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Windows XP Edges Out KDE in Usability Test
AstroDrabb writes "Linux, once viewed as an operating system that only computer geeks could appreciate, is today a much more user-friendly software that companies, public administrations and consumers can master almost as easily as Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP."
What like you could do any of those task on a stock non-OEM version of windows without pre-configuring?
Last I checked... the windows XP cd burning software that was built in was a pain in the ass. Try burning an ISO. And windows XP itself doesn't have an office suite now does it...
Where as most linux distros come with a whole shitload of application by default.
I touch computers in naughty places
Actually windows since 2k has virtual desktop via powertools iirc. Its just not a very advertised feature because it doesn't work very well. But it is there.
Win2k doesn't have it's own pwertools. Powertools up until winXP has been a combination of tools for all win32 OSes. The WinXP one does have a virtual desktop util that's decent (probably the best one available for windows) but isn't nearly as good as in linux. The previous powertools did not have multidesk utils. I have a demo of a program called "enable" that i get by with, but it's definitely not worth paying for. It has some major flaws.
if(!cool) exit(-1);
Um, hello. Go to MS, download powertoys, right click on the taskbar, go to toolbars, check desktop manager, and viola, msvdm with support for 4 desktops you can toggle between or view all 4 at once. How much simpler can that be?
The title on slashdot is misleading--the study compares Suse 8.2 Pro (with KDE as the desktop environment) with Windows XP. It then says it kept track of how long it took users to complete certain tasks, such as word processing, sending email, copying CDs (don't let the RIAA find out about this study), and managing files, to name a few. These things can be done by KApplications alone, but you would have to know what SuSE makes as the default email client (Mozilla, KMail, Evolution), word processor (OO Writer, KWrite), and cd writer (K3B, X-CD-Roast, cdrecord (ok, not for people new to Linux)). This title could be better titled as "Windows XP Edges Out SuSE in Usability Test".
Unfortunately, I won't know what applications users were expected to use or did use for a couple days.
my wife switched back to redhat after using xp for a few months. said she preferred the control linux gave her. she's a writer, not a ubergeek woman. even uses openoffice. *note to openoffice crew: make the word count function easier to find!* =)
Considering Microsoft fortune of, according to this website (http://www.microsoft.com/usability/lab.htm) :
Most of our research is conducted in Usability Labs based in Redmond, WA. On average, approximately 750 participants per month evaluate our software. A database of 35,000 people in the Seattle area helps us find the right person to match the profile required for each given study.
MS has invested millions of dollars (and hours) on usability testing on its software. To consider that KDE is rated almost equally should be humbling to its UI designers and programmers. Way to go.... can't wait for KDE 4!
I am sleepy (it's 10:20pm here) and working in the other window (doing some paperwork), so I can't go to bed yet. :(
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The second paragraph says that a full english report will be available in a few days. This is just a write-up.
Good point. Can any of our German colleagues take a look at the detailed article (not available in Englisch yet) and let us know if this is addressed?
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
I don't know exactly what you mean by extension as opposed to program, but PowerPro (www.windowspowerpro.com) includes vdesks among its uncountable number of great features. In fact, I find the PowerPro implementation to be considerably superior to, and more powerful than, the KDE version.
In my irrelevant opinion, the two Big Missing Applications in Linux are PowerPro and GoBack. But I expect that I am the only person in the world with that opinion.
Sigh; having praised a couple of Windows-only programs, I suppose I'll be modded down now. So in an attempt to pre-empt that possibility, please note that it's the applications I like, not the OS.
Windows Media Player is the only one of those that's made by Microsoft...
We can change the numbers. And the results have already started coming in: Unreal Tournament 2003. Neverwinter Nights. This is native support we're talking here. I run NWN on my debian box. The install was cake and it runs faster than on Windows. Today, the nerd games, tomorrow, EverQuest and Links...
For instance, I've got Ctrl+Alt+Z bound to my command prompt and Ctrl+Alt+V bound to gvim, along with many others.
Hope this helps!
Emerald Astrology
I think it probably is. At the company I used to work for I had an ATI card with it's own program. It was pretty good, but it had a few issues. Every once in a while I would lose a window. And if you were debugging with MSVC 6.0 and hit a breakpoint you would be locked onto the current desktop until you started the program again. It really sucks if you happen to be on the wrong desktop in that case. Especially since you can't shut down while debugging and you can't end the task while debugging. You pretty much have to hard-reboot. I blame that on low-level hacks in MSVC, though.
if(!cool) exit(-1);
No one seems to care about virtuawin because it would prove many people's statements of "Windows sucks" wrong. Oh well...
