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."

Comments

How true

[Slack0ff]

KDE is a very simple interface. To tell you the truth I had a harder time going from windows 200 to xp then going from gnome to kde. I know thats like compairing apples to oranges but i like oranges better anyway.

Re:How true

[ceejayoz]

To tell you the truth I had a harder time going from windows 200 to xp then going from gnome to kde.

Well duh... going from stone tablets to a modern operating system is quite the jump.

Seriously though, you had problems going from 2000 to XP? It takes like three clicks to set it all back to looking exactly like Windows 2000, and even if you leave it on default there's nothing much changed... just the new themes, an extra panel in Explorer, and a slightly rearranged Start menu...

start leading..

[Suppafly]

I really don't see KDE or any other linux desktop software beating Windows or MacOS in usabilities tests anytime soon. KDE and GNOME keep playing catchup to windows instead of leading the way. Sure there are some unique features, but the bulk of linux desktop development is recreating features that windows and macos have had for years. 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.

Re:start leading..

[connsmythe96]

Argh. I'm tired of hearing people say that the multidesk features are too complicated. They're NOT. They're only confusing when people click em before they know what they do. If you included that in a little "tour of KDE" like windows does then I really don't think it would be a problem. Everyone I've ever showed that to has understood it, and they weren't all computer geeks.

Everyone says we need more unique features, but then when we do have a good feature they say it's just confusing and we shouldn't use it. Every new feature needs to be learned. That will always be the case. You don't throw out good ideas because people haven't seen them yet. You show people the new ideas so they can make their lives easier too.

Re:start leading..

[Arandir]

I really don't see KDE or any other linux desktop software beating Windows or MacOS in usabilities tests anytime soon.

Did you read the article? Of course not, this is slashdot!

Let me quote: "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."

SuSE/KDE came damned close to meeting or beating Windows XP. I suspect that "anytime soon" they WILL meet or beat WinXP.

Why did WinXP win by a narrow margin in this test? The answer is simple. Look at the test subjects. Although none had previously used WinXP, they were familiar with computers, which means a very high probability that they were familiar with Win9x/NT/2K. WinXP isn't that much different from the older Windows desktop. It has some nice new features, and a huge facelift, but its foundation is still the familiar Windows desktop. WinXP beat out SuSE/KDE simply because the test subjects were already familiar with the basics of the WinXP desktop.

The hurdle facing the new UNIX desktops is not usability, but a public completely unfamiliar with UNIX.

Re:start leading..

[toga98]

Done this. Although they do offer multiple desktops, it's poorly implemented. When I tried using it on XP, the items in the taskbar reorder themselves in what seemed like a random fashion. Sometimes I would have trouble switching to apps and getting focus. Sometimes I would "lose" applications entirely - they were there but I couldn't get focus or see them in the taskbar. There were quite a few annoying aspects. Enough to make the feature useless. I think this is one feature that could be made more useful, but I'm afraid it is only for power users. I know too many people that use windows and can't grok the fact that you can have more than one application open at a time.

Re:start leading..

[pi_rules]

My biggest beef with Win2k usability is how often is just acts funny. I've never gotten entirely comfortable with it just because it's so damned touchy. Things that I can do on my Gnome/Linux machine here just plain suck sometimes on Win2k.

I sometimes have to map a large number of drives when I need to push/pull configuration files to machines. This is horrendously slow. I've got it scripted through a .bat file to mount and umount them all but some of these links are across a WAN and encouter 200ms ping times. I open up 'My computer' and -boom-! explorer.exe just halts while it pulls who knows WHAT back from these systems just to let me know that drives G-L are still working. I still have no idea what it's doing.

Doing anything with a "large" set of files just plain sucks. I tried moving 30MB of data (mostly 1k files) into a different directory today in Windows. I don't know why it took darned near 3 minutes to do. Cripes, you just relink the file -- it doesn't even have to do that much I/O. Something braindead going on there.

I just love clicking 'Start' and having it take 2-3 minutes to come up sometimes. I haven't the foggiest as to why this happens. It's usually over a Terminal Services session though.

Why the heck can't I right click -> properties on a directory and just turn off all the read-only bits? Seems like the folder itself has to be read only for the option to show up. It's just confusing. I usually drop to Cygwin and just do a chmod -R 777 on it. Works for me.

Oh, and the last time I actually did tell explorer to remove the read only flag from a large set of files it popped up a counter telling me it would take 5 minutes to complete. That damned box was there until my next reboot. That's usability.

Why the snot do minimized windows like to magically pop back up when I restore a -different- application? I see this more often than I care for. Restore Mozilla Firebird and, oh thanks Windows, I wanted to see that minmized My Documents folder! Thanks!

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.

Of course we have the braindamaged idea that deleting an open file is impossible. Just unlink it. It's worked fine for years and years in other filesystems -- get with the program. I don't want to hunt down every process that might have something open when trying to trash a large directory. Just get rid of it.

Oh, and what's with "Preparing to Delete..." crap? That cancel button never works either on that little ditty. Do I cycle exploer.exe like an impatient little snot and jump into Cygwin to just get rid of it or let myself stew for 3 minutes at a dialog box that does nothing for me and refuses to go away nicely?

Every day I have to work with that pile of drivel I remember why I installed Linux for the first time 5 years ago.

Re:start leading..

[fwarren]

One of my favorite tricks is to log into the user account I have on my system for web development, So I have 4 virtual windows for user B. Then I open a console and su to my normal account and do a "nohup gaim &" and "nohup kmail &"

So here I am with my 4 (virtual) desktops, running 2 apps from another users account.

