Trivial Barriers to Personal Linux Use?

saintp asks: "I'm currently multitasking: building a computer for my girlfriend, and also trying to convince her to put Linux on it, so I've been thinking a lot lately about the barriers to adoption of Linux by Normal Everyday People. One that seems to be a major problem is that Windows users are addicted to downloading every piece of crapware that comes down the tubes -- hence the popularity of Gator and subsequent popularity of Ad-Aware. While geeks the world over sigh at this behavior, it makes a lot of people really happy, and they are very chagrined to discover that they can't do this on Linux without some command line mucking about, compilation, etc. What other minor, apparently trivial barriers exist to personal Linux use? Is anything being done to address these, or do many of the major vendors seem to be focusing exclusively on the business market, possibly to the detriment of Linux in the long run?"

Comments

Not all Windows user download that much software..

[pilot1]

Your girlfriend might download alot of software just to try it out, but everyone I know is too scared to.

I know back in the day before I had migrated to Linux, I would install various programs just to play around with them. However, I never installed crapware like Gator, it was usually just stuff from sourceforge that sounded useful.

Maybe you could try giving her a distro that uses RPM, then show her freshmeat and sourceforge, and teach her how to install any programs she might want. That should satisfy her urge to try out new things.

Software installation

[Tyrdium]

It's a pain to install software on Linux compared to Windows. What I'd like to see is a nice, standardized binary distribution method, with good OS integration. RPM is good, but requires opening it in a program. What I'd like to see is a way to, by simply double-clicking on the RPM, install it to the directory of my choice (e.g. have it bring up an installer similar to the ones commonly used in Windows). Also, the directory structure in Linux is relatively confusing to work with. How about a single, unified folder for my programs, like Windows' Program Files folder? I've heard of a distribution that uses a directory structure similar to Windows', but it's definitely not one of the larger ones.

Re:Software installation

[More Trouble]

What I'd like to see is a way to, by simply double-clicking on the RPM, install it to the directory of my choice (e.g. have it bring up an installer similar to the ones commonly used in Windows). Also, the directory structure in Linux is relatively confusing to work with. How about a single, unified folder for my programs, like Windows' Program Files folder?

Well, Mac OS X does a pretty good job of this. It maintains all the Unix-y stuff in the typical Unix-y places, and has a whole secondary structure for GUI-crap. For instance, there's a /bin, /usr, /var, etc; along with a /Applications, /Library, etc.

:w

Re:Software installation

[splattertrousers]

I think you've proved the OP's point.

Who, other than geeks, is going to remember those commands?

It's so much easier to do it the Mac way: download it and drag it into the Applications folder. Even easier would be a program that lists all the available applications instead of forcing the user to find them on the web.

Re:Software installation

[captaineo]

On Windows the majority of well-written installers are single self-extracting .exe's or .msi's.

With OSX you get a .dmg if you are lucky (and a .dmg.gz, .sit, or .dmg.sit if you are not). You double-click the .dmg and it mounts a virtual disk. You run the program inside. You try to unmount the virtual disk but it won't let you because it is in use. Then you close the program and unmount the disk. You still have to throw away the original .dmg and the archive (if it came in one).

It kind of sucks to have your OSX desktop cluttered with foo.dmg.sit, foo.dmg, and Foo, just for one program.

Newbie detector

[pontifier]

When I first tried linux and the bsds it took me a while to figure out how to get arround in the terminal.

perhaps "dir" should start a linux tutorial as i'm sure i'm not the only person who's first instinct was to type "dir" when given a command prompt.

Re:Newbie detector

[Brandybuck]

Maybe Windows should have a tutorial pop up each time I type "ls" in the command shell.

Re:Newbie detector

[bcrowell]

Actually we really need an animated paperclip to pop up and say, "It looks like you're trying to do an ls. Do you want the ls wizard to help you through the process?"

Re:Newbie detector

[Anonymous Coward]

$ ls -a
Are you sure you want to do an ls -a? That will
show hidden files, and files are hidden for a reason.
>y
Okay, are you absolutely sure you meant to say yes to that last question?
>y

My personal list of barriers

[Evil Attraction]

I use Linux most of the time. The only reason I sometimes (too often) boot to Windows, is when I want to either play a game or do some genealogy. There aren't many games for Linux - not very popular, at least - and there are certainly no genealogy software which can compete with the genealogy software developed for Windows. I guess I can live with that.

What concerns me most is the situation for the rest of the family; We are Norwegians, and my father does some accounting for a few locale companies. I've yet to see a decent accounting application for Linux which works according to Norwegian rules. We're actually talking about one application which separates my father from using Linux instead of Windows.

My brother took over my father's farm a year ago. He needs Windows for some special software related to running a farm. Once again - it's only one piece of software.

