linux4all | DropBox Alternatives For Linux

I don't feel it's good to burden people with cognitive overhead in the name of "customizability," when most of them don't want to worry about how the thing they want to do happens.

You say that as if the programmers are forcing people to choose non-simple tools.

Yes, there do exist systems which have managed to get themselves the happy medium of simple-on-the-surface-but-customizable. But usually it's a choice between one and the other; that the tools that are simple are deliberately made non-customizable in order to have that simplicity, and the tools that are extremely customizable necessarily have added complexity in order to offer that customizability.

Take my favourite window manager, Fvwm. It does not offer a GUI for configuration, because any GUI would either have to be incredibly complex, or cut out half the options one can have for the settings. I love this window manager, because you can make it do practically anything. But the cost of that is that the configuration is done with text files, not a GUI.
Many people may not want to pay that cost, sure. But I don't want to be deprived of my lovely window manager because some people find it too hard.

I don't like the idea of forcing someone to use tools that don't fit their lifestyle and workflow. But I feel that that's what many free software communities are all about, is privileging the kinds of people whose lifestyles and workflows fit existing tools and insulting / marginalizing people whose don't. I feel that a lot of the outcry about things like GNOME and Fedora's changes is that of privileged people having their privilege taken away from them, and having to learn a handful of new things so that many, many people don't have to make their brains fit into places they can't.

I'd rather not inconvenience anyone if possible, but my sympathies are with those who are currently being left out. I feel that there is a great deal of unspoken contempt for nontechnical users in many free software communities, and the ones that I have the most respect for are the ones that put the most effort into reducing cognitive overhead, technical / cultural knowledge requirements, and other obstacles to accessibility. It disgusts me to see things like white cismale hackers plastering the Fedora logo over their hackergotchis' mouths in protest against the idea of Girl Scouts on their system.

Indeed, the dark underbelly of FLOSS is truly ugly and horrible. I don't know the incident to which you are referring, but I am alas not surprised. There are only two FLOSS projects I am aware of that are female-welcoming, and that's Archive-of-our-own and Dreamwidth. The others at best are neutral.

I don't have much respect for projects that are deliberately elitist and newbie-hostile. Even though I'm not a newbie, they are unpleasant places to be, and I have no desire to contribute to them.

GNOME has actually been a lot of fun to work with. They run an outreach program for women that's explicitly trans-inclusive, and that actually pays women to work on the project. I spent my summer working on GNOME's JavaScript developer docs, and am hoping to mentor someone in the next round. GNOME's executive director is a woman, and I think the last one was as well.

I know GNOME isn't your preferred desktop, but I personally love it and it's also the one I'd feel most comfortable giving to a newbie. I feel that free software like it, which puts a high priority on being accessible to everyone, is very important to have around.

I don't agree with your dichotomy between simplicity and customizability.

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I don't agree with your dichotomy between simplicity and customizability. <user=jewelfox> provides a good example with GNOME, and I'd even include things like Kate/Gedit and the not-FLOSS SublimeText.

All of these items are, in fact, very simple to just pick up and start using. A person can figure out the basics of what they want to do within a very short period of time, and be happy with that.

Then, the power users can dig around under the hood and customize them to their heart's content. Kate and Gedit have their plugin systems that allow Gedit to go from a step above Notepad to an editor that rivals Mac's TextMate. SublimeText has the plugin system, plus a simple-to-understand text-based setting system (ST is, of course, aimed at developers, so it's expected that such users wouldn't be intimidated by config files, and most of it's simple key-value pairs). Gnome has extensions, plus the ability to edit the Javascript and CSS files that control just about everything (which has allowed for variations such as Cinnamon and Unity, as well as themes in general).

A lot of basic usability/simplicity (and Jewel's desire for lower cognitive overhead) isn't so much in the lack of customizability, but rather a fantastic set of defaults, so that it doesn't <em>need</em> to be customized. For example, as much as I love toying around with GNOME's CSS file and themeing stuff, I had no desire to do so on my Fedora install, because I already liked the defaults. I think I actually did more customizing of my Ubuntu 12.04 (with Unity) install than I did with my Fedora one (and Unity has been notoriously hostile to customizability until the most recent version or two; and even with Ubuntu Tweak, there's still quite a bit that Canonical has locked out completely).

Look, I don't even understand why we're having this argument! All I wanted to do was share my findings about DropBox alternatives, not argue about user interfaces!

Don't get me wrong, the fact that you shared what you found is awesome, and I'm sorry that that was glossed over.

However, part of what makes an application appealing, regardless of whether it's FLOSS or commercial, is not only finding that balance between customizability and ease of use, but providing good defaults. It seems to me that your assumptions are that "easy to use" means it can't be customizable, I think your choices in your original post (as well as your comments here) reflect that, and I commented accordingly.

Also, I wasn't arguing, but rather joining in the discussion, which I felt was interesting (though perhaps that was missed, given that it appears I screwed up the DW/specific markup and it butchered the whole rest of my comment?) and worthwhile in the broader topic of tool choice.

DropBox Alternatives For Linux

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