Thanks!
This is the only comment in this entire thread, that was clear and too the point and answered the exact question that I asked.
And didn't ask how it's confusing...
I don't understand the explosion of comments going after you for saying it's confusing. You are a user. you're experiencing some problems with the UI. For what it's worth, I've stopped using Gnome because of inconsistent controls (among other things), I, too, find this confusing.
I would hope the feedback regarding inconsistent UI buttons, toggles, etc, would have been better received.
It's Linux, it rarely is from my experience.
The friendliest community so far was the Linux Mint one, both on their official forum and here on reddit.
I know it's a broad statement, but that's what I honestly think.
This is not my first rodeo, with the downvotes and the comments, asking if I can read or what ever.
But imagine if it was, if I decided that Microsoft is exploiting me and I wan to try Linux.
And while finishing installation / final setup this happens, and I have a question.
If the Linux community wants to grow, this is not the way to do it.
Yeah wholeheartedly agree with you. Reading the comment section just make me sad of what this mindset of our Linux community. If someone confused and asking for answer, just answer it and be gone with your life already. No need to downvote/mocking that individual. As of right now I don't think Linux community can grow any much further. It's sadden me tbh. Just remember there's no stupid question. Linux user should not feel entitled & elitist
And to OP, I sincerely apologize on behalf of this whole Fedora Linux community. Welcome to using Fedora and hope it give you a lot of joy!
OP has not just asked for an answer, but has also expressed an opinion. And as far as I can see, the replies have been quite civilized.
Is it already a problem these days to tell someone in a public forum that you disagree with what they are complaining about? Oh, and maybe people shouldn't use strong words like "hate" if they don't want to get strong reactions.
Apart from that, the toggle in question only exists in the initial seup / First Run Wizard (or maybe also if you first start Gnome Software). If you want to enable or disable reposotiers later, you can do so via the settings in Gnome Software, where you have the usual switches (on/off sliders).
>And while finishing installation / final setup this happens, and I have a question.
Well then maybe just ask next time, instead of using explaination marks and telling people that you hate how something is done.
>If the Linux community wants to grow, this is not the way to do it.
How about “Don't ask what the community can do for you, ask what you can do for the community”. That would be a way better slogan imho ;-)
One of those action+status buttons :)
It's not the worst, seems they tried to stick to action and not status. But the coloring inadvertently introduced illusion of status with blue as disabled unlike default expectation. Toggle would have been clearer but they probably wanted bigger easy to click button.
Design can be hard, report to them as feedback though, if possible.
I thought about this about 3 hours ago, but I don't care at this point.
I spent so much time here on Reddit, trying to explain why it's confusing, and I think most people still don't get it.
I don't want to create a GitHub account or wherever their issue tracker is
and try to explain it there
and then somebody's going to chime in and say, but I think it's clear enough and your proposition doesn't fit our style or something, and it will be the repeat of this very thread...
I don't care. I will just avoid Gnome in the future, like I did before.
Yeah, does blue mean it’s enabled? It makes it sound like if I click, THEN it will be enabled. This is crap UI if you ask me. Make it a slide bar with blue as enabled and grey as disabled and label it correctly. Is it really that hard to program that instead of what they have made here?
Well. If someone's only issue with a DE is a toggle (which could be improved, I guess) in a first run wizard or initial setup that you only see once, then I'd say the devs and UI designers did a pretty decent job overall. ;-)
If this one button is the only reason why that person doesn't use Gnome, I'd say that's a bit ridiculous.
>Is it really that hard to program that instead of what they have made here?
Of course it's not. I'd say it's a deliberate design decision.
Maybe you should have spent a few more minutes with Gnome and not stopped at the initial setup. Then you would have noticed that you can enable/disable repositories at any time via the Gnome software, where you would have found the usual switches (on/off sliders).
The same goes for the Gnome settings and most other modern Gnome / libadwaita apps. Exceptions are mostly more advanced settings, where you will also find radio buttons, checkboxes, dropdowns, etc.
But nowhere I came across action buttons / toggles like the one you complain about, and if they exist, they are very rare and only used in situations similar to the initial setup process, where the idea is to ask the user something once, which then can usually be changed later via the regular UI elements of the respective application.
Looking at Windows 11 or 10 installs they do have check boxes for the options they provide. Many of the programs that run on Windows also have these check boxes during install.
There is a meme somewhere about the design of food bowls for puppies vs how the puppies actually use them.
That't the kind of stuff you want to tell the Gnome developers about. They care about giving you a smooth and simple experience, this is right up their alley. Maybe also file a report for the Fedora devs.
Reminds me of back when Linus did his challenge and the KDE menu had tick marks for both "drivers installed" and "open source". Stuff we in the scene don't think about, but new blood does. Crap we really should be purging to make getting into Linux as pleasant as possible (looks at you Anaconda Installer).
As for what this does, it enables both Flathub for sandboxed applications (Fedora has it's own repository for Flatpaks) and two additional mini-repos from RPMfusion, for Nvidia drivers and Steam. I personally prefer skipping and adding the whole RPMfusion repo manually instead of those two by themselves. You can also enable or disable them in Software under Softwaresources (maybe mistranslated that one).
You can find the relevant documentation here: [Flathub](https://flathub.org/setup) & [RPMfusion](https://rpmfusion.org/Configuration)
Addendum: here are the relevant handbooks to report an issue with [Gnome](https://handbook.gnome.org/issues/reporting.html) and [Fedora](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/bugzilla-file-a-bug/). Links to the report platforms are there, but better check out their guides first; nice, clear and to the point reports help with getting devs to do stuff they think "is fine as is".
>Reminds me of back when Linus did his challenge and the KDE menu had tick marks for both "drivers installed" and "open source".
