Slashdot Mirror
Penguin Airlines
An anonymous reader writes "DesktopLinux.com interviews Chris Stevens, President of Penguin Airlines about his young venture's business model that includes using Linux in all aspects from the ground up -- from desktops to the reservations system! 'Tux' is more than just a name for this new air taxi service which brings convenient, economical, time-saving air travel via the shortest route between home and destination." They wrote an essay about their business plans, and their heavily computerized jets look nifty as well. CD:Those interested in the aviation side of things should check out James Fallows book "Free Flight" as well.
Takes a team of 4 people reading faqs for 2 hours just to figure out how to get the damn landing gear to retract.
...but the landing gear on the airplanes that THOSE people operate will NEVER fail.
MS: Click here to retract landing gear.
Q105832 The "Click here to retract landing gear" button has no corresponding button to deploy landing gear. This will be addressed in the next hotfix or service pack or feature upgrade or automatic update. Please remain in the air until this is released. Your purchase is important to us.
Linux: OK, now that you've finished studying physics, chemistry, metallurgy, aeronautical engineering, and CNC mill operation (ie how to machine your own parts from raw bits of metal - preferable ones you cast yourself, but if you want to be a non-free kinda guy you can buy the metal), it should be obvious to you that turning this crank will open/close the landing bay doors while lowering/raising the landing gear, depending on whether you turn it clockwise/counterclockwise. Visit the GNOME project for instructions on installing an electric motor with a button that will retract the landing gear. There's not a corresponding instructions for installing a motor for deployment because MS aircraft don't work that way, but feel free to turn the crank manually.
"A well trained agent could get information faster than with any fancy point and click UI."
'Fancy point and click UI's have advantages that keyboards don't have, and vice versa. I know DOS really well, and I'm able to take advantage of that to fly around Windows. But, not everything can be done easily from a keyboard. Don't forget that not every agent is 'well trained'. There's still the matter of giving the user clues as to what he/she needs to do in order to make the computer do what they want.
Microsoft and Apple both understand this and give you very helpful pointers. You can click on File and hit Open, or you can Alt+F then O. If you click on File, you'll see that the O in Open has an underscore in it, thus familiarizing yourself with productivity enhancements of the app you're using.
The short version of what I'm saying is that one isn't 100% superior to the other, so don't treat them that way. The mouse and the keyboard (as well as text and graphics) compliment each other, they don't compete with each other.
My comment that started this thread was not a 'Linux doesnt have a UI so nobody can do any work' joke, it was a "Linux doesn't give enough visual clues to the user" joke. The 'I didnt see that command had a vowel' joke made after my post was funny as hell because even in the text side of Linux this is true. Linux has a wonderful helpfile system, but the command to call it is a little cryptic. 'Man'. It's not 'manual', it's 'man'. So the mapping is a bit broken here. You have to remember the short form of manual, as opposed to just remembering manual. That's a huge UI problem with Linux, it isn't very helpful if you don't have the commands you need to use memorized. That's a bit different from a graphical UI that shows you what options you have available for you to use at any given time.
I think this is a legitimate criticism of Linux. I really hope more attention is paid to this aspect of it in the near future. The OS is very sophisticated and extremely flexible, but it needs a lot of evolution in the user-experience department in order to win a larger market share. Is this important to the Linux Community? Oh I dunno. What could it possibly hurt, though?