I didn't see the parent comment as downloading the gimp so much as praising something blender specifically did well. The fact that it has had more impact within the industry is the evidence to support it.

Competitively, libre office has a fairly similar UI to the pre-ribbon office suite, which people at the time much preferred once the ribbon came around (before they got used to it anyway) but it hasn't had the same disruption that blender did. I suspect the file format compatibility issues and die-hard Excel fans have a lot to do with it, but it's an interesting counterpoint to the assertion that the UI is responsible for the difference in adoption rates.

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bawolff 4 days ago | parent [-]

Just my personal opinion (and there is of course no accounting for taste), but personally i consider libre/open office to have one of the worst UIs of any software i have ever used. (In fairness i haven't used it in a really long time, hence calling it "open"). I absolutely think usability issues are a major limiting factor for libreoffice.

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zdragnar 3 days ago | parent [-]

The people who really drive ms office adoption are the ones who use it all day every day. They can't imagine a world without Excel, and (at the time) the cluttered formatting of the office controls were a power user's best friend.

When the Ribbon UI came around in office, it faced a ton of push back due to moving so many things around and hiding so many common operations, but the file format translation issues between office and alternatives kept people in the MS cage, I think.

Nowadays many users grew up with the ribbon, so it doesn't seem so painful.

	▲	bawolff 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think its the ribbon. I grew up pre-ribbon. I did not like the ribbon. MS Office 97 still had a way better UI than anything open/libre office did. If i had to rank, i would say Old pre-ribbon ms office > ms office with ribbon > [a large gap] open/libre office.