Posted by
Roblimo
on from the we-need-more-stories-like-this dept.
GauteL writes "Sigurd Rinde, a typical desktop user, talks about how Linux can replace Windows for everyday use.
He talks about word processing, presentations, Web editing,
accounting, calendars, etc.
Read more
here."
Maybe the writer wears suits, but he's hardly a typical non-tech user. As soon as he talks about compiling and vi v. emacs, he's disqualified.
Still a really interesting write-up, though. Just don't point to this as proof that your PHB could survive in a Linux world yet.
Re:Hooboy: the "typical user"
by
Crixus
·
· Score: 4
Wake up people! The typical desktop user doesn't understand the difference between "netscape" and their operating system! If you unplug their keyboards in the night they will call tech support in the morning! They run their monitors in 640x480x256 because they don't realize there are any other settings!
Yes! I love it when I see someone get a system shipped to their door with a 19" monitor and the screen settings are exactly that, 640x480x256.
The Start button is roughly the size of a house on a 19" monitor in that resolution. I don't switch them to 800x600 or 1024x768 because it's likely a better resolution for them with that monitor, I switch them because I swear that once the huge start button tried to kill me.
One day, before Netscape.com was a portal, I was asked by a cousin what search engine I used, "Yahoo or Netscape."
It was difficult helping him to understand the difference.
"...and so, as the sun sets on Slashdot World, everything is hunky-dorie and everyone lived happily ever after and without Microsoft."
While I respect the opinions of the author of this article, I have to say that in my experience the apps for Linux just aren't up to the same caliber as those available for Windows yet. I mean, can you show me a mail client as powerful and easy to use as Outlook Express? How about a word processor with the feature set of Word (and I know a lot of/. readers think of a spell checker as "bloatware", but some of us like having a lot of options we can configure).
What's more irritating about articles such as this one is that they don't really serve a productive purpose to us as a community of developers. It glosses over the failings of Linux, and this is a Bad Thing(tm). Remember the "Jihad Tux" icon on Suck back a couple of months ago? It was funny, but it was a bad omen as well.
I suppose this article in particular is just serving as a final straw to me. Lately I've noticed a really disturbing trend towards self-congratulation in the OSS movement, and especially on this particular discussion board. Criticism of Linux is less and less welcome while this sort of wanking is on the upswing.
Look, sitting around patting ourselves on the back while ignoring the deficiancies in our software is the exact same behavior that we love to flame companies like Microsoft for. It feels good to convince ourselves that Linux is finally "there" and that anyone who can't use it is just an idiot. It feels good to think that even a "suit" can use it now. It feels good, but it's not true -- not yet.
When I first installed Slackware (waaay back when), it was nearly impossible to deal with as a newbie with no previous UNIX experience. Linux has come a very long way; I won't dispute that. It's not a replacement for Windows yet, however, and we as a development community aren't doing ourselves any favors by pretending (as an example, not a flame) that the GIMP can hold a candle to Photoshop yet.
I am conviced that the OSS development paradigm will lead to a better product that any closed paradigm. I am also convinced, however, that if the community loses their focus that the OSS paradigm breaks down. Flaming the "non-believers", trolling about "suits", preaching to the choir and pretending that flaws don't exist are all symptoms of this loss of focus.
Now, I'm not trying to discourage discussion. I'm not trying to sell short the efforts of the people developing Linux and various OSS apps. I'm not trying to suggest that the whole community is one way or the other, nor am I forgetting that Linux kicks ass in particular areas. I'm not saying that the people who developed the OSS paradigm or who work on the software don't deserve a vast amount of credit.
What I want to point out is that self-congradulation (which is how I view this article) is inherantly dangerous to the future of the paradigm from a Big Picture point of view. It should be recognized as such, and should be avoided whenever possible.
----
-- Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
About time... what Linux needs to truly take off is support from the average desktop user, not just the techies and power users. I just hope we see more favorable reviews from "average" people and that these reviews encourage other "average" users to run Linux on their PC. It's important to recognize that Linux isn't just a server OS, it can work well as an office platform too.
No, it's not. Whatever you do folks, don't get complacent. Linux is NOT ready for the average user yet.