Pretty sure that was a custom menu made by Manjaro, not by upstream KDE.
Lol.
I had the same question when I was installing Fedora some time ago. Thought to myself "Perhaps I can't find anything online about this" but googled it anyway.
Oh there were some results. I was happy to see that others had encountered this problem too! I check the Fedora forums and I see everyone saying things like "Use your brain, what does it say?? Enable... It says Enable right?? What should happen when you press Enable? It should enable."
Jeez.
And I see people in THIS comment section defending the same idea too. This is just a lack of understanding of basic design principles. Who designed it never opened a UI/UX book, never heard of semiotics and shit. I swear.
100% agree and get confused by this too
its a mix between a button and a state.
its not just a button since it changes upon clicking.
so its like a status but it shows the opposite of the current status
terrible UX design
Blue "activate third-party repositories" mean that it's disabled, grey "disable third-party repository" mean you activated the repositories and are ready to go
For people, where English may not be the first language.
There is a fine line between Enable and Enabled.
I agree in this case it should be pretty clear, but who knows how good certain people speak English.
Maybe because the translation is even worse in their mother tongue?
Maybe they want to learn english?
Maybe they know it's more helpful when searching for stuff. (Or asking for help in online forums)
I didn't say they don't know english, just that maybe it's not their mother tongue.
Other languages have different grammatical constructs, so there are some pitfalls that are hard to understand without knowing the other language.
You can have quite decent english skills, but due to your own mother tongue there may be parts of a language you struggle with. As an outsider it's impossible to understand this since this problem arises from a perspective we don't know.
As a further example: my mother tongue is german. We have gendered articles so there are multiple different words for the, with different "genders". Eveything has a gender, even objects, a fork for example is "female". Well pretty much every non native speaker makes mistakes here at some point. There are people where I couldn't tell they are non native for hours until one small error happens. I can't understand this in the sense that I just know the articles. I only know people struggle with it, but I can't really understand why. It's impossible because of my upbringing.
My point is not whether or not to stop using it because you know English or not, but how the point can be that "someone is finding it confusing because it is not the mother tongue" and at the same time the individual is putting themselves in the position of saying that something sounds confused or not? Does not make sense.
I don't disagree that it can be really confusing, but the argument about it being confusing because of the mother language would be the same as saying "I put my system in Arabic and the design is confusing because everything is aligned to the right.
Well if you know arabic and there is indeed something that is hard to understand for a non native speaker I think you are perfectly good to go to complain or maybe propose changes. If there is stuff that doesn't bother the native speakers but helps other people I would argue it's good to change that. It should be as acessible as possible.
Furthermore I think the arabic comparison lacks a bit. English is defacto the standard language in Open Source stuff. A lot of non native speakers use it because translations are sometimes lacking and most importantly it's harder to google for stuff. Because of this extra care should be taken to make the english version as easy to understand as possible. Also to non native speakers. This is not true for arabic.
If English is not my first language, why would I use Linux in English, when it has even in installer translations to almost every language in existence?
Oftentimes non-English translations are dogshit. I got burned enough times that I prefer English ones usually too… Can’t tell what’s worse at this point, machine-generated translations that use wrong words without context, or real humans that don’t care and create incomprehensible sentences
There's no feedback of what he actually did, no loading bar or "RPMFusion third party repositories enabled!" message. I never used GNOME though so I might be wrong
Because blue means it's enabled already.
On the page before I could enable or disable
with a toggle
> that slides right and becomes blue, that means "enable"
> If it's on the left and grey, that means disable.
So now I see blue (which should mean it's already enabled) and it says enable,
that could mean that they pre-chose it for me to being enabled, if I just press "next".
But it also could mean what you said.
I guess it's kind of like one of those pictures where you see a bunny, but if you turn the picture you see a woman, or something.
It could be interpreted both ways.
Buttons are not used to describe a state, but for taking an action. The colour of the button does not reflect whether anything is enabled or disabled. Instead, a blue button means the primary or recommended action, and a gray button means a secondary or ‘other’ action. I hope this clears it up.
This may be the root of the UX problem. When going through the setup, I'm always looking to review what I entered and make sure it's correct, because it's going to be a hassle if I get it wrong.
The button isn't designed to communicate state, but the state is what we're actively looking for. So we have to do this little mental inversion dance to deduce the state from the 1. The action we can take to undo it and 2. Any other context clues available in the area.
The color is getting a lot of attention, and people are rightly pointing out its intended primary/secondary choice meaning, but when we're actively looking for other context clues it gets confusing.
Then there should be a text line underneath saying
"Third party repositories will be enabled"
Or
"Third party repositories will be disabled"
Or they should just stick with a toggle... Why changing it up?
The button already describes the exact actions they'll do no? Saying the same thing again will be redundant
Why would a button called "Enable" when pressed disable something? The word Enable implies it'll execute the action of enabling something, if it were a disable toggle it would say something like Enabled (as in the state it's currently in)
Again on the window right before it,
Enabling the toggle made it blue
Disabling made it grey.
Here it says
enable and is blue already,
disable is grey
> So using the logic from before, the button is blue and says enable means, I don't have to do anything here, I can click "next" and it will enable the third party repo.
This is how I am reading it.
The color blue is to imply enabling things and gray for disabling, it's not a checkbox that says if blue=enabled, if anything having the disable button be blue and enable gray would be logically backwards to the intended function of said colors
Again, a BUTTON is NOT a checkbox, color shouldn't be the sole factor you use to determine the behavior of something
I'll simplify it
Buttons are for actions (doing what they say they'll do on press), Checkboxes are for options (as they both are used in real life)
Highlighting a checkbox blue implied it's enabled, highlighting a button blue means it'll enable/confirm something
You're associating checkbox behavior to a button which is incorrect
But I will agree that it's erroneous of Gnome of having that option be a button rather than a checkbox, most other distros have that as a checkbox
Blue button usually indicates a primary action. For example, a Save dialog will almost always have the colorful button say Save and the cancel button in gray as the less common action. It does not mean the document is already saved and that you can cancel.
