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Groklaw Tries Their Own Linux Usability Study
inode_buddha writes "There's a new project taking shape at Groklaw. Calling it Grok-docs, it aims to do what many of us have long whined about - a large-scale linux usability study. Evidently, PJ had some frustrations with linux, and is asking for suggestions. So far, it seems to be following a Wiki-style setup. Everybody is welcome, especially those with little or no linux experience. I hope the distros and vendors are watching this one!"
I've honestly wondered why more distros don't adopt something similar to Debian's APT.
Apple has now, hasn't it? (I don't own a Mac myself, but I saw a friend of mine using "fink", which he described as "apt for Macs")
I use Debian, and in 98% of all cases, I simply do apt-get install foo, and then I'm done. Menu shortcuts, proper dependencies, everything.
Actually, I find Apt-Get far easier than Windows.
This statement is solely an opinion. Kindly take it as such in all cases.
Urpmi, Synaptic, APT-GET etc work well so every mention of denpendency hell should at least make mention of its cure.
Did you actually read the articles? The point is that this won't be on Groklaw, but on a new site. It is a separate project designed to further the growth of FOSS. Ain't nothing wrong with that, and it won't affect Groklaw since it will be the community that does this project. PJ merely proposed it. She won't be the one doing it. She'll just be one of thousands of people who offer input.
No, I won't admit it. A friend of mines computer was hit by a couple viruses. She'd never used Linux before, isn't a computer geek, and yet she had a good grasp of knoppix by the end of the day I burned a cd for her. The only question she had to ask was the name of a cd burning program, and after that she had no problems backing up the files from windows. Even better in light of the fact that she'd only burned cds in windows a few times, so doing that on any system was a fairly new thing.
Everything will be taken away from you.
That crack you're on is really, really good. Where can I get one?
... well, less intuitive than Windows. We'll leave it at that.
I've been managing UNIX systems for about fourteen years now, with a focus on Solaris. I've installed my share of W95/W98/W2K/WXP systems. I've pretty much always had an install that ended up being what I expected it to be. I have read *no* documentation on how to install Windows. Ever. I'm pretty sure that I've never even watched someone install Windows.
I've installed Linux a few times. I had to tell it what serial mouse I was using and what video card I was using. I had to figure out how to apportion swap. Mind you, figuring out what swap was was easy for me coming from the UNIX world, but for the average person? And the tool to repartition the filesystem was
Look, Windows is the scourge of humanity, there's no disagreement there. But claiming it's as easy to install Linux as it is to install Windows? That way lies insanity.
On Linux what one file do you have to download? Every piece of software is a bit different, most should just be installed from your distribution (automatically taking care of all dependencies), and when they aren't whoever produces it should be aware of this and make it realtively simple to install it on any distribution, if they don't whose fault is it? If you look for a few minutes though you will find plenty of examples of software with installation routines just as simple as the standard windows installer, the fact that lots of software doesn't come like this is no more valid than complaining that windows software can come in a zip. Finally what is windows solution to upgrading all the software on your system automatically to the latest version, or even just tracking security issues, oh I forgot, there isn't one (except for corporate types) except for the OS itself, with most linux systems all the software would be tracked by the packaging system so upgrading software is even easier than windows. If you want to just go around and randomly install any piece of software you discover online, you can expect things to get complicated somewhere along the way no matter what OS you are using.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
In my opinion, there should be two separate clipboards, which I refer to as the "Tempboard" and the "Permboard" for clarity. Yes, I hear many of you saying--this is the way it's implemented. Well, yes--partially. Let me first explain The Right Way to Do It, followed by applications that break the rules.
The Right Way to Do It:
(I'm using Eterm 0.9.2, Gaim 0.75, and Opera 7.23 on a Fedora box. Please let me know if these errors don't happen on other versions or other distros.)
- Select some text in a Gaim window, then close that window and attempt to
middle-click paste it into another program. No pastage.
- In Gaim, select some text in the textbox and then attempt to middle-click pa
ste it to the same text box. No pastage.
- Highlight some text in Opera. Then unselect it. Try to middle-click paste
it somewhere. It works!
- Highlight some text in Opera. Unselect it. Highlight something in another
window and close that window. Try to middle-click paste--you get the old fake
Opera-select.
- Highlight something in an Opera textbox. Middle-click it to the url box.
It works. Highlight something using the keyboard. Middle-click it to the url
box. It pastes instead your old highlight.
- In the Gaim textbox, type "Text1". Select the text and CTRL-X it. Type
"Text2" in the textbox. From another window, select "Text3".
- CTRL-X "Text1" in Gaim again. Select text from Eterm. Shift-Ins in the
terminal window. Shift-ins in Gaim. Different things are pasted to each
window!
- CTRL-C text in Gaim's chat screen, and try CTRL-V to paste it into the
textbox below. It instead pastes what was previously in the Permboard.
Does anybody else have ones they'd like to add to my list?Problem: The Tempboard gets deleted when the window is closed.
Problem: The Tempboard gets deleted when you middle-click inside the same text input widget.