Roadmap:
1. Forget skins. They're bullshit. Concentrate on UI design - flash can come later.
2. Make your UI consistent across apps. Someone needs to come up with a "Linux UI style guide" - preferably have some kind of library that does standard keybindings and mouse handling - eg. for context menus. These things vary so wildly between apps right now (heck, even cut & paste varies wildly between apps right now) that it makes using the computer a jarring experience.
3. Design GUI apps for the GUI - that is, don't think in terms of command-line apps. Too many GUI apps (heck, look at KDE & the basic bits you get with Corel Linux) look and feel like someone decided to switch to a command-line app at the last moment. Developers - try coding the GUI first, and then work on the internals - not the other way around. The GUI should NOT be tacked on at the end.
4. Do usability tests on your granny. If she can't get it (and if she can, she musn't be related to Ada Lovelace), then you're doing it wrong. Take notes, and go back to the drawing board.
5. Try running Linux without editing a text file for configuration / using the keyboard for anything except data entry. If you can't, it's not ready yet.
6. Provide: a. Duhhhh-level install. That is - you insert the disk, you hit OK, it does it. b. User interviews (find out their needs and provide them a list of options based on them) for the medium level install. c. Techy level install - that is, you let them customize to the nth degree. d. Provide a,b,c in all your apps.
7. Help should be context sensitive, and never more than a STANDARD KEYBOARD SHORTCUT away.
8. If it looks like an idiot could use your app, you've not made it easy enough. You've designed it for a pretty smart idiot.
Simon [... wonders if anyone would be willing to take me on as Linux GUI Czar.. hmmmm... have to look into that]
Hooboy: the "typical user"
by
konstant
·
· Score: 5
You know your market perspective is skewed when...
Roblimo calls a guy with a three computers at home running over a lan he installed himself, and who waxes nostalgic for his old HTML editor a "typical desktop user".
Wake up people! The typical desktop user doesn't understand the difference between "netscape" and their operating system! If you unplug their keyboards in the night they will call tech support in the morning! They run their monitors in 640x480x256 because they don't realize there are any other settings!
If you're planning on marketing Linux to the masses, at least get the character sketch straight. This guy is at least what you could call a "power user". Hell, I'm sure some of the people on this board who call themselves "geeks" couldn't do have of what he's apparently done.
-konstant Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-- -konstant Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
First of all, good for him, it'll no doubt save him money in someway...but I have a few grumbles with what he says anyway...
Have to admit that I was inclined to do my best to end my relationship with MS (costly stuff that, forty percent plus margin kind of makes me uneasy in the have-I-been-taken-for-a-ride department)
Where does he get 40% from? How does he know how much Microsoft spends in R&D?
Word can easily be replaced by Wordperfect, Staroffice or Abiword. Quite satisfactory, and MSWord files are no problem.
Yeah, if all you use words for is just typing up stuff, Word has MANY features, most people only use 5% of the features, but not everyone uses the same 5%. In many areas, Staroffice and Wordperfect fail (good antialiased fonts is a BIG area). Table support, integration (eg. embedd other documents like excel/pdf/ etc are lacking. He probably does use these, but then, if all he needs is 'abiword', then maybe he would be just as happy with a simple editor like notepad or wordpad.
Somebody has a question that you are about to answer in slide 14. I 'click' forward to 14 and then back again. (try that in Powerpoint).
Uh, maybe he should look at PowerPoint again. Linus likes PowerPoint right?:P
This is where I see a glaring gap among the Linux applications. Netscape is useful (but unstable), best solution I guess is having a Palm Pilot in conjunction with Kpilot or Jpilot.
On the dot;).
And the few times I needed a helping hand both Mandrake and Caldera did their best without sending me through the hoops of four levels of interrogation before support - MS style
Oh, I dunno, I've found Microsoft to be the best support company (in my own experience). But then, I deal mostly with developer support where they ship you like service pack cds by courier to your door:). I've heard phone support is pretty crappy, but web based support is good. I've always had personal responses from my emails to Microsoft.