Just another feature in addition to virtual desktops that I can not live without.

Try that ONE on XP.

Re:start leading..

[2short]

Hate to break it to you but I'm on Windows XP and I can open a remote file in the file browser of every single application I use. And ctrl+s saves in every single one.

A different perspective

[GeckoFood]

For those of us that work with Linux and UNIX on a daily basis, especially in the work place, and have been at it for years, it's even easier than Windows. (That's not sarcasm, BTW).

Re:not a kde user but

[Altrag]

It says -as- competent though. Which could range anywhere from "I could rig this box tight" to "I think I know how to double-click the email icon".. To "What's a double-click?"..
On the other hand, it stated only that the users had no prior experience with XP or Linux. They made no mention of whether they had prior experience with 95/98/ME or NT/2K, all of which would give a fairly large boost to the XP side of things since most non-administrative tasks are accomplished in the same way, with XP only adding a few colors and curves to the mix.

Re:just another year

[Overly Critical Guy]

People said that last year, and the year before, and so on into the past.

There are entire interface violations dying to be fixed, as well as technology problems like X itself, before Linux can be a desktop environment. For instance, sane install/uninstall procedures that don't require an "RPM manager," or app writers who don't use "://" as the button for their open dialogs.

I don't understand why it's so hard for free software to have good interfaces. The easy answer is because it's "programmers writing for programmers," but anyone who is used to Windows freeware and shareware knows that their interfaces are typically as high-quality as any other commercial application. Why are Windows programmers doing it and Linux programmers not? I'm genuinely curious. Is it the difference in easy-to-use development environments?

Re:XP wins? not suprised

[Overly Critical Guy]

Ultimately make computers easier to use and you will get more idiots using them. What we really need is a computer operation license like a driving license :)

Welcome to the reason Linux has taken so long to gain desktop market share--attitude.

By the way, people love to say XP "holds your hand," but all it does is require you to click to show the hard drive's contents for the first time, and provides a grouped view for Control Panel. Um, that's it, unless you count system tray popups that alert you to things like low disk space, which is a damned good idea anyway.

Where Linux starts to fall down

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

GNOME2/KDE3 makes for a very usable desktop, I'd say it's along the caliber of WinXP/Mac OS. Linux starts to fall down when you try to install 3rd party applications (what if you can't get RPMs? what if you're running an older GLIBC?) or hardware.

This wasn't a useability test

[roystgnr]

The key phrase is here:

with computer skills but no prior experience with Linux or Windows XP

In other words, unless they were running these tests for months, this was a "learnability" test, which measured how productive you will be with your computer for the first few days you use it. Unless you're only planning to use the computer for a few days (and other than offices who hire a lot of temps I don't think this is a very common situation) this probably isn't the best measurement to optimize for.

It's the easiest measurement for computer magazines to make, though, so it's probably the closest thing to actual "usability testing" we'll ever see, and it's better than nothing. I just worry that it will lead to companies improving learnability at the expense of useability. It reminds me of the way commercial Linux distributions at one time seemed to be competing to have the easiest damn installation in the world at the expense of post-installation config tools, because all the "reviews" of different Linux distributions stopped shortly after the installation was over.

Re:Good to see

[dirk]

Considering Linux UI is basically a copy of Windows (for the most part) this isn't surprising at all. Take something you know people like and copy it and people will like what you will do. When I boot RH9, it looks like a Windows knock-off, which means any person with Windows experience will have an idea of what to do. That said, it will get them close to being as easy to use as Windows, but always a step behind. Until they start actually innovating UI usability instead of trying to copy what Windows does, it will always be a step behind.

Where Linux really lags behind Windows is 2 areas. Install/uninstall programs and UI conformity. Installing/uninstalling many programs is still a chore. Where does it install? What's this stuff about compiling (if there isn't an RPM). How do I uninstall? And the UI conformity is nonexistant. Almost all Windows programs have the same setup. The menus have the same option in the same places (cut/copy/paste is always under Edit, which is always second from the left on the menu). In Linux, every app has it's own look and feel. Which means most apps have to be completely learned from scratch instead of building on the base. Until Linux overcomes these 2 major hurdles, it will always be 2 steps behind Windows.

My Experience

[Tewley]

This may be off-topic, but ...

As "Joe User" with moderate technical acumen, I recently made the jump and set up dual-boot SUSE. The install went very well, and I was very pleased with the KDE GUI.

But very quickly I had to spend a couple of hours doing things like learning how to set up header files in order to re-compile my kernal to support NVIDIA drivers.

I figured it out. But it took a while.

And still -- after a lot of careful study and research on linuxquestions.org -- I can't get my sound card to work. The best I have gotten for folks with the exact same configuration is "buy a new soundcard and save yourself the trouble".

My point is not to complain, but to indicate that there is still "geek time" and knowledge that must be "paid" to support free software. For many people it becomes like changing the oil on the car -- it's something that *can* be accomplished with enough time and patience. But how much do you want to fritz around with it, when all you want to do is play an MP3 ?

God forbid I want to hook up my digital camera.

Pay the dude $30 for an oil change.

For Linux, the last piece of non-geek usability may be the hardest to attain.

(It's not like I WANT to use MS XP ...)

Re:KDE/GNOME/etc is much more useable than XP

[Peter Harris]

Well I guess you have to mention features that the
vast majority of computer users don't use if they
are features Windows lacks.
If you will pardon the expression - duh!
A couple of those mentioned are so genuinely useful
that I doubt you can honestly disparage them from
a position of understanding.