bunch of windows might be less efficient than a desktop with fewer open windows.

When I state a professional judgment, it is still something of an opinion, and I can be right or wrong, depending on what we are talking about.

"That computer is down": OK, maybe obvious, but with the added feature of being clearly not an opinion. There are few such binary things in computers though, and the rest stray into the realm of some other color in between the binary of "up" and "down".

What brings all this up is a note I received from Richard Meyer about some things I said in a recent post:

I was reading your latest post "Another Printer Answer and Mint 3.0 Beta 012"
and I noticed again your distaste for all things "Ubuntu beige" (I may be overstating the case here).

This attitude seems to be pretty common world-wide, except among Africans. I was born and brought up in Africa, and I can assure you that to us, brown and olive are the most restful colours most of us could possibly imagine. I have run a few tests among my friends, and too much green makes us think of mosquitoes and insects and too much blue disturbs us as well.  ;-)

I am attaching my normal wallpaper to give you an idea of what I find restful and soothing.

I suppose what I'm saying is it's all a matter of taste, except that I never really understood the aversion to beige that seems to haunt Ubuntu ... now maybe you'll understand the attraction we feel - it really isn't just "to be different".

This started me thinking along a whole new avenue I never have before.

First off, my wallpaper (from the Hubble Space telescope), and then this: I have never really thought much about how color might be influenced by place of birth or culture. Everything I have ever read made me think that color preference was just some sort of weird brain wiring thing. Example My favorite color is Blue, and always has been. I can not recall a time when I did not prefer Blue. And I have a freakishly long memory: I recall the mobile over my crib. Monarch Butterflies. My wife likes Purple, and my daughter Green. As Richard notes here though, there may be more to it than that. This may not be just wiring. Fascinating.

I like Richards wallpaper, but I have to admit that I see it mostly from the point of view of "Wow: that is great photography.". I would not choose it for my wallpaper though.

The first thing I have been pondering since he sent me that note is one of basic cultural sensitivity. I hope people do not read this weblog and think I am saying (when expressing a personal opinion) that I am implying that people that feel any other way than me are in some way being denigrated. One of the things about weblogs is that one is, to some degree, supposed to express things in a personal way, or what is the point? You can read a press release or a manual anywhere. While I have always striven to keep such a tone out of this weblog, I will further watch what I say, and be certain I am being crystal clear on what is opinions versus professional judgments.

Linux Configurablity

The very next thing that occurred to me was something I have often thought about regarding Linux itself. One knock Linux has received is that it is *too configurable*. What made some people uncomfortable with it was that there were so many choices (over 20,000 packages in the Debian repository, for example). Themeability like nothing else on the planet. Over a hundred distros! Can't Linux just make up it's mind?

No.

What is confusion is also power. Linux runs in more languages, on more platforms, in more ways, than any other OS on the planet. It is developed world wide by a huge group of very passionate people. It can be made to match the ideals and goals of whomever for whatever. If you need simple, easy: it's there! See Xandros or Linspire: there are no operating systems easier to install than those. None.  Not OS.X even. Note that these both chose KDE for the user interface too.

You have purely open for the openly pure (Say, Debian). You have Distros willing to pick up binary only bits in order to run on a wider array of hardware (Like Ubuntu, with it's restricted drivers bit).

When a company is picking a Linux Desktop to standardize on, they look at the needs of their company, and the culture of the company. They standardize to save training costs, not because Linux is painting them into any corners. They pick the bits they need, create an image, and they go with it. If the company is of any size, and has any rugged individualists in it, they'll peal back off that standard image and set up something else more to their liking. Unless the company gave them a Kiosk presence only of course, in which case they'll just grumble a lot.

Linux Adoption Rates

I have read several times over the years that Linux adoption rates on the desktop are higher outside the US than inside. I always chalked that up to the way the US business culture tends to resist change. But now Richard has me wondering if it is not that Linux is just easier to make match the local preferences, whatever they may be.