I think a lot of what the guy is saying hovers around the 'correct' mark, but it depends so much on your personal needs. A lot of the reason why everyone uses Office is because there's a huge 3rd party market for plugins and applications based on Office. I mean, you can write a (small) accouting system using Excel and macros alone, and heaps of people use Excel for exactly that. Unix is damn good for shell scripting, but Windows is damn good for business/producvitiy app scripting and integration. Want to reuse IE in your word document to render VML drawings, with vector data coming from an Access database? No problem. COM. Want to play an MPEG video in your power point app using Windows Media Player? No problem. COM. Want to add your power point presentation into a word document, and also display an excel sheet inside your powerpoint presentation? No problem. COM.
etc. KOffice/KDE is making huge strides towards this, but still has a way to go.
If all you need to do is to type up letters, then spending money of Office is stoopid. But just don't think that that's all Office does.
There are two problems with this post. The first problem is that the HREF tag is incorrect--the closing is not formed correctly so the link doesn't work. The second problem is that the bitmap doesn't correctly identify this post as a joke.
This guy is a typical user? You're joking, right?
He indicates that he's presently using three different distributions of Linux, and has recompiled (at least one of them) 3 times. He has a home network, with a full-time Internet connection. He "naturally" chose KDE over Gnome, and prefers vi to emacs.
He's a "typical" user. Right.
I don't like to see "end luser" comments, because those end users are the people who pay us. (If half of my clients had half a clue, I'd be looking for a real job....) But to suggest that this guy is anything like a "typical" end user is too much--way too much.
The "typical" user turns off his computer, but leaves the monitor on--and thinks he's saving energy. Or he turns the monitor off, but leaves the computer on, thinking the whole thing is off. The typical user carefully types his password on his notebook when he boots it up on the airplane--otherwise that heavy-duty security won't let him into his files. The typical user hopes that someday the computer support geeks will stop giggling about the time he demanded immediate onsite response, and the "critical problem" turned out to be that the monitor was unplugged.
All joking aside, how typical is this guy? Would any of us pass this article along to "typical" users at an employer's, or at client's? How many typical users that we know would be able to read through the first paragraph and understand what it means? If this is any realistic notion of a "typical" user, ESR (et al)'s dream of "taking over the world" is a joke--because the vast majority of the world simply can't read that first paragraph.
When Windows 95 was being reviewed one of the Microsoft project leaders defined a very simple metric: "can my mother use this?" You can prate all you want about the stability and reliability of *nix or *BSD--but until all of our mothers are chatting on Linux boxen there simply isn't going to be a place in the desktop market for Linux (et al). My (67-year-old) mother is happily using Windows 95. She uses CompuServe for email, and has yet to explore the Web--she thinks it would be more complication than she has time to put up with. Would I expect Mom to recompile Mandrake 6.0 3 times to deal with "Level 5 problems"?
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe the writer wears suits, but he's hardly a typical non-tech user. As soon as he talks about compiling and vi v. emacs, he's disqualified.
Still a really interesting write-up, though. Just don't point to this as proof that your PHB could survive in a Linux world yet.
Yes! I love it when I see someone get a system shipped to their door with a 19" monitor and the screen settings are exactly that, 640x480x256.
The Start button is roughly the size of a house on a 19" monitor in that resolution. I don't switch them to 800x600 or 1024x768 because it's likely a better resolution for them with that monitor, I switch them because I swear that once the huge start button tried to kill me.
One day, before Netscape.com was a portal, I was asked by a cousin what search engine I used, "Yahoo or Netscape."
It was difficult helping him to understand the difference.
Ignore Alien Orders
While I respect the opinions of the author of this article, I have to say that in my experience the apps for Linux just aren't up to the same caliber as those available for Windows yet. I mean, can you show me a mail client as powerful and easy to use as Outlook Express? How about a word processor with the feature set of Word (and I know a lot of /. readers think of a spell checker as "bloatware", but some of us like having a lot of options we can configure).
What's more irritating about articles such as this one is that they don't really serve a productive purpose to us as a community of developers. It glosses over the failings of Linux, and this is a Bad Thing(tm). Remember the "Jihad Tux" icon on Suck back a couple of months ago? It was funny, but it was a bad omen as well.
I suppose this article in particular is just serving as a final straw to me. Lately I've noticed a really disturbing trend towards self-congratulation in the OSS movement, and especially on this particular discussion board. Criticism of Linux is less and less welcome while this sort of wanking is on the upswing.