Problem: Opera uses "fake selects" in order to work around the clumsy situation of not being able to highlight multiple things at the same time. Firefox does is that well, and so does OpenOffice.org. As we shall see, they don't always get it right.
Problem: The Tempboard reverts to Opera's old fake-select when the window is closed.
Problem: Highlighting with the keyboard doesn't update the Tempboard.
Go back to Gaim, select "Text2", and type Shift-Ins. "Text1" is pasted.
Problem: Shift-Ins pastes from the Permboard, not Tempboard.
Problem: Shift-ins pastes from the Tempboard in Eterm, but pastes from the Permboard in the Gaim window.
Problem: Selecting chat text and CTRL-C doesn't update the Permboard.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
get a better distro. most MODERN distros ask fewer questions than windows.
seriously. if its asking you that kind of info. its not very good.
Two +5 comments repeating themselves - talk about karma whores :-)
Responding to this particular point I find installing hardware in Windows is anything but intuitive. In fact, unless you are careful, you will end up with a bogus crappy MS default driver for any new hardware you install.
I also have some specific gripes with Linux (mainly Mandrake) distribs - but they are usually very similar to my Windows gripes. You get to a point in the install where you are left in a recursive nightmare of Wizards and invalid options. As for software installs, I just don'rt see that the GUI Linux tools are any better or worse than the Windows equivalents.
So, please, spare us the Windows comparisons -they simply don't hold water.
Where the Grokdocs project will be great, I think, is as a central repository for all those little tricks and tips that all computer users need, whatever their OS and ditribution.
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
They do! No one using almost any major distro has to download dependencies. Mandrake has urpmi, Redhat- Yum (or apt-get), SUSE-Yast, all of these take care of dependencies.
There are still plenty of things to be fixed on the desktop for linux, but installing software is no longer one of them! It's as easy (if not easier) to install software with linux than with windows. With windows you have to find the software on the internet, download it and double click. With Mandrake (for example) you go to the menu entry which says install software, tick what you want to install, and it installs it and all the dependencies. It's hard to get easier than that!
Maybe you should try a distro which is aimed at being user friendly, eg Mandrake, SUSE, Xandros etc. Their install is defintely as easy, if not easier than Windows. Most of the time, it just consists of hitting the next button.
Rubbish.
My luddite housemate nuked his windows ME install while I was away with some random virus. The reinstall CD that came with the laptop failed 50% through reimaging the harddrive. He managed to find my Mandrake install CDs, click through the 50% partitioning of his harddrive (for windows / linux), accept the default swap + home et al.
While I agree that a Debian / Slacware install is no place for a newbie, Knoppix + Mandrake have reversed the argument - mainly due to the fact that they _must_ be user-installable as no OEMs bundle Linux.
I've had windows installs crap-out on me many a time, win9* was particularly susceptible to failing if there was any partitioning of the harddrive...
Result: He could check his email, watch streaming video with mplayer and even edit his floppy-backup word files. With no spyware or virus threats.
I've installed Linux a few times... But claiming it's as easy to install Linux as it is to install Windows? That way lies insanity.
Your comment makes clear that you haven't installed Linux in the last year or two, or if you have, that you haven't used an easy-to-install distribution. Most modern distributions install more quickly, more easily and with fewer questions than Windows does. Oh, and they do more stuff after the install is complete.
Grab a current Mandrake CD, for example and give that a try. You'll be surprised.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
As a semi-experienced linux user, I have to say that the man pages are often next to useless. When I want to do something, I expect to find directions that explain exactly how to do it, not a set of rules and conditions that, if manipulated precisely, can give me exactly what I want - but no examples on how to employ, or to even invoke those rules and conditions.
Most of what I know I've learned from online tutorials, old Solaris manuals (which don't help when command syntaxes differ), and the Google Groups (formerly Deja) newsgroup archives, and of course, just spending countless hours hunched over a keyboard pounding away at the problem until I give up or the problem goes away.
That's nuts.
I'd propose that one essential disc that should ship with every distro is an all-in one help/tutorial system that replaces (or at least is positioned as an alternative) to the man system. While I was able to tough it out because I had another computer with an internet connection and a browser, a newbie setting his/her system up for the first time will likely not have that luxury. Having a locally available source for help/reference would help a lot.
wiki.linuxquestions.org is a recently launched community Linux wiki that was announced on Slashdot a few months back.
If you have _answers_ to these questions, stop on by and write it down.
Even if you only have time to write a paragraph, your paragraph will inspire someone else to add onto it that otherwise might not have contributed.
Actually it was originaly a problem in Windows.
She used Knoppix to verify that it was not a problem with the operating system or drivers, and was instead a problem of the modem.
Advanced users are users too!
However the programmer should be a slave to the user?
In a word...yes. Or else you fail usability.
Nobody's gonna act like your app is some gift from heaven. If users can't use it, they'll bitch and move on to something else. There are few things I hate more than programmer egos. YES, you're not God's greatest gift to computing. YES, if you're developing software you expect to be used publicly, you are slave to the users who will demand features, or else you're just another asshole who