Hey guys, Windows is dominant so we need things to be designed more like Windows!

If we wanted a Windows experience we'd use Windows am I right? It's painful enough I have to use it for work, at least let me have a better time at home.

I have to agree. I think there's something to be said for making the transition easier, but the idea that Linux needs to copy windows to that extent is very restrictive.

All he's really saying is that it is important for things to be easy for people to figure out how to do, and for that you need to be aware of what mental models they already have and design interfaces with the goal that the largest number of users can succeed in using the software. A better analogy might be that if you're trying to run a political campaign, you should probably be speaking the language the majority of voters speak, and caring whether they understand you.

The examples the article gives seem like good ones. The starting point is a video of people new to linux trying to use software and failing to figure it out, acknowledging that as a problem to be solved. The proposed solutions are basically to have wizard guis that can walk users through the most common tasks for disk management and network drives. Usability matters and none of that should be very controversial.

I'm on Manjaro, and it actually does have two places for settings. The KDE settings menu is usually the place to go, but Manjaro's settings menu is where you can do a few obscure things like installing different kernel versions.

This might just be a Manjaro thing though as I haven't seen this on other distros, and Control Panel does way more than it should really on Windows with how long the Settings app has been around.

Or you intend to dd an image onto it. Or you intend to turn the entire disk over to a VM and want to partition it from inside the VM. I think there might also be a (rare and esoteric) use case involving PostgreSQL.

I really like this take on it: https://forgejo.org/docs/latest/user/actions/github-actions/#familiarity-instead-of-compatibility

For all of these reasons, Forgejo Actions strives for familiarity instead of compatibility. We want users of GitHub actions to feel familiar using Forgejo Actions, even if there are some small changes here and there. Workflows should work with some minimal changes.

I think the same thing applies to Linux DE's. Linux is not and never will be a 1 for 1 to windows workflows. If we chase perfect compatibility, we will be perpetually behind on a wild goose chase.

But, doing things like what KDE does, where most of the common keyboard shortcuts are the same, and things like virtual desktops allow for similar workflows with very little adaptation, is very reasonable.