this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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I think it's still an interesting question whether this feature should be enabled by default (and most people seem to agree it should be).
If it wasn't on by default, the kind of person who would benefit from it wouldn't discover it.
The kind if person who would benefit from that shouldn't be using a computer. But then again, most smartphone users shouldn't be using a phone. How about choosing different default settings in an installation based on a central "expert" vs "newbie" setting?
People who find computers useful should be using computers.
This weird idea from some linux users that only people who see their computer as a hobby and have mastery over them should be allowed to use them, and that computers should be designed exclusively around the needs of computer-as-hobby users, is absolutely nuts.
Its a tool. It should be designed to be useful as possible to anyone who needs such a tool.
Sincerely,
Another linux user who cares about UI/UX and is tired of this kind of junk. It's a dumb argument, let's all stop making it please. Linux supports all your "technical user" wildest dreams, let the average people have their features and design considerations too.
Twenty years ago I might have agreed. Now, in hindsight, I can say that giving everyone access to computers & thereby the internet has brought out the worst in humanity, including mass-manipulation and authoritarian regimes thanks to people making even worse calls in elections than they used to.
This is really getting that "old man screams at the cloud" vibe.
Are you okay?
The devil is in how things are made useful to users who just want to get things done. The problems comes with corporations making decisions about what users should need to understand, and what users want. There's been a lot of dumbing down and manipulation in that process, serving the needs of those corporations and advertisers and not the needs of the users.
Software can be made useful for those who don't want or need to undertand all the details, in a good, non-harmful way. The principle of separation of interface and implementation even demands it. But our society being what it is, that largely doesn't happen, so I'm inclined to agree with your pessimistic take.
I recently installer something, and KDE showed me where it ended up in the launcher, which I appreciated, and now I'm not supposed to use a computer. Really? Thanks.
At least me wife will be happy, but I'll need to find new work.
Oh. You're one of them. I can safely ignore you.
What qualifies as "expert" setting can be very divisive.. for me, it would be removing this menu entirely. Or even switching from KDE to sway or similar ^^U
But if I was the kind of people that do use this kind of menus I would probably find that kind of indication useful. It helps finding the category the app you just installed belongs to. If you install an educational app/game that teaches programming by giving instructions to a turtle in order to draw a graphic/picture (I think I have seen something like that before): which category should it be at? games? education? development? graphics?
My main point is: If the desktop environment "expert" toggle is set once, gimmicks like this one here would be disabled by default. On a default installation, with the "expert" toggle to "off", those same gimmicks might be enabled by default.
Everything in the desktop is a gimmick... remove all visible things of the desktop and only show apps. Settings can be handled in a text configuration file. Or are some of these gimmicks actually useful, even for "experts"?
I have many times, installing a new app on a Windows Server, just gone in and seen the latest installed app and clicked on it. Sorry, that is my best example as that is where I most often use this feature - I don't install that many apps on my desktops.
Welcome to a future of forever arguing which features are gimmicks.
This one, for example, is not.