One of the frustrations I’ve run into while using Linux has been with saving screenshots. At first glance, the interface is much better than Windows’, because pressing the Print Screen key brings up a dialog that lets you save your screenshot to a file easily:
The GNOME Screenshot application
At this point, you’re much better off that you’d be on Windows (which either requires extra steps, or requires you to install 3rd-party applications). However, you’re also a lot worse off than you realize. This screenshot application sucks!
- When picking which folder to save a screenshot in, you’re presented with a list of directories – your “Places” (Home directory, Desktop, USB sticks, etc) and the directory you most recently saved to (in the example below, “filepicker”). This looks good until you realize you might have multiple directories called “filepicker” and have no way of telling which one you’re looking at. “filepicker” is reasonably unique, but I have multiple directories named “tmp” (/tmp, /var/www/tmp, /home/chris/tmp) and I usually dump a screenshot into one of these directories until I have a chance to edit it (e.g crop it in an image editing application). There is no way to tell what directory you’re really saving to.
The GNOME Screenshot application: list of directories to save pictures in
- It gets worse. If you choose “Other…” you’re presented with a directory picker:
The GNOME Screenshot application: directory chooser
This doesn’t look too bad until you try using it. In this screenshot, it looks like pressing “Open” would save the screenshot to /tmp/guest/tmp: note the “Location” bar and the highlighted item. Despite this, it actually would save to /tmp/guest. The “Location” bar just exists to trick you. If, given the situation in the picture above, I typed a path into it (e.g. /home/guest/Desktop/tmp) and pressed Enter, the screenshot would still be saved to /tmp/guest! This dialog lies to you if you type a path manually, and lies to you if you select a directory and choose “Open”. The only way to get it to do what you want is to actually navigate into the directory you want to use, then press “Open” (and ignore any text in the “Location” bar and any selected directories in the list).
- It still gets worse. If, after navigating to the right folder, you try to type a filename into the “Location” bar (e.g. Picture.png), it creates a directory (in this case, it would create a directory called “Picture.png”) and uses that directory to save the screenshot. You still have to type the filename when you’re back to the main Screenshot application window.
- It gets even worse. If you want to save time and just type a full path into the “Name” field on the main screen, it appears to work, but doesn’t actually save the screenshot! It fails silently!
This is some of the worst usability I’ve ever seen. There are plenty of applications that aren’t very intuitive and are hard to use, but the deception here is in a league of its own. I created a brief video that highlights some of these issues – you can watch it after the jump.
The sound doesn’t sync very well, but this should convey the idea….
Linux works. You blow one example out of proportion and condemn the whole operating system. And Linux is open source; if you don’t like it, change it. From my experience, even with its glitches, Linux has loads of great free apps you can’t get for free on Windows, and compiz is just sweet. When Linux is completely free, I’ll take it any day over Windows.
nitespier: Yeah, god forbid we should make Linux BETTER, since it’s already free, right?
nitespier, this isn’t the only issue I have with Linux. Read my other posts. There are a lot of things I don’t like about it.
Compiz is definitely pretty, but there are problems with it too. For example, I’ve had lots of trouble getting the little previews working properly with an ATI card (it looks like something is wrong with image scaling or mipmaps). When I boot using Compiz, I usually end up staring at a solid white screen for an unreasonably long time. Another ATI-related issue is that 3d apps / overlays don’t seem to work very well (lots of flickering). The extra eye candy wasn’t worth the trouble for me… I would have reservations about wooing somebody to Linux based on Compiz’s “ooh shiny”.
I can afford Windows. Price isn’t the only factor I consider when picking an OS.
@ everyone in this site
Price may not be, but choice should be. Call me a zealot call me a fanboy but, There were plenty of times Windows had problems like this. When it was supposed to be the best. BSOD, compatibility isuues, lack of user friendliness features, and people shelled out thousands of dollars over and over again because it was forced fed to us by a monopoly. So, fast forward to now, thanks to all of us lining the pockets of Microsoft over and over, they put out a stable product, that has ripped off every one of its good attributed (almost every) from *NIX (I will throw apple into here because it is closely related to BSD). I chose the lesser of two evils right now because,
A.) I am patient (sounds like you are too)
B.) I like to learn (same as above)
C.) CHOICE, not cost ( although if linux cost as much as windows I owuld never buy it.)
Is this all making sense? Comparing the two is trivial at best (ref. this log and the thousands like it) M$ is a billion dollar company with a constant influx of money. You should step back and be amazed that Linux has made it this far (see amazingly I dont need windows with linux, thanks to VMWARE and btjunkie.org, now linux can run windows…) on what you could compare to a college drop-out’s budget. Of corse windows is better, so is mac, would you expect anything less? but better is relative, better if you mean more compatible and more refined, then yes. But if you mean flexibility, choice, cost, control, stability then I would say no.
Ah man, thanks for the workaround! I had naively thought that typing a directory name into the “select a folder” dialog would make gnome-screenshot use that directory. Not so! That despite the fact that the dialog goes away when you hit enter after typing /tmp.
It’s bugs like these that make me think sometimes that “Linux” is going backward. Or maybe I should just go back to twm, xwd and the command line. Grandma doesn’t need to use my PC!