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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."
does it have a Start button?
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.
Everyday You see me is the worst day of my life -Office Space
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.
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).
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
And rather short on details (such as what is the nature of the assigned tasks used in the test? Copying a file? Formatting a drive? Partitioning a drive?) Also, they had 60 users "aged 25 to 55 with computer skills but no prior experience with Linux or Windows XP" work on KDS, and "20 users with the same qualifications who performed the exact same tasks on Windows XP."
Eh? Why not have them all do it on each? Or even out the groups a bit more?
Anyway, a short, vaguely interesting pro-Linux article. So I'll just be happy, but this could have been much cooler with bigger samples, better planning, and more detailed reporting of the results.
everything in moderation
I'd be more interested in seeing a study in which half the group tried it on GNU/Linux,KDE first then on Windows, and the other half, vice versa. I've never heard from someone who has never used either operating system having new experiences with both of them.
I wonder, did they consider experience with Windows 9x as _no_ experience with Windows XP?
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
...the ease of use is only for USE. Not for support. There are a bajillion different variants of "desktop Linux" system, and each has to be supported differently. (Compare and contrast with Windows, where its much-berated centralization actually makes it easier to support. You see users helping OTHER USERS with Windows-- e.g. "Yeah, you just have to click on X, then click Y and you're done". You'd never see that with Linux.
What's more, to most of the people I've talked to about Linux, ease of use is not even a factor so long as commercial games won't run on Linux. (No, I'm not talking about WineX or VMWare. I'm talking about native support.) Most users are unwilling to talk about how easy Linux-based systems can be to use if they can't use them to game. You may poo-poo something that seems so frivolous, but it's a HUGE factor to many (most?) Windows users, particularly those under 30.
I love Linux. But frankly, this sort of story just seems like the Linux community patting itself on the back. Here's a challenge: Go to a college computer lab (make sure you fit in, i.e. don't do this if you're 45 and have a long gray beard) and ask random students if they've heard of Linux. (It may help to wear a Debian pin, or a Tux pin, or both, or the like). Then ask if they've considered switching to it. Be sure to tell them that some distributions of Linux can be quite easy to use. It won't matter... You may be surprised by what they tell you. And I guarantee games will be on the menu (in the majority of cases, anyhow).
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
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.
Then you obviously don't know the trick to winning this kind of game. The trick is to stop implementing new features at the exact moment that the "leader" commits to becoming an unusably bloated, worthless feature ladden pile of... Oh my gosh! Stop! Stop!
-- MarkusQ
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.
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!
How do I make a window always-on-top in any version of Windows? No way that I know of unless the application supports it.
How do I get virtual desktops in Windows? Litestep, the best way I know of, involves replacing explore.exe, the brunt of Windows's interface.
How do I locally display just a single application (such as a systray program) without viewing the entire screen of the remote system? VNC/TerminalServer doesn't come close.
How do I update every single installed program from a single command entry without rebooting in Windows? (OK, maybe that's not relating to the GUI argument.)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I live in the real world. The real world runs on Windows. In my private life, the world runs on Linux and MacOS (currently)... with an unavoidable smidgeon of Windows because it's necessary in the real world. (One of these days I'm going to get off my butt and learn to use WINE or VMWare or something...)
I knew that "something Linux" would become equal with Windows eventually but I didn't expect the time to arrive so soon. Bravo but "beating Windows" isn't the point exactly is it? It's fun but not the purpose of Linux, KDE or OSS.
The next "what if" is "what happens when Linux rules the desktop?" I tend to see a touch of chaos in the future. Very unpredictable. The next "what if" is about innovation. If Linux becomes king of the hill, where will innovation lead? Where will it come from? I don't want to open the debate about whether or not Microsoft "innovated" anything but when Linux finally captures the hill, where will it come from?
I know of a very prominant financial institution known for its stodginess...still running WinNT 4.0 on many of their machines who is starting to run Linux on their machines as well. Linux is an eventuality.