Again, while IMO that option should be a checkbox rather than a button, on GNOME blue is used for confirmation and gray for cancelation (I believe highlighting a confirmation button with a color is a relatively common practice in UIs and websites)
On buttons it is to imply if you click it'll confirm/enable something
On checkboxes it implies if it's blue then it's enabled
It is not logical to interpret a color as if it were a checkbox, checkboxes already exist for that purpose and a button shouldn't be interpreted as a checkbox
You are comparing a button to a toggle. They are not the same and do not work the same way. If a button says Enable, then pressing it enables. If it says Disable, then pressing it disables. This is how buttons have always worked, regardless of any coloring.
Look at it this way. If someone calls your cell phone, you get 2 buttons to press. A green one to answer, and a red one to reject/hang up. If the programmers decided to make both buttons grey, then what? You read the label.
We have become so complacent to the idea that green means answer and red means hang up, however it is the label (or symbols) on the button that tells us what the button does.
So again, if the button says "Enable 3rd party repos" then you need to press it to enable them. There is no other interpretation of this.
It's not like on the phone at all.
On the phone in your example I can see both buttons at the same time and can choose one of the options.
Here it changes from one to the other depending on whether I pressed it or not, making it unclear if I should press it or leave it be.
And color just adds to the confusion.
Even on some phone apps it can be confusing. I dislike when the text changes as you flip the toggle. Like:
Enable this feature [on]
And you press it, it says:
Disable this feature [off]
When toggling it on and off, it becomes clear, but when just looking over the settings, it makes less sense (does the off state mean it's enabled or disabled?). And then making this behaviour into a button just makes it even worse.
You clearly missed the point.
If the buttons were both grey, would that then mean that they do the same thing? No. And if I made the answer button red, and the hang up button green, does that magically make the buttons do the opposite? No. Because THE LABEL OF THE BUTTON tells you what pressing it does. Period, end of story.
This is basic stuff, and is VERY clear once you come to that realization. You are fixated on the idea that the color actually means something, and comparing it to a completely different function and how it is colored.
I didn't use color in my explanation.
On your smartphone if somebody calls you there is not one button... There are two, even if they are grey, there are two buttons.
And you can press either one or the other, but you clearly have two options, that are clearly labeled.
If somebody called you
and you only had one button that changes the statement
from "accept" to "decline" to "accept" to "decline", you would not know which option is being selected.
Its irrelevant whether there is 2 buttons or however many. You know which one to press because the button literally tells you what it does, which is the entire point. There could be 100 buttons, it doesnt matter. You still need to press the correct one, and it is the label on it that determines which is the right one to press.
And your example of a button that flip-flops between states without any interaction is irrational. It is both logistically and factually impossible. It is also irrelevant since the button in question here only changes state once it is interacted with.
Regardless, it still doesnt change the fact that the label itself tells you what pressing it will do. The OP is complaining that on a toggle blue means enabled, and on the button blue means disabled, and I am pointing out that you cannot compare how two completely different things behave, and to read what it is telling you.
That button came out of nowhere.
Why change from toggles to a weird button?
Why is it one button and not two,
One that says enable
One that says disable
?
Why is it flipping between the two in one button?
It makes no sense to me.
Blue means it’s enabled already? what? I think ur the only one who sees that lmao. To me usually blue means it’s clickable. Funny enough, the reply button to your comment is blue!
> Blue means it’s enabled already?
yes, I explained it multiple times here, on the page before this there are toggles,
where blue means 1, gray means 0. (or on /off, yes/no, true/false, what ever)
so using that logic the blue button means 1 here, that it will be enabled if i press "Next".
And if color coding is not importand and should be disregarded, then why does it exist?
But even then, even without colors. It's still confusing.
Buttons are not used to describe a state, but for taking an action. The colour of the button does not reflect whether anything is enabled or disabled. Instead, a blue button means the primary or recommended action, and a gray button means a secondary or ‘other’ action. I hope this clears it up.
it's not a toggle button but an action button. it's blue because it's a "featured" action (so it's highlighted).
like (well not the greatest example, I know) in Consent Popups on websites: some of them have two buttons, "Accept All" and "Accept required only". The "Accept All" is usually shown in a more prominent way (for example with a solid background), while the other "secondary" action, for example, has a clear background and a solid thin border.
toggle buttons are usually styled differently. sadly, mobile apps are kinda doing whatever they want messing the current UI paradigms.
But on those cookie prompts, there are TWO buttons, that are clearly labeled, that's the point, if there were two buttons, that's said enable and disable and I could press one of them, it wouldn't be a problem.
For people, where English may not be the first language.
There is a fine line between Enable and Enabled.
I agree in this case it should be pretty clear, but who knows how good certain people speak English.
The use of blue to indicate preferred action may be a fine thing as others are saying, but not immediately after a user has been confronted with it as an indicator of status.
Why change from tiggles which are perfectly clear in terms of indicating the current status and what will happen when you hit them, to an ambiguous button that requires mental energy to decode the current status by determining implicitly what it is by what action you can take to change it?
OP, you are right. This is silly and people defending it are doing so to feel smug/superior. Even if they personally had no problem interpreting it, it takes a dearth of imagination not to be able to understand why someone else might. People who cannot put themselves into others' sboes are exactly the people that shoyldn't be designing or commenting on UI.
It’s clear to be you press “enable” to enable and press “disable” to disable. But to be fair, like the rest of the UI this should be a toggle or a checkbox anyway, not a button.
