Are Linux desktops more coherent than Windows and Mac OS ?
3,721Most of you probably use Linux everyday, but you might still interact with another OS, whether it's Windows or Mac OS X. If you do, you might have noticed a trend: these two systems are starting to lag behind Linux in terms of UX consistency. Let's take a more in-depth look.
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Mac OS X used to be lauded for its UX consistency. Its apps lookesd, felt, and behaved the same. They all used the global menu bar, a dock icon, and most of the system features were readily integrated into third party applications.
Nowadays, its no longer true. First party applications are now weirdly incoherent. Some applications use a title bar that flows down to the toolbar, like the finder. Some applications use a headerbar, like GNOME apps, such as Notes or Safari. Some use a regular menubar, like the system profiler. Some other applications don"t even have a menbar or a toolbar, and integrate their window controls directly in the content itself, like the calculator. And then there is the issue of the iOS apps ported to Mac OS X. As of now, there are two that are shipped with every copy of mac os: the voice recorder, and the stocks app. Both of these don't look at all like mac applications. They have a giant menubar, and a design that looks and feel like mobile apps, which they are. This type of apps will even be more prominent in the near future, since Apple wants to go all in on porting ipad apps to the mac.
If we go even further, we can see different app styles on a lot of default mac applications as well: You have apps with big sidebars, like the AppStore, and smaller sidebars, like iTunes, or medium sidebars, like Apple Books.
All of that is terribly inconsistent. Learning to use an app doesn't guarantee that the next one will behave the same. Apple used to be the champion of consistency and simplicity of use, but these days, I can safely say it has lost its edge.
Windows 10:
Windows, in the other hand, has always been pretty disjointed. This has only gotten worse with windows 10 and its successive updates. Almost every app has a different lookd and feel. You have Windows 95-like applications, with old dialog boxes, grey buttons and old icons (like what ??). You have windows 7 type applications, like the file explorer, with a ribbon interface and an interface designed for use with a mouse. You have Windows 8 style applications, with the metro design language, like XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. And, finally, you have the fluent design style, which is embodied in the settings, for example, with different highlights, some blurred transparency and an interaction model tailored for mouse and touch input.
Optional Microsoft applications like MS Office also use a very different style, using different colors from the rest of the system. Icons also look inconsistent between all these applications. Some are monochromatic, the newer ones are layered shapes with a bit more color, and the legacy ones are colorful and more realistic in style and design.
All of this leads to a jumbled mess of incoherent UX and weird behaviors. Some options are available in two place at once, or some Windows 10 style element opens Windows 7 style applications. Nevertheless, Microsoft seems to be willing to unify everything under the fluent design style.
Linux
Well, Linux used to be the weirdo. Its interface was hardly coherent, mixing and matching applications from various desktop environments. It still does that, depending on the distro. But if you pick on desktop environment and look at all its applications, you'll find it's a more coherent and more polished whole.
GNOME 3 has consistent use of headerbars across all apps. Menus are always in the same place. The look and feel is all changed with the system's theme. The app menu on top of the window orks for all applications they ship.
On KDE, the structure is the same: you get a menu, whether you hide it, leave it in the window, or put in a global menubar. The layouts look the same. The options dialog look similar. The theme affects all applications at the same time. All widgets use the same style.
On elementary, all default apps look and behave the same as well, without a menubar, and their own implementation of the headerbar. Lists look the same, icons are reused through the system, the theme is coherent, whetehr the app uses the light or dark variant.
As of now, if you stick to a Linux desktop and use its default applications, you get a more coherent experience than Mac OS, or Windows. It might not have the same features, it might not work the way users coming grom these systems are used to, but they are a lot more easy to pick up and use, since their respective apps work and behave the same way.