This is definitely a milestone. This is a "sit up and take notice" moment. But once Linux leads, Microsoft will have no choice but to make "compatible" software... and this time they won't dare to make their stuff lock out the competition or they will be ignored... in the future...
The second paragraph says that a full english report will be available in a few days. This is just a write-up.
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?
"Sufferin' succotash."
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.
"Sufferin' succotash."
In certain business environments, Linux can be far easier to support. Many business users need a small suite of office and productivity apps, and not much more. A great setup is to put diskless workstations on each desktop, then run a few Linux terminal servers, locked down, in your datacom closet. Once the initial setup is done, maintenance is a breeze. Backups can be made from a central location. The user environment is portable to any workstation in the office. The admin can all be done in one place.
Obviously this is not a solution for every environment, but where is fits, it fits really well.
Everything you say about games is correct, and none of it matters. Windows will always be the best gaming platform. There is nothing the Linux community can possibly to do change that fact. The power of numbers is just too much to overcome.
If someone values gaming too much to switch to linux, it's really not my problem.
From your tone it almost sounds as if you think Linux has to win over gamers in order to survive. Nothing could be further from the truth. Linux does not need a large userbase in order to thrive. All it needs is a small group of dedicated developers and the assurance that it will not be outlawed. Anything more than that is nice but not necessary.
Linux is not useful for gaming. Linux is not meant for gaming. I don't use Linux for gaming. Gaming is not the only thing in the world that computers are used for.
The mindset that a computer platform has to win market share or die is an artifact of the commercial software paradigm that has no relevance to open source software like Linux. With Linux, the users are the developers, and while new users are certainly welcome, there will always be certain markets like the gaming market where Linux serves no purpose and plays no role.
Yeah, KDE is pretty usable. But it's lacking real smarts. I consider usability to mean "the interface is efficient, and acts as I expect it to". Here are a few (what I consider fairly obvious) features that would really improve KDE for me.
1. Drag-and-drop menus. In Windows, the Start menu is really just a directory structure, and a special case of the Explorer view. You can drag and drop new items into the Start menu / Taskbar and they appear there instantly. You can "Explore" the Start menu and arrange / delete / add items as you please. Compare and contrast with the latest version of KDE that I've tried, where you essentially need a "menu edit" application to set up new shortcuts. Painfully old-fashioned.
2. Faster file access and directory listing in Konquerer. Comparison:
Windows - to view C:\mp3 takes 3 seconds.
Mandrake - to view \mnt\Windows\mp3 takes 9 seconds.
What's more, in KDE the files display one-by-one as they are "found". My "Jazz" folder might appear first, but by the time I go to click on it, more folders have appeared and it has moved. Ugly.
3. Please, give us the option of a double-click interface.
-"I still believe in revolution; I just don't capitalize it anymore." - srini!
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.
You take a person who never used a computer and teach them. Guess what, they'll pick up DOS, Linux, Windows, BeOS, any GUI, any console, pretty much just as easily.
People can understand, but geeks have an ability to understand right away. They then assume that everyone one else is a flipping idiot for not understanding. Some people just need to be taught.
Imagine something that doesn't come naturally easy for you, say cooking. Now imagine not being taught but just kind of trying different things. Not so easy is it? Remember you don't have a natural ability to cook so you're not going to pick it up easily.
Now think about how you might fare if you took courses and practiced a couple of times a week. You wouldn't be great but you'd get by. Of Course you'd still get stuck sometimes. That's what it's like for Joe and Jane computer user I think. We assume they should just know, and they just need some courses to get by.
They still annoy the piss out of me with their annoying questions.
-- taking over the world, we are.
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.
A scientific comparison of Apples and Oranges
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.
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
As a Windows user, I've been nothing but irritated that MS keeps changing where to find anything but the most basic items. From Win95/WinNT3.51 to WinXP, they've moved everything from Network ID to the command prompt icon. There haven't been more than two releases in a row on either track where at least one feature I would consider fundamental hasn't been moved. I'm not saying that some of the changes haven't been useful, or logical, but some just look like another way to require certification. I would consider myself fairly adept, but nothing irritates me more than trying to remember where a particular feature is in this particular OS. If MS proponents want to complain about the multitude of Linux window managers, they should think about this. At least in Linux, a coimpany can pick one, and keep it on multiple versions. Some would say you can with Windows, too, but the useful new features are tied to the new UI, too.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
But when it comes to the design of the desktop interface and programs, Windows XP still has a strong edge: 83% of the Linux users said they liked the design of the desktop and the programs, compared with 100% of the Windows XP users.