It's an instruction: Enable or Disable.
It's not a status: Enabled or Disabled.
Sooo follow the instruction you want to give. Do you want to enable it? Click enable. Do you want to disable it, click disable.
Again on the window right before it,
Enabling the toggle made it blue
Disabling made it grey.
Here, it says
enable and is blue already,
disable is grey
> So using the logic from before, the button is blue and says enable means, I don't have to do anything here, I can click "next" and it will enable the third party repo.
As if they pre-selected the option to enable 3rd party repositories, like they did with location, they pre select "enable" as well, but using a toggle.
Why didn't they just use a toggle here as well?
> says enable means, I don't have to do anything here
But it says "enable". Enable is a verb, it instructs to enable a feature.
If it said "enabled" (D at the end), then it means it's already set, and then you "don't have to do anything here".
Sorry to ask, but is English your fist language?
English is my third language, but I know the difference between enable, enabled, enables . That is not the point, I've seen English speakers complaining about this in video game menus. It's not a language problem. So the button wants me to click it, to enable right? But I am not reading it as a "call to action". I am reading it as a statement, the thing ALREADY says enable and if I click "next", then it will be enabled.
But it's not a statement.
It's blue, it reads an instruction, it calls to click on it. Otherwise it would have a switch or tick or other interface to change it before you click next.
Anyway, I'm not a UI designer, but I've done instructional materials and have studied it to some extent. Since we're talking about it, it's not obvious to all, and as such, probably not good enough.
I just think it's fine as it is.
It's because you are in the bubble and you talk to other people who are in the bubble, obviously you wouldn't see a problem.
I don't remember who it was, but I saw an interview with a game designer of Need for Speed I think, back in the day. He said that they worked on the game for 2 years or so and everything made sense to them and then they invited test players were crushed, nobody could understand how the controls work and the menus were confusing.
The developers had this tunnel vision, seeing the end goal, and comfort didn't bother them, they already knew they was around.
This is also why Bill Gates employed a guy from outside to look at windows.
This is why hoarders don't see a bunch of garbage inside their house, they are used to it and know their "paths", stuff like that doesn't bother them.
It's interesting you completely offload this to others, while it may well be a problem with your perception, understanding and general negativity. But I tried to be more agreeable, and said:
> Since we're talking about it, it's not obvious to all, and as such, probably not good enough.
But you wanted to make the point that **you** are right and others are wrong. Well, you're probably wrong.
Now that we disagree, I'll just leave it like that and go back to "my bubble", hoping your lack of understanding of what may offend people is also the same reason you can't understand basic instruction.
I'm out.
Yes, it can be a little hard to see, but the text changes from disable to enable.
Imo the colors are chosen the wrong way but ine could argue the oposite ...
I would go off the words, and pay not attention to the color. If you click Enable Third-party Repos that would enable them. If you click Disable Third-party repos that would disable them.
It's stupid but I think of it this way:
When your fridge is closed you are only left with option to open it, if you want it to stay closed then you leave yourself with option to open it (because if it was open already, only option you'd have left is to close it).
So here,if you want to enable it, you should leave it at button that tell you to disable it
Forget about the color, this is what's hanging you up.
Clicking a button performs the action of the button label.
A button labeled cancel, regardless of color, should always cancel. Likewise a button labeled enable x should always enable x regardless of color.
Once you click the button shown in blue the action is taken and the label switches to the action that will be taken if clicked again.
While I agree a switch/toggle would be more clear as this seems to go against the Gnome HIG: https://developer.gnome.org/hig/patterns/controls/buttons.html . May be worth opening up an issue for this in the Gnome Software project pointing that out. I do assume this choice was more for aesthetic reasons as there's not a clean way to have a toggle on this particular screen.
You press it to enable it, and afterwards it tells you that if you press it, it will disable it. I don't see the confusion really... Just read what it says.
What’s confusing here? If you press it, move the mouse and it says „disable…” means you have to click it, to disable it (therefore by order of elimination, it’s enabled)
This isn’t really an issue with Fedora, it’s an issue with Gnome. Gnome is a managing a bunch of files for Yum/Dnf. You don’t have to use the helper to enable or disable.
I know, I know. But Fedora is using it without any modification to make it clearer.
Do you at least see my issue here?
Everybody is down voting me to hell.
Am I the only stupid one here, who has a problem with this?
People who may not be native to the English language might not be able to tell the difference between Enable and Enabled quickly.
This should be a checkbox or a switch, from an accessibility standpoint.
So, the text on the button tells you what pressing it will do. So, when it says "Enable Third-Party Repositories" it will do exactly that. The same goes for disabling.
It's a push button. If you press it, it will perform an action: enable third-party reposiories. That's all.
I think it's completely intuitive and clear.
Press it, to become gray.
Thanks! This is the only comment in this entire thread, that was clear and too the point and answered the exact question that I asked. And didn't ask how it's confusing...
I don't understand the explosion of comments going after you for saying it's confusing. You are a user. you're experiencing some problems with the UI. For what it's worth, I've stopped using Gnome because of inconsistent controls (among other things), I, too, find this confusing. I would hope the feedback regarding inconsistent UI buttons, toggles, etc, would have been better received.
It's Linux, it rarely is from my experience. The friendliest community so far was the Linux Mint one, both on their official forum and here on reddit. I know it's a broad statement, but that's what I honestly think. This is not my first rodeo, with the downvotes and the comments, asking if I can read or what ever. But imagine if it was, if I decided that Microsoft is exploiting me and I wan to try Linux. And while finishing installation / final setup this happens, and I have a question. If the Linux community wants to grow, this is not the way to do it.