My other brother doesn't have this problem, but he's not so good in English. I would have loved to install Linux on his laptop so that I didn't have to help him out every time Windows f*cked up. But most of the Linux software lacks in the localization field. Not many applications are being translated to Norwegian.

Conclusion: Some special software which still looks a few years from now, and the lack of localizing the most popular software. I guess both of these problems will be solved over time, but I would've given my lef...right foot for having it solved now. :)

I've got one.

[dporowski]

I have to keep screwing with it.

Seriously. I mean, I like messing about with computers, OS flavors, etc, etc. I've currently got a couple different flavors of linux, looking for a third, and am thinking about a BSD. It's just lack of space for hardware that keeps me from having more toys. It's nice to use, it's powerful, it's flexible..

However, I'm not always in the mood to sit down and figure out why something doesn't work right. For instance, why Mandrake currently has told me three times in a row that my glibc is out of date. And upgraded it to the newest version each time. (Yes, using "mandrake update".) Oh, and doing so BROKE Mandrake Update. My OS update feature broke itself. I'm sure this is fixable, but why should I have to screw with it just to make the admin tools work again?

My mouse. It's got 5 buttons. Why the HELL would I want to install a program, tweak multiple files, and chant ominously just to get the side buttons working? I know how, sure. It's just I have better things to do.

I don't WANT to make my game work. I want my game to WORK. I don't want to have to make X program load properly, or hand-twiddle a configuration file. I want to open a damn document, view it, edit it, and save it with formatting. No, I don't want to learn TeX to do it. I know I CAN, but why do I have to?

Seriously. I'm a damn hobbyist, and I do these things for fun, and it still pisses me off that I have to spend more time playing with it to make it work than it does working. Updates shouldn't break things. Upgrades shouldn't cause triple-layered dependency hell. THere shouldn't be dependency hell at all. We hate "dll hell", why is fucking about trying to find just the right version of a given module acceptable? I mean, there's girls and liquor and music out there for me, why should I spend all my time fixing something that can just work? (I know it can. Apple did it. It's been done once, thus can be done again. It's just not BEING done.)

Choice? Screw choice! I want function! Would you drive a car if you had to put the damn wheels on every time you parked it? Would you put up with having to buy the correct grade of gas from JUST th right pump style, from the exact proper petrol chain, just to start the car in the morning?

For fuck's sake, the 2.6 upgrade, which I look forward to installing on GENTOO for the love of god, isn't covered by the documentation, requires a full replacement of the main module utilities, and Still might not work right. I CAN'T RTFM, since this shit isn't IN the FM to R.

I think you get the idea.

I love doing this stuff, and it STILL pisses me off and drives me to drink. What do you think your granny's going to do?

Go back to windows, or Mac, or something that does what she wants, when she wants it, and doesn't have to be babysat.

And enough with the goddamn text editors, people. I understand you like them, but I don't need 50 of them. Spend the time you used to put those on my distro app disk to make sure the distro doesn't randomly shit itself.

(Not bitter or anything, me...)

might not be that big a deal..

[mehu]

My mom's computer was popping up ads every couple minutes under windows, so last summer I set it up as a dual-boot Debian box. Installed mozilla, gaim, openoffice, & the usual basics (my mom had to have solitaire & mahjohngg), and showed them how to switch back & forth w/ the lilo menu. I also set up gdm w/ the face browser, & set it so they don't have to type in a password (although my 16-yr-old sister opted to have one anyway, 'cause "it's cool!").

Next time I went home, they had me switch the default to Linux so they didn't have to sit there when it booted up. My mom, sister, and stepdad (who can't even figure out how to use the DVD player) have been using it quite happily since then, and aside from having to install flash for my sister (which I was able to do remotely via ssh, another plus), they haven't complained at all about not being able to install shit. They're just damn happy they can read their email (they use mozilla), chat, & web surf w/o being bombarded by popups all the time. They're also quite impressed that they can each have their own web bookmarks and desktop pictures (first thing my sister did was put up a Pirates of the Caribbean background). I don't think they've booted into Windows much at all since then.

Only real problem they've had is that there's currently no way I know of for them to switch users when my sister has xscreensaver locked, short of killing X.

Try BSD.

[FFFish]

Over the past decade or so I've tried Linux on and off a half-dozen times. Every time, I've gone back to Windows, which blows goats but at least lets me get my g.d. work done instead of having to continually f*** with obscure configuration files.

But I've installed FreeBSD a week ago, and it's going along pretty well. There's still a fair bit of f***ing with configs, but less so: it's secure from the start.

FreeBSD feels, to me, like it was designed. Linux always feels like it just accumulated by accident.