10 ideas to improve GNOME

The fact that windows shows similar information to ordinary users doesn't make it the right thing to do. The goal for GNOME should be to be better and more usable than other systems, not to mimic them. If we do, users will have no incentive to move to GNOME.

MacOS-X hides these folders, and nobody complains. In fact, there are people who think that MacOS is more usable than windows. Besides
many of the things you find in these unix directories are more or
less hidden in registry in windows, only to be found by expert users
that know how to use regedit. Again nobody is complaining.

So, unless you actually can come up with an example where more than 5% of secretaries, accountants or other non sysamin users tweak or even read things in e.g. /proc on a daily or even monthly basis,these directoris should probably be not shown. My guess is that your list of such examples will be very short. In most cases your examples, if you at all find any, will point out other usability problems that could have better solutions than just showing the mentioned folders by default.

It is not about treating users as idiots, its about treating users as humans. Even smart people have a limited capacity to handle too much information. That's why we should hide things that most people don't need to know about. E.g. it is much faster to select one specific directory out of three, than the same directory out of seven. If the icreased number of direcories mean that you have to scroll (e.g. in a file dialog) the selection could be as much as 10 to 50 times slower.

One example: Most of us don't consider fighter pilots to have below average mental capacities. Yet, some modern aircrafts have voice warnings for fatal incidents. Such systems tend to focus on important stuff.

E.g. If he is loosing altitude too quickly a voice will typically say:

"warning altitude",....,"Warning Altitude"..., "Altidude", "ALTITUDE","ALTITUDE!!!"

and not:

"warning altitude, your rear mirror defroster malfunctions", ...,"Warning Altiude, your rear mirror defroster malfunctions",...
and finally from a big hole in the ground say "ALTITUDE, your rear mirror defroster malfunctions"

Most people use computers for everyday tasks that are related to the world outside of computers, so hiding unnecessary stuff about the tool makes it easier for them to concentrate on their real work such as writing sales letters, creating invoices, or perhaps even creating great work of art.

Naturally there people like sysadmins and developers that need to access these directories, so there need to be a way to unhide them (and there is, just remove them from the .hidden file). However, in most offices in the real world I have worked in my lifetime there have been far more users that cares about invoices, salesletters, and spreadsheets than there have been sysadmins or developers.

I'm also not surprised that Kubuntu users complained. KDE have a long tradition of appealing to wannabe sysadmins that have a need to control everything in their environment. I have no objections to let them do that, but if you look at it from a managers perspective increased complexity translates into increased training costs, and the higher the cost, the less chance that Linux or any other free desktop will ever replace windows in a desktop near you. It is no coincidence that commersial GNU/Linux distros like Red Hat and Novell use Gnome as default desktop environmnet.