Look, sitting around patting ourselves on the back while ignoring the deficiancies in our software is the exact same behavior that we love to flame companies like Microsoft for. It feels good to convince ourselves that Linux is finally "there" and that anyone who can't use it is just an idiot. It feels good to think that even a "suit" can use it now. It feels good, but it's not true -- not yet.
When I first installed Slackware (waaay back when), it was nearly impossible to deal with as a newbie with no previous UNIX experience. Linux has come a very long way; I won't dispute that. It's not a replacement for Windows yet, however, and we as a development community aren't doing ourselves any favors by pretending (as an example, not a flame) that the GIMP can hold a candle to Photoshop yet.
I am conviced that the OSS development paradigm will lead to a better product that any closed paradigm. I am also convinced, however, that if the community loses their focus that the OSS paradigm breaks down. Flaming the "non-believers", trolling about "suits", preaching to the choir and pretending that flaws don't exist are all symptoms of this loss of focus.
Now, I'm not trying to discourage discussion. I'm not trying to sell short the efforts of the people developing Linux and various OSS apps. I'm not trying to suggest that the whole community is one way or the other, nor am I forgetting that Linux kicks ass in particular areas. I'm not saying that the people who developed the OSS paradigm or who work on the software don't deserve a vast amount of credit.
What I want to point out is that self-congradulation (which is how I view this article) is inherantly dangerous to the future of the paradigm from a Big Picture point of view. It should be recognized as such, and should be avoided whenever possible.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
About time... what Linux needs to truly take off is support from the average desktop user, not just the techies and power users. I just hope we see more favorable reviews from "average" people and that these reviews encourage other "average" users to run Linux on their PC. It's important to recognize that Linux isn't just a server OS, it can work well as an office platform too.
No, it's not. Whatever you do folks, don't get complacent. Linux is NOT ready for the average user yet.
Roadmap:
1. Forget skins. They're bullshit. Concentrate on UI design - flash can come later.
2. Make your UI consistent across apps. Someone needs to come up with a "Linux UI style guide" - preferably have some kind of library that does standard keybindings and mouse handling - eg. for context menus. These things vary so wildly between apps right now (heck, even cut & paste varies wildly between apps right now) that it makes using the computer a jarring experience.
3. Design GUI apps for the GUI - that is, don't think in terms of command-line apps. Too many GUI apps (heck, look at KDE & the basic bits you get with Corel Linux) look and feel like someone decided to switch to a command-line app at the last moment. Developers - try coding the GUI first, and then work on the internals - not the other way around. The GUI should NOT be tacked on at the end.
4. Do usability tests on your granny. If she can't get it (and if she can, she musn't be related to Ada Lovelace), then you're doing it wrong. Take notes, and go back to the drawing board.
5. Try running Linux without editing a text file for configuration / using the keyboard for anything except data entry. If you can't, it's not ready yet.
6. Provide:
a. Duhhhh-level install. That is - you insert the disk, you hit OK, it does it.
b. User interviews (find out their needs and provide them a list of options based on them) for the medium level install.
c. Techy level install - that is, you let them customize to the nth degree.
d. Provide a,b,c in all your apps.
7. Help should be context sensitive, and never more than a STANDARD KEYBOARD SHORTCUT away.
8. If it looks like an idiot could use your app, you've not made it easy enough. You've designed it for a pretty smart idiot.
Simon
[... wonders if anyone would be willing to take me on as Linux GUI Czar.. hmmmm... have to look into that]
Coming soon - pyrogyra
You know your market perspective is skewed when...
Roblimo calls a guy with a three computers at home running over a lan he installed himself, and who waxes nostalgic for his old HTML editor a "typical desktop user".
Wake up people! The typical desktop user doesn't understand the difference between "netscape" and their operating system! If you unplug their keyboards in the night they will call tech support in the morning! They run their monitors in 640x480x256 because they don't realize there are any other settings!
If you're planning on marketing Linux to the masses, at least get the character sketch straight. This guy is at least what you could call a "power user". Hell, I'm sure some of the people on this board who call themselves "geeks" couldn't do have of what he's apparently done.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
First of all, good for him, it'll no doubt save him money in someway...but I have a few grumbles with what he says anyway...
:P
;).
:). I've heard phone support is pretty crappy, but web based support is good. I've always had personal responses from my emails to Microsoft.
