User friendly Free Software Desktops

[MJ Ray]

Bernhard Reiter <bernhard at intevation.de> writes:

> MJ: Do you feel like starting the research 
> and mail me a list of known initiative and their assessed state?
> I will then start an FSFE list depending on the result.

I've been looking already.  There are the separate KDE and GNOME
usability lists, as well as the rox-devel and sapphire-devel lists
which often drift into usability because of my participation, but
LUIGUI appears to be no more and I've not found any others.  I would
really like to join a usability list.

> Gnustep oughtweights current MS and Linux desktop-projects by far.

I thought it was more or less a GNU reimplementation of OpenStep or
whatever it was called?

> Innovation in usability do not happen suddenly, it is more like science
> where we need the shoulder of giants. :)

Indeed, but we need to be careful that we are not trapping ourselves
into past mistakes "for compatibility reasons".  Some experimentalism
should be encouraged and the successful innovations from them will
migrate to the mainstream.

Werner Koch <wk at gnupg.org> writes:
> FWIW, _GNOME Desktop_ is an afterthought of the GNOME project which
> itself has nothing to do with a Desktop; it was orginally planned has
> a replacement of the Unix systems with components: GNU Network Object
> Model Environment.

Doh!  I did know that.  See http://slef.towers.org.uk/gnomesuck.html
for a contentious take on that aim.  It's nearly a year ago now, and
Ximian seem to have other things to do.