Graphical User Interface (Last updated July 10, 2008 / June 20, 2005)

NOTE: Added July 10, 2008: On July 2, 2008 Walter Mossberg wrote an introduction to the Mac OS X user interface for Windows XP users. I then blogged on the same interface topics that he mentioned on my CNET blog: Introducing the Linux user interface. In my opinion a Windows XP user switching to Ubuntu 8.04 will feel much more at home with Ubuntu compared to Leopard.

NOTE: The paragraphs below were last reviewed in June 2005

Both Linux and Windows provide a GUI and a command line interface. The Windows GUI has changed from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 (drastically) to Windows 2000 (slightly) to Windows XP (fairly large) and is slated to change again with the next version of Windows, the one that will replace XP. Windows XP has a themes feature that offers some customization of the look and feel of the GUI.

Lycoris and Lindows in action from the Wal-Mart web site. The lynucs.org web site has examples of many substantially different Linux GUIs. Of the major Linux distributions, Lindows has made their user interface look more like Windows than the others. Here is a screen shot of Linux made to look like Windows XP. Then too, there is XPde for Linux which really makes Linux look like Windows. Quoting their web site “It’s a desktop environment (XPde) and a window manager (XPwm) for Linux. It tries to make easier for Windows XP users to use a Linux box.”Linux typically provides two GUIs, KDE and Gnome. See a screen shot of

Mark Minasi makes the point (Windows and .NET magazine, March 2000) that the Linux GUI is optional while the Windows GUI is an integral component of the OS. He says that speed, efficiency and reliability are all increased by running a server instance of Linux without a GUI, something that server versions of Windows can not do. In the same article he points out that the detached nature of the Linux GUI makes remote control and remote administration of a Linux computer simpler and more natural than a Windows computer.

Is the flexibility of the Linux GUI a good thing? Yes and No. While advanced users can customize things to their liking, it makes things harder on new users for whom every Linux computer they encounter may look and act differently. Read the rest of this entry