Um, hello. Go to MS, download powertoys, right click on the taskbar, go to toolbars, check desktop manager, and viola, msvdm with support for 4 desktops you can toggle between or view all 4 at once. How much simpler can that be?
It could be simpler if the virtual desktops didn't screw up every 5 minutes. Having a snapshot snapshot of the windows on each desktop in the toolbar would also be nice, rather than the useless full-screen pager.
I used the multiple desktop powertoy for a month, and kept getting stuck on a desktop (because a program "wasn't responding fast enough"). Windows and dialog boxes would also randomly disappear. MSVDM is a totally flawed dektop manager.
I really don't see KDE or any other linux desktop software beating Windows or MacOS in usabilities tests anytime soon.
You say that as if usability tests actually test something concrete and meaningful, like mass or height or temperature. But they don't really. Usability testing isn't physics. Yes, KDE may do slightly worse in usability tests than Windows, but what does that actually mean? At most it means that it takes a little more time to learn a few more quirks that the KDE interface has. Big deal. In return, KDE is also a more featureful interface and comes with a lot more software out of the box. Usability is only one of many things to optimize for in a piece of software, and it is not the most important one in many applications.
In fact, the fact that the users in the study had "prior computer skills" suggests that they had experience with Windows-like interfaces, which means that most likely a significant part of the slight Windows XP advantage was simply due to familiarity.
What this test shows is that KDE is in the ballpark, and that's all that is really needed.
KDE and GNOME keep playing catchup to windows instead of leading the way.
Many open source projects are unashamedly about providing open source versions of closed-source systems, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Sure there are some unique features, but the bulk of linux desktop development is recreating features that windows and macos have had for years.
Yes, and Microsoft and Apple copied many of those features from yet other systems. That's the way business and product development work: you look at what works in the market and you copy as much of it as you legally can. There is nothing wrong with that.
The KDE team does unquestionably good work, but they are going to need to keep stepping it up if they expect anyone to find their software more useable than the already existing mainstream products.
This test shows that KDE is close enough as far as usability goes. Maybe they can edge out Windows XP in such tests by sacrificing some features or some other hacks, but you are naive to think that there are any great hidden usability improvements possible.
The unix style is much more intelligent - if there's more than one match, you'll usually get some audio feedback and it will complete up to the point where there's a difference. If you double-tab, you'll get a listing of all the possible matches (sometime it's just on a single tab) and if there's a big list of matches, you'll usually get prompted if you really want to see the whole list.
This is as area where unix has had a big head start, though. How long has unix tab completion been around, anyway? The Google search wasn't very helpful.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Command line. /all"
"ipconfig
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
Fast user switching is simply multiple desktops, it has no special attachment to TS.
They're both branding strategies. How are they not analogous?
Why can't the OS read an ISO9660 image natively? It's not like it's that hard -- ISO 9660 is already in the OS for cds.
I quickly stopped bitching about this once I found DAEMON Tools. Get it, install it, love it.
Also go here and download awxDTools, a great shell extension addon that allows you to mount any supported image type by right-clicking it.
Actually the study did mention that all users had experience with previous versions of Windows.
The reason for that is because the study wanted to simulate the situation in governmental (sp?) organisations where most users have Windows experience as well.
Actually it's quite impressive that KDE can keep up with Windows in a 45-minute test with Windows-users.
"Do you want to get started on the path of what window comes with working, out of the box, compared to KDE?"
:-) I run SuSE 8.2 with a KDE setup (KDE is part of the Linux OS, just like the WindowsXP GUI is part of the WindowsXP OS), and last time I checked, it came with over 3000 usable, working applications. These applications are Free as well as being included in the purchase price. I have roughly 3 different options for Office suite to use, more email clients then I can shake a stick at, and a wide array of browsers. So as not to confuse anybody from the get-go, a sensible set of default applications are installed out of the box, while a very nice intuitive menu system lets me do a point and click install (for those who have never tried this little gem, on SuSE, click the "SuSE Work Menu/Administration/install software packages", and all the software you can install for that application/GUI combination is available as a one-click install). If that is too simple for your needs, or your application is not listed, you can invoke the powerful YaST software installer, that allows you to search on lots of criteria. After all, shipping 3000+ apps without a way to sensibly choose between them would be stupid.
