Why, oh why, do so few developers of free software know or care about user interface design? Or reversing the question, why do so few developers who know how to design user interfaces have any interest in working on desktop Linux? What little effort there is, is simply applied to imitating Windows. For a couple of years I saw some hope at Eazel, but then the money spout got turned off and the developers who actually knew what they were doing lost interest and moved on to other things.

I had hoped to replace it with an Intel Mac Mini; but sadly that did not arrive at MacWorld, and seems unlikely to arrive before April 1 at the earliest. In the event I need to quickly replace this system, what do people recommend for small, quite, cheap, energy-efficient X86 box? Here are my requirements:

1. Must have 100 Mbps or faster Ethernet.
2. All hardware fully supportable by Linux.
3. CD drive required. DVD optional.
4. Under $500, ideally under $200. Note that I do not need or want a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc.
5. Operating system not required.
6. Zero-noise. I will pay more to get this.
7. Small, ideally mini sized or smaller. I will pay a little more to get this.
8. Energy efficient. It should draw less than 60W, ideally less than 45W.
9. AMD chips are a plus, but not a requirement.
10. An ATI Radeon video card is a plus, but not a requirement. I’ve just had better luck with ATI cards over the years.
11. 802.11 is a plus. I’d pay a little extra for this
12. Bluetooth is a plus. I’d pay a little extra for this

So, what are my options? Wal-Mart sells a $220 bare bones Microtel box that might do the trick if I added a little memory (though I wish they’d knock ten bucks off the price and leave out the mouse, keyboard, speakers, and OS). Does anyone know what one of these things sounds like?

Possibly a Shuttle bare bones system? The price is starting to climb once I add all the pieces though; but at least it’s small.

NorhTec has some interesting small servers, but they may be a little too small for me (no CD drive). Plus they’re on the expensive side.

If this server dies in the meantime I guess I’ll just repurpose my whitebox desktop Linux system for the time being, but that’s quite big and noisy; and I’d rather not turn it on in my office full time.

Why can’t Linux figure out how to drive the monitor? Damned if I know. The monitor’s a little strange–it’s widescreen instead of 4 by 3. My guess is the right driver is missing, or I don’t have my XF86config file set up just right. I could probably figure it out if I used Linux on the desktop more than occasionally. I did it a couple of times before, before I switched to Mac OS X for most of my work; and it was incredibly difficult and scary each time. Frankly right now I can’t be bothered to do that again. I do know that the exact same hardware works flawlessly with Windows, and the same monitor works without a hiccup on my Macs. Why should Linux be any different?

And then I think again, “Why should Linux be any different?” That’s when I get the stupid idea. I am sure this is a collossally stupid idea. I am sure it is going to be totally obvious to all Linux and video card geeks everywhere that this idea is totally unworkable and completely infeasible and could never possibly work in a thousand years. They are going to fill the comments section with a thousand reasons why this couldn’t possibly work. But then I think, it’s New Year’s Eve. No one is reading this anyway. Why not? So here goes:

Why should Linux be any different? Why can’t Linux use the exact same drivers Windows does? Why should every marginally different piece of hardware that comes off the shelves at CompUSA require a custom driver just for Linux? Instead of rewriting everything from scratch, why not just use the Windows drivers? Of course, this would require some sort of emulation layer, and performance would suffer some; but isn’t this what VMWare already does? Why not write an emulation layer that allows Linux to use all the Windows video drivers? It’s a tough job, but is it really impossible? More to the point, is it harder or easier than continuing to write drivers for every new video card that drops off the assembly line? How stupid is that?

Unfortunately once I logged in I was back in 1999. Well not quite. One change since then is that my home directory and trash can were nowhere to be found. They’re no longer on the desktop where they belong. I eventually found them hidden in a menu that seemed to exist for no reason other than to have three menus in the menu bar. Another unwelcome change is that the Ubuntu desktop wallpaper is a lot uglier than the standard Mandrake, Red Hat, or Gnome themes I’ve seen in the past.

Gnome is still a confusing agglomeration of way too many unrelated pieces. There’s no particular rhyme or reason to the organization of the menu bars. The main menu bar is at the top of the screen where God intended it to be be, but application menu bars are still in the wrong place. The included programs range from adequate to poor. Just one example: why does it take three dialog boxes to open an ftp connection in gftp? My overall feeling is that if the Linux community hasn’t learned the first thing about user interface design in 15 years, they’re not going to start now. Creating new distros that add a few packages and delete a few others won’t help. That’s just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Linux is doomed to continued irrelevance on the client unless someone with some competence in user interface design forcibly forks almost every application from the Gimp to OpenOffice and rewrites it with a focus on usage rather than features.