Have to admit that I was inclined to do my best to end my relationship with MS (costly stuff that, forty percent plus margin kind of makes me uneasy in the have-I-been-taken-for-a-ride department)
Where does he get 40% from? How does he know how much Microsoft spends in R&D?
Word can easily be replaced by Wordperfect, Staroffice or Abiword. Quite satisfactory, and MSWord files are no problem.
Yeah, if all you use words for is just typing up stuff, Word has MANY features, most people only use 5% of the features, but not everyone uses the same 5%. In many areas, Staroffice and Wordperfect fail (good antialiased fonts is a BIG area). Table support, integration (eg. embedd other documents like excel/pdf/ etc are lacking. He probably does use these, but then, if all he needs is 'abiword', then maybe he would be just as happy with a simple editor like notepad or wordpad.
Somebody has a question that you are about to answer in slide 14. I 'click' forward to 14 and then back again. (try that in Powerpoint).
Uh, maybe he should look at PowerPoint again. Linus likes PowerPoint right?
This is where I see a glaring gap among the Linux applications. Netscape is useful (but unstable), best solution I guess is having a Palm Pilot in conjunction with Kpilot or Jpilot.
On the dot
And the few times I needed a helping hand both Mandrake and Caldera did their best without sending me through the hoops of four levels of interrogation before support - MS style
Oh, I dunno, I've found Microsoft to be the best support company (in my own experience). But then, I deal mostly with developer support where they ship you like service pack cds by courier to your door
I think a lot of what the guy is saying hovers around the 'correct' mark, but it depends so much on your personal needs. A lot of the reason why everyone uses Office is because there's a huge 3rd party market for plugins and applications based on Office. I mean, you can write a (small) accouting system using Excel and macros alone, and heaps of people use Excel for exactly that. Unix is damn good for shell scripting, but Windows is damn good for business/producvitiy app scripting and integration. Want to reuse IE in your word document to render VML drawings, with vector data coming from an Access database? No problem. COM. Want to play an MPEG video in your power point app using Windows Media Player? No problem. COM. Want to add your power point presentation into a word document, and also display an excel sheet inside your powerpoint presentation? No problem. COM.
etc. KOffice/KDE is making huge strides towards this, but still has a way to go.
If all you need to do is to type up letters, then spending money of Office is stoopid. But just don't think that that's all Office does.
There are two problems with this post. The first problem is that the HREF tag is incorrect--the closing is not formed correctly so the link doesn't work. The second problem is that the bitmap doesn't correctly identify this post as a joke.
This guy is a typical user? You're joking, right?
He indicates that he's presently using three different distributions of Linux, and has recompiled (at least one of them) 3 times. He has a home network, with a full-time Internet connection. He "naturally" chose KDE over Gnome, and prefers vi to emacs.
He's a "typical" user. Right.
I don't like to see "end luser" comments, because those end users are the people who pay us. (If half of my clients had half a clue, I'd be looking for a real job....) But to suggest that this guy is anything like a "typical" end user is too much--way too much.
The "typical" user turns off his computer, but leaves the monitor on--and thinks he's saving energy. Or he turns the monitor off, but leaves the computer on, thinking the whole thing is off. The typical user carefully types his password on his notebook when he boots it up on the airplane--otherwise that heavy-duty security won't let him into his files. The typical user hopes that someday the computer support geeks will stop giggling about the time he demanded immediate onsite response, and the "critical problem" turned out to be that the monitor was unplugged.
All joking aside, how typical is this guy? Would any of us pass this article along to "typical" users at an employer's, or at client's? How many typical users that we know would be able to read through the first paragraph and understand what it means? If this is any realistic notion of a "typical" user, ESR (et al)'s dream of "taking over the world" is a joke--because the vast majority of the world simply can't read that first paragraph.
When Windows 95 was being reviewed one of the Microsoft project leaders defined a very simple metric: "can my mother use this?" You can prate all you want about the stability and reliability of *nix or *BSD--but until all of our mothers are chatting on Linux boxen there simply isn't going to be a place in the desktop market for Linux (et al). My (67-year-old) mother is happily using Windows 95. She uses CompuServe for email, and has yet to explore the Web--she thinks it would be more complication than she has time to put up with. Would I expect Mom to recompile Mandrake 6.0 3 times to deal with "Level 5 problems"?
You must be kidding....