I hope the study is flawed, because its too depressing to consider the alternative. Btw, why no MacOS in the test? Then we would see how KDE measures up to an OS with good UI.
where they get test subjects that used neither XP nor linux/KDE...
;)
mac users? i can't believe that! they'd never be pleased with the appearance of XP
The tests found from 26.6.? 16.7.2003 in Berlin instead of.
... in ..." so it's "findet von .... in berlin statt". but when written in isolation, and translated out of context, "findet" means "finds" and "statt" means "instead of".
now thats a classic... i love this. (german speaking mods will agree and mod this post funny)
for all those who don't speak german:
the sentence should say "the tests took place in berlin from 6/26 to 7/16 2003 in berlin". "to take place" is "stattfinden" in german, but the verb is split because of the "from
(non-german-speaking moderators will have learned something and mot this as informative)
Free as in mason.
IMO, the biggest problem I have is that I can't find a decent shell in Windows.
In Linux, even when I run SX, I just open a bunch of terminals and type happily away. I can do everything from CLI whether it's inside a GUI or not. In windows, I keep looking for bash or any decent shell, but all I can find is this stupid Dos shell that seems only useful for changing directories. I can't quickly check my running processes, launch an app or 2 , write scripts or code and check on stuff running in the background while changing some stuff in my Mysql databases.
It's like the GUI works against the OS not for it..
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
Yet, it still requires at least "guru" status to fix a problem when it does go wrong, particularly where things like hardware and device drivers, or configuring the GUI, are concerned.
Aren't MCSEs and other monkeys trained in the M$ circus required to handle those tasks on a windows machine? How is it that someone who can manage a Linux system is automatically labelled as being a guru? As flattering as it may be to some people's ego, this preconcieved notion is a stumbling block in the public's willingness to adopt the OS for common use. As far as installing and configuring a Linux system being a nightmare, i'm a little vague in following that point. Installing even the more spartan distributions like Slackware is an effortless task. Configuration of the system is probably were most people who are too familiar with a device mangler get into trouble. Configuration of various daemons, however, can get a little more involved. However, on a windows platform, we expect a trained tech to handle those tasks (services) anyway. So I'm still not sure why gurus are needed to configure a GUI or install a driver. Linux is just a different OS and it requires different knowledge to do these things. Sure, you might need to know more detail about your hardware when setting things up manually, as opposed to windows or Mac. That's the beauty of Linux and Unix platforms. They don't need to rely on an overworked, underpaid programmer overseas to write an autodetection program to guess the specs and limits of a said piece of hardware for a driver installation. Your point is well taken, and I agree with you whole heartedly, just wanted to add my 2 bits.
What this journalistic snippet fails to mention is the fact that there are some tasks that XP excelled and other tasks where KDE outperformed XP. In other words, while XP was a bit faster for the user to initiate email it was easier for the Linux user to play an audio CD.
Most of the numbers were expected. For example, the Windows Media Player is a more complicated tool than the KDE CD Player; therefore it is not surprising the KDE was quicker at this task.
What did surprise me was that KDE took so long to change the background (almost x2 as long as XP) yet the users thought it was easy. This might have something to do with the more advanced background features native to KDE; for example, a background per-desktop or a scheduled background change.
To modify shortcut icons in the toolbar was much quicker under KDE and I have always found this to be more cumbersome than XP. Perhaps the XP "personalized" menus have something to do with this? Users not only took less time to create icons in the toolbar but KDE users generally graded this task as easier than their Windows XP counterparts.
One other interesting comparison is email; users took a little longer to perform this task under KDE but they generally graded this as easier to do than their XP counterparts.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
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)