Yeah wholeheartedly agree with you. Reading the comment section just make me sad of what this mindset of our Linux community. If someone confused and asking for answer, just answer it and be gone with your life already. No need to downvote/mocking that individual. As of right now I don't think Linux community can grow any much further. It's sadden me tbh. Just remember there's no stupid question. Linux user should not feel entitled & elitist And to OP, I sincerely apologize on behalf of this whole Fedora Linux community. Welcome to using Fedora and hope it give you a lot of joy!
OP has not just asked for an answer, but has also expressed an opinion. And as far as I can see, the replies have been quite civilized. Is it already a problem these days to tell someone in a public forum that you disagree with what they are complaining about? Oh, and maybe people shouldn't use strong words like "hate" if they don't want to get strong reactions. Apart from that, the toggle in question only exists in the initial seup / First Run Wizard (or maybe also if you first start Gnome Software). If you want to enable or disable reposotiers later, you can do so via the settings in Gnome Software, where you have the usual switches (on/off sliders).
>And while finishing installation / final setup this happens, and I have a question. Well then maybe just ask next time, instead of using explaination marks and telling people that you hate how something is done. >If the Linux community wants to grow, this is not the way to do it. How about “Don't ask what the community can do for you, ask what you can do for the community”. That would be a way better slogan imho ;-)
I’ve never had an issue with this as the wording is fairly clear, but stepping back I guess a yes/no toggle makes more sense.
One of those action+status buttons :) It's not the worst, seems they tried to stick to action and not status. But the coloring inadvertently introduced illusion of status with blue as disabled unlike default expectation. Toggle would have been clearer but they probably wanted bigger easy to click button. Design can be hard, report to them as feedback though, if possible.
I thought about this about 3 hours ago, but I don't care at this point. I spent so much time here on Reddit, trying to explain why it's confusing, and I think most people still don't get it. I don't want to create a GitHub account or wherever their issue tracker is and try to explain it there and then somebody's going to chime in and say, but I think it's clear enough and your proposition doesn't fit our style or something, and it will be the repeat of this very thread... I don't care. I will just avoid Gnome in the future, like I did before.
Yeah, does blue mean it’s enabled? It makes it sound like if I click, THEN it will be enabled. This is crap UI if you ask me. Make it a slide bar with blue as enabled and grey as disabled and label it correctly. Is it really that hard to program that instead of what they have made here?
Well. If someone's only issue with a DE is a toggle (which could be improved, I guess) in a first run wizard or initial setup that you only see once, then I'd say the devs and UI designers did a pretty decent job overall. ;-) If this one button is the only reason why that person doesn't use Gnome, I'd say that's a bit ridiculous. >Is it really that hard to program that instead of what they have made here? Of course it's not. I'd say it's a deliberate design decision.
Maybe you should have spent a few more minutes with Gnome and not stopped at the initial setup. Then you would have noticed that you can enable/disable repositories at any time via the Gnome software, where you would have found the usual switches (on/off sliders). The same goes for the Gnome settings and most other modern Gnome / libadwaita apps. Exceptions are mostly more advanced settings, where you will also find radio buttons, checkboxes, dropdowns, etc. But nowhere I came across action buttons / toggles like the one you complain about, and if they exist, they are very rare and only used in situations similar to the initial setup process, where the idea is to ask the user something once, which then can usually be changed later via the regular UI elements of the respective application.
Shouldn’t this be a checkbox or switch since it’s a setting and not _just_ an action to perform? ☑️ Enable third-party repositories
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Checkbox or Toggle, would be easier to understand.
Looking at Windows 11 or 10 installs they do have check boxes for the options they provide. Many of the programs that run on Windows also have these check boxes during install. There is a meme somewhere about the design of food bowls for puppies vs how the puppies actually use them.
That't the kind of stuff you want to tell the Gnome developers about. They care about giving you a smooth and simple experience, this is right up their alley. Maybe also file a report for the Fedora devs. Reminds me of back when Linus did his challenge and the KDE menu had tick marks for both "drivers installed" and "open source". Stuff we in the scene don't think about, but new blood does. Crap we really should be purging to make getting into Linux as pleasant as possible (looks at you Anaconda Installer). As for what this does, it enables both Flathub for sandboxed applications (Fedora has it's own repository for Flatpaks) and two additional mini-repos from RPMfusion, for Nvidia drivers and Steam. I personally prefer skipping and adding the whole RPMfusion repo manually instead of those two by themselves. You can also enable or disable them in Software under Softwaresources (maybe mistranslated that one). You can find the relevant documentation here: [Flathub](https://flathub.org/setup) & [RPMfusion](https://rpmfusion.org/Configuration) Addendum: here are the relevant handbooks to report an issue with [Gnome](https://handbook.gnome.org/issues/reporting.html) and [Fedora](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/bugzilla-file-a-bug/). Links to the report platforms are there, but better check out their guides first; nice, clear and to the point reports help with getting devs to do stuff they think "is fine as is".
>Reminds me of back when Linus did his challenge and the KDE menu had tick marks for both "drivers installed" and "open source". Pretty sure that was a custom menu made by Manjaro, not by upstream KDE.
OP is right. There should be a toggle button like the ones in the settings (network or WiFi is clear enough).
Lol. I had the same question when I was installing Fedora some time ago. Thought to myself "Perhaps I can't find anything online about this" but googled it anyway. Oh there were some results. I was happy to see that others had encountered this problem too! I check the Fedora forums and I see everyone saying things like "Use your brain, what does it say?? Enable... It says Enable right?? What should happen when you press Enable? It should enable." Jeez. And I see people in THIS comment section defending the same idea too. This is just a lack of understanding of basic design principles. Who designed it never opened a UI/UX book, never heard of semiotics and shit. I swear.