Yes, lets
There are Webservers, portal systems, mailers, exchange replacements, 4 different major DB systems, development environments, compilers, code management systems, version management systems, common infrastructure components, such as DNS, DHCP, windows file sharing, as well as other file management stuff, such as NFS, OpenAFS, and other nice toys like that. I have grid applications and toolkits, several scripting languages, including some BASIC variants, artificial intelligence applications, a BOATLOAD of cool games, debuggers, profiling tools, educational software, scientific software, graphics software, including some really top quality 3d rendering software. I have financial planners, business planner, Internet communication tools, stuff to work with a whole load of palmtops. the list goes on and on. Oh, yes, using something like WINE or Win4Lin, I can run most native windows applications as well.
I can spend a good year just assessing all the software that comes on my 2 DVD's that came in the SuSE package. I also have over 1000 pages of truly useful printed documentation, something those bastards in Redmond are too cheap to include. and to be sure, that same documentation is also included as softcopy. All this for 50 pounds sterling.
Besides all that, I have access to the source code of all these applications. If I were so inclined, I could actually start rummaging around in the guts of the thing, making it just the way I want it to be, or learning how something worked. I know who the developers are, and I can take any questions or problems straight to the source, so to speak. No secrets, no hidden gotcha's, no "call home" stuff that reports my every move. No registration, no nazi software gestapo, no jack-booted thugs that will come to raid my business for license compliance.
So, let's talk about what Windows ships with working out of the box, shall we? (not a troll, just something to ponder...)
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Not sure if it binds the K menu, but you can map the keyboard to a Windows configuration through the Control Center. I'm at work, otherwise I'd tell you for sure.
hang brain.
The first thing you have to understand is that glibc is a special library - it is enormous, it cannot be usefully upgraded by users, and it uses symbol versioning.
The last thing is why RPMs will sometimes bomb with errors about glibc. Rather than rename the entire library (btw, glibc is far more than just libc.so.6), they essentially rename the individual function, then the linker transparently selects the latest version when you compile. That is why the only version of libc.so you will ever see is .so.6
As developers usually use the latest version of a distro available, and users often do not (think users who got their distros off dial up, bought them, or got them from a book) this places us in a problematic situation.
The solution is for apps to be compiled in such a a way that they don't use modern symbol versions. Unfortunately at the moment that's very hard to do. Fortunately, me and FooBarWidget have been researching the problem for some time now, and have a variety of ways to make compiling against older libc symvers very easy. This does mean giving up some nice features, like the thread-local locale model, but delaying the adoption of these technologies for a year or two is an adequate price to pay for greater compatability.
Once we've done some tests to find out which approach is best, expect to see guides on how to do this with tools to make it easy over at autopackage.org
That leads to the second problem with RPMs, namely that they are usually specific to a particular distribution. That means that all too often, there is no RPM for your distro, or it's out of date (that applies to debian/gentoo as well btw).
Once you eliminate glibc from the equation, the rest is primarily a matter of metadata. The most common incompatability is typically dependency naming, and sometimes the prefix used to install to.
The answer to "Why do you have to click 'Start' to stop" has been answered more than adequatly by Raymond Chen here:r yview.a spx/History
http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/raymondc/catego
To sum up his answer:
While trying to create a simple yet space efficient design, they decided on a single button in the bottom left. This was called the 'System' button. However users would boot the system and look at it with a puzzled expression. So they called it 'Start'. Then they asked the users to shut down the system, and guess where they clicked? Yeah. The start button. So that's why it is.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
Uh... how about cygwin (http://cygwin.com)?
Dual montiors is easiest to do with the macintosh. Depending on what your monitor setup is, you can eithier have two graphics cards (which don't have to be the same, unlike windows I think), and plug two montors into them. Or if you have dualie out, just plug two montiors in. You can also expand your desktop with the laptops.
In linux I know you can modify the XFree86 config file and use Xinerama. I haven't tried, but KDE's Xserver configure (kxconfig or something) might detect the second monitor and setup dual monitors.
I gave up dual monitors with windows.
To my knowledge, Linux is the only OS capable of playing games streched across both monitors.