Why I don't like new UIs

I've recently had two experiences with UIs that are designed to be streamlined and user-friendly. And, frankly, to me they're anything but that.

Windows 8

For some reason I had to use it and well, it took me several minutes to figure out that the loading...-like screen is actually a log in screen and I need to click a nearly invisible single-coloured button to actually allow me to select (or write) a username and log in. Then it took me another several minutes to figure out how to find Desktop. During my work I was several times greeted with IE instead of Start menu (who the hell did have the idea to put an IE icon next to a sensitive corner that gets you to the start menuscreen?) and found out how to log out by sheer luck. Didn't figure how to shut down from logged user. Ugh, I have to tell, GNOME Shell is heaven compared to that.

Fedora 20 Installation

Everything is parallel. I have to say, I prefer the linearity of the old Anaconda. Just clicking next, next, next and nothing gets missed... Now, well, that's another question. The icons being single coloured didn't help much either. I just hate these new symbolic icons that the PC world of nowadays is plagued with. E. g. here on blogger I always confuse pencil with label. *Sigh*

But well, having to spend 30 mins on custom partitioning and only figuring the problem after reading a manual, when it was actually a something the installed could have told me itself, is a completely another story :( Why does the new anaconda tells me the partition is not correct, but does not tell me why. Why? Why? If it knows it's not correct, it should tell me the reason, not just pop up a bubble telling me something is wrong, that Fedora needs 5 Gigs of space (which was perfectly satisfied by the configured layout) but not telling me, that the problem is missing /boot/efi partition?! Something that's was obvious to the installer but not to the human encountering UEFI for the first time... Why it cannot tell me the error it encounters? Why? Why are all the new UIs pretending human is a brain-dead idiot with less intelligence than a well-trained monkey?

But to end it on positive note, F20 on Live USB is freakishly fast as well as the actual installation :-p

My Impression of Gnome Situation

To me it seems, and with the Gnome Shell release this has become even more pronounced, that the situation around Gnome is like the situation around political parties in Czech Republic. They mostly lost touch with reality and majority of people either lost their interest in them, became their haters or their (almost) unconditional adorers. Pointing out an issue equals hating now (and yes there are some exceptions). I have lost faith. Sadly. In both. Does it need to happen to Fedora as well? If we gnomeifficate anaconda, we might end-up like this as well. Users aren't as dumb as we tend to make them. People don't want grey lives with nothing to look forward to, with nothing to choose from. With computers treating them as monkeys. I don't want an environment where I cannot choose between grey two-colour symbolic icons and colorful normal ones. Is reaching out specifically to women making them feel equal?

No, I'm not promoting choice in general. Linux is not about choice. I realize there are lines you should not cross. We cannot sensibly support two parallel audio stacks in Fedora. We cannot sensibly support Hurd or BSD kernel in Fedora. We cannot sensibly support any random combination of system libraries. But we can let user customize their HDD layout when installing. We can show them nice professional looking installer (don't get me wrong, I agree that the installer needed rewrite of its internals, I just don't agree with many of the UI changes that went along with the code redesign). We can show them KDE quality design. We can promote open standards while not setting the hurdle too high for using proprietary or patent encumbered. We can let them choose desktop background by clicking on desktop. We can let them turn off their computer. We can let them install OpenOffice without breaking LibreOffice. Are we?