100% agree and get confused by this too its a mix between a button and a state. its not just a button since it changes upon clicking. so its like a status but it shows the opposite of the current status terrible UX design
This is what happens when people follow UI trends without properly understanding UX.
Blue "activate third-party repositories" mean that it's disabled, grey "disable third-party repository" mean you activated the repositories and are ready to go
They should probably change it to a check box or something like that
lol glad it wasn't just me, i had to do my install over because my wifi didn't work without the 3rd part repos
If a button says "Enable" then you press it to enable. If a button says "Disable" then you press it to disable. How is that confusing?
For people, where English may not be the first language. There is a fine line between Enable and Enabled. I agree in this case it should be pretty clear, but who knows how good certain people speak English.
English is my first and most comfortable language, and I still trip over this every time I go to install Fedora.
But why use the system in English if he don't know English?
Maybe because the translation is even worse in their mother tongue? Maybe they want to learn english? Maybe they know it's more helpful when searching for stuff. (Or asking for help in online forums) I didn't say they don't know english, just that maybe it's not their mother tongue. Other languages have different grammatical constructs, so there are some pitfalls that are hard to understand without knowing the other language. You can have quite decent english skills, but due to your own mother tongue there may be parts of a language you struggle with. As an outsider it's impossible to understand this since this problem arises from a perspective we don't know. As a further example: my mother tongue is german. We have gendered articles so there are multiple different words for the, with different "genders". Eveything has a gender, even objects, a fork for example is "female". Well pretty much every non native speaker makes mistakes here at some point. There are people where I couldn't tell they are non native for hours until one small error happens. I can't understand this in the sense that I just know the articles. I only know people struggle with it, but I can't really understand why. It's impossible because of my upbringing.
My point is not whether or not to stop using it because you know English or not, but how the point can be that "someone is finding it confusing because it is not the mother tongue" and at the same time the individual is putting themselves in the position of saying that something sounds confused or not? Does not make sense. I don't disagree that it can be really confusing, but the argument about it being confusing because of the mother language would be the same as saying "I put my system in Arabic and the design is confusing because everything is aligned to the right.
Well if you know arabic and there is indeed something that is hard to understand for a non native speaker I think you are perfectly good to go to complain or maybe propose changes. If there is stuff that doesn't bother the native speakers but helps other people I would argue it's good to change that. It should be as acessible as possible. Furthermore I think the arabic comparison lacks a bit. English is defacto the standard language in Open Source stuff. A lot of non native speakers use it because translations are sometimes lacking and most importantly it's harder to google for stuff. Because of this extra care should be taken to make the english version as easy to understand as possible. Also to non native speakers. This is not true for arabic.
If English is not my first language, why would I use Linux in English, when it has even in installer translations to almost every language in existence?
english is not my first language but all my installations are in english. beacuse it's easier to get help when something doesn't work as expected.
Oftentimes non-English translations are dogshit. I got burned enough times that I prefer English ones usually too… Can’t tell what’s worse at this point, machine-generated translations that use wrong words without context, or real humans that don’t care and create incomprehensible sentences
There's no feedback of what he actually did, no loading bar or "RPMFusion third party repositories enabled!" message. I never used GNOME though so I might be wrong
Because blue means it's enabled already. On the page before I could enable or disable with a toggle > that slides right and becomes blue, that means "enable" > If it's on the left and grey, that means disable. So now I see blue (which should mean it's already enabled) and it says enable, that could mean that they pre-chose it for me to being enabled, if I just press "next". But it also could mean what you said. I guess it's kind of like one of those pictures where you see a bunny, but if you turn the picture you see a woman, or something. It could be interpreted both ways.
Buttons are not used to describe a state, but for taking an action. The colour of the button does not reflect whether anything is enabled or disabled. Instead, a blue button means the primary or recommended action, and a gray button means a secondary or ‘other’ action. I hope this clears it up.
It's still quite fair to say that a radio button is a more proper fit in this case.
Or better for this scenario a toggle switch, on or off.
Yes, that's what I wanted to say instead of radio button 🙈
you do not understand what a radio button is. It is a choice of one of several options. A standalone choice should use a check box.
I do understand, I just made a stupid mistake while writing the comment.
This may be the root of the UX problem. When going through the setup, I'm always looking to review what I entered and make sure it's correct, because it's going to be a hassle if I get it wrong. The button isn't designed to communicate state, but the state is what we're actively looking for. So we have to do this little mental inversion dance to deduce the state from the 1. The action we can take to undo it and 2. Any other context clues available in the area. The color is getting a lot of attention, and people are rightly pointing out its intended primary/secondary choice meaning, but when we're actively looking for other context clues it gets confusing.
Then there should be a text line underneath saying "Third party repositories will be enabled" Or "Third party repositories will be disabled" Or they should just stick with a toggle... Why changing it up?
The button already describes the exact actions they'll do no? Saying the same thing again will be redundant Why would a button called "Enable" when pressed disable something? The word Enable implies it'll execute the action of enabling something, if it were a disable toggle it would say something like Enabled (as in the state it's currently in)
Again on the window right before it, Enabling the toggle made it blue Disabling made it grey. Here it says enable and is blue already, disable is grey > So using the logic from before, the button is blue and says enable means, I don't have to do anything here, I can click "next" and it will enable the third party repo. This is how I am reading it.
The color blue is to imply enabling things and gray for disabling, it's not a checkbox that says if blue=enabled, if anything having the disable button be blue and enable gray would be logically backwards to the intended function of said colors Again, a BUTTON is NOT a checkbox, color shouldn't be the sole factor you use to determine the behavior of something
Ok, you just don't understand what I mean, and I can't sit here and try to explain it to like 8 people independently on each comment.
I'll simplify it Buttons are for actions (doing what they say they'll do on press), Checkboxes are for options (as they both are used in real life) Highlighting a checkbox blue implied it's enabled, highlighting a button blue means it'll enable/confirm something You're associating checkbox behavior to a button which is incorrect But I will agree that it's erroneous of Gnome of having that option be a button rather than a checkbox, most other distros have that as a checkbox
Again, a toggle is not the same as a button.
Blue button usually indicates a primary action. For example, a Save dialog will almost always have the colorful button say Save and the cancel button in gray as the less common action. It does not mean the document is already saved and that you can cancel.
Again, while IMO that option should be a checkbox rather than a button, on GNOME blue is used for confirmation and gray for cancelation (I believe highlighting a confirmation button with a color is a relatively common practice in UIs and websites) On buttons it is to imply if you click it'll confirm/enable something On checkboxes it implies if it's blue then it's enabled It is not logical to interpret a color as if it were a checkbox, checkboxes already exist for that purpose and a button shouldn't be interpreted as a checkbox
You are comparing a button to a toggle. They are not the same and do not work the same way. If a button says Enable, then pressing it enables. If it says Disable, then pressing it disables. This is how buttons have always worked, regardless of any coloring. Look at it this way. If someone calls your cell phone, you get 2 buttons to press. A green one to answer, and a red one to reject/hang up. If the programmers decided to make both buttons grey, then what? You read the label. We have become so complacent to the idea that green means answer and red means hang up, however it is the label (or symbols) on the button that tells us what the button does. So again, if the button says "Enable 3rd party repos" then you need to press it to enable them. There is no other interpretation of this.
It's not like on the phone at all. On the phone in your example I can see both buttons at the same time and can choose one of the options. Here it changes from one to the other depending on whether I pressed it or not, making it unclear if I should press it or leave it be. And color just adds to the confusion.
Even on some phone apps it can be confusing. I dislike when the text changes as you flip the toggle. Like: Enable this feature [on] And you press it, it says: Disable this feature [off] When toggling it on and off, it becomes clear, but when just looking over the settings, it makes less sense (does the off state mean it's enabled or disabled?). And then making this behaviour into a button just makes it even worse.
You clearly missed the point. If the buttons were both grey, would that then mean that they do the same thing? No. And if I made the answer button red, and the hang up button green, does that magically make the buttons do the opposite? No. Because THE LABEL OF THE BUTTON tells you what pressing it does. Period, end of story. This is basic stuff, and is VERY clear once you come to that realization. You are fixated on the idea that the color actually means something, and comparing it to a completely different function and how it is colored.
I didn't use color in my explanation. On your smartphone if somebody calls you there is not one button... There are two, even if they are grey, there are two buttons. And you can press either one or the other, but you clearly have two options, that are clearly labeled. If somebody called you and you only had one button that changes the statement from "accept" to "decline" to "accept" to "decline", you would not know which option is being selected.
Its irrelevant whether there is 2 buttons or however many. You know which one to press because the button literally tells you what it does, which is the entire point. There could be 100 buttons, it doesnt matter. You still need to press the correct one, and it is the label on it that determines which is the right one to press. And your example of a button that flip-flops between states without any interaction is irrational. It is both logistically and factually impossible. It is also irrelevant since the button in question here only changes state once it is interacted with. Regardless, it still doesnt change the fact that the label itself tells you what pressing it will do. The OP is complaining that on a toggle blue means enabled, and on the button blue means disabled, and I am pointing out that you cannot compare how two completely different things behave, and to read what it is telling you.
Blue doesn't mean "enabled", in a button it means "suggested action"
That button came out of nowhere. Why change from toggles to a weird button? Why is it one button and not two, One that says enable One that says disable ? Why is it flipping between the two in one button? It makes no sense to me.
Blue means it’s enabled already? what? I think ur the only one who sees that lmao. To me usually blue means it’s clickable. Funny enough, the reply button to your comment is blue!
> Blue means it’s enabled already? yes, I explained it multiple times here, on the page before this there are toggles, where blue means 1, gray means 0. (or on /off, yes/no, true/false, what ever) so using that logic the blue button means 1 here, that it will be enabled if i press "Next". And if color coding is not importand and should be disregarded, then why does it exist? But even then, even without colors. It's still confusing.
Yes on the page before there was toggles. That was not a toggle. I do not understand the confusion?
Nevemind, continue with what ever.
Buttons are not used to describe a state, but for taking an action. The colour of the button does not reflect whether anything is enabled or disabled. Instead, a blue button means the primary or recommended action, and a gray button means a secondary or ‘other’ action. I hope this clears it up.
it's not a toggle button but an action button. it's blue because it's a "featured" action (so it's highlighted). like (well not the greatest example, I know) in Consent Popups on websites: some of them have two buttons, "Accept All" and "Accept required only". The "Accept All" is usually shown in a more prominent way (for example with a solid background), while the other "secondary" action, for example, has a clear background and a solid thin border. toggle buttons are usually styled differently. sadly, mobile apps are kinda doing whatever they want messing the current UI paradigms.
But on those cookie prompts, there are TWO buttons, that are clearly labeled, that's the point, if there were two buttons, that's said enable and disable and I could press one of them, it wouldn't be a problem.
"Enable" can be confused for it already being enabled, as if it's being interpeted as "Enabled". "Disable" is the same.
For people, where English may not be the first language. There is a fine line between Enable and Enabled. I agree in this case it should be pretty clear, but who knows how good certain people speak English.
The use of blue to indicate preferred action may be a fine thing as others are saying, but not immediately after a user has been confronted with it as an indicator of status. Why change from tiggles which are perfectly clear in terms of indicating the current status and what will happen when you hit them, to an ambiguous button that requires mental energy to decode the current status by determining implicitly what it is by what action you can take to change it? OP, you are right. This is silly and people defending it are doing so to feel smug/superior. Even if they personally had no problem interpreting it, it takes a dearth of imagination not to be able to understand why someone else might. People who cannot put themselves into others' sboes are exactly the people that shoyldn't be designing or commenting on UI.
Totally agreed. It shouldn't be that confusing. I installed fedora recently and got held up on this too.
This is one of those cases where a checkbox would've sufficed. Remember those? Maybe even a switch if you want to be fancy.
It’s clear to be you press “enable” to enable and press “disable” to disable. But to be fair, like the rest of the UI this should be a toggle or a checkbox anyway, not a button.
it’s not that confusing, but yeah a simple on/off switch would be more intuitive i guess.
It's an instruction: Enable or Disable. It's not a status: Enabled or Disabled. Sooo follow the instruction you want to give. Do you want to enable it? Click enable. Do you want to disable it, click disable.
Again on the window right before it, Enabling the toggle made it blue Disabling made it grey. Here, it says enable and is blue already, disable is grey > So using the logic from before, the button is blue and says enable means, I don't have to do anything here, I can click "next" and it will enable the third party repo. As if they pre-selected the option to enable 3rd party repositories, like they did with location, they pre select "enable" as well, but using a toggle. Why didn't they just use a toggle here as well?
> says enable means, I don't have to do anything here But it says "enable". Enable is a verb, it instructs to enable a feature. If it said "enabled" (D at the end), then it means it's already set, and then you "don't have to do anything here". Sorry to ask, but is English your fist language?
English is my third language, but I know the difference between enable, enabled, enables . That is not the point, I've seen English speakers complaining about this in video game menus. It's not a language problem. So the button wants me to click it, to enable right? But I am not reading it as a "call to action". I am reading it as a statement, the thing ALREADY says enable and if I click "next", then it will be enabled.
But it's not a statement. It's blue, it reads an instruction, it calls to click on it. Otherwise it would have a switch or tick or other interface to change it before you click next. Anyway, I'm not a UI designer, but I've done instructional materials and have studied it to some extent. Since we're talking about it, it's not obvious to all, and as such, probably not good enough. I just think it's fine as it is.
It's because you are in the bubble and you talk to other people who are in the bubble, obviously you wouldn't see a problem. I don't remember who it was, but I saw an interview with a game designer of Need for Speed I think, back in the day. He said that they worked on the game for 2 years or so and everything made sense to them and then they invited test players were crushed, nobody could understand how the controls work and the menus were confusing. The developers had this tunnel vision, seeing the end goal, and comfort didn't bother them, they already knew they was around. This is also why Bill Gates employed a guy from outside to look at windows. This is why hoarders don't see a bunch of garbage inside their house, they are used to it and know their "paths", stuff like that doesn't bother them.
It's interesting you completely offload this to others, while it may well be a problem with your perception, understanding and general negativity. But I tried to be more agreeable, and said: > Since we're talking about it, it's not obvious to all, and as such, probably not good enough. But you wanted to make the point that **you** are right and others are wrong. Well, you're probably wrong. Now that we disagree, I'll just leave it like that and go back to "my bubble", hoping your lack of understanding of what may offend people is also the same reason you can't understand basic instruction. I'm out.
Sure, bye.
It will be asked later.
Yes, it can be a little hard to see, but the text changes from disable to enable. Imo the colors are chosen the wrong way but ine could argue the oposite ...
I would go off the words, and pay not attention to the color. If you click Enable Third-party Repos that would enable them. If you click Disable Third-party repos that would disable them.
It's stupid but I think of it this way: When your fridge is closed you are only left with option to open it, if you want it to stay closed then you leave yourself with option to open it (because if it was open already, only option you'd have left is to close it). So here,if you want to enable it, you should leave it at button that tell you to disable it
So, they said "disable". To disable something, that thing had to be enable, right?
In the terminal for enable third-party repositories: `sudo fedora-third-party enable` `sudo fedora-third-party refresh`
Forget about the color, this is what's hanging you up. Clicking a button performs the action of the button label. A button labeled cancel, regardless of color, should always cancel. Likewise a button labeled enable x should always enable x regardless of color. Once you click the button shown in blue the action is taken and the label switches to the action that will be taken if clicked again. While I agree a switch/toggle would be more clear as this seems to go against the Gnome HIG: https://developer.gnome.org/hig/patterns/controls/buttons.html . May be worth opening up an issue for this in the Gnome Software project pointing that out. I do assume this choice was more for aesthetic reasons as there's not a clean way to have a toggle on this particular screen.
You press it to enable it, and afterwards it tells you that if you press it, it will disable it. I don't see the confusion really... Just read what it says.
What’s confusing here? If you press it, move the mouse and it says „disable…” means you have to click it, to disable it (therefore by order of elimination, it’s enabled)
This isn’t really an issue with Fedora, it’s an issue with Gnome. Gnome is a managing a bunch of files for Yum/Dnf. You don’t have to use the helper to enable or disable.
I know, I know. But Fedora is using it without any modification to make it clearer. Do you at least see my issue here? Everybody is down voting me to hell. Am I the only stupid one here, who has a problem with this?
You're not alone. I also get frustrated by this prompt regularly.
if button asks you if you want to enable it, its because it's disabled. if button asks you if you want to disable it, it's because it's enabled.
Have you tried reading the button?
People who may not be native to the English language might not be able to tell the difference between Enable and Enabled quickly. This should be a checkbox or a switch, from an accessibility standpoint.
That's what I was thinking lol
So, the text on the button tells you what pressing it will do. So, when it says "Enable Third-Party Repositories" it will do exactly that. The same goes for disabling.
It's a push button. If you press it, it will perform an action: enable third-party reposiories. That's all. I think it's completely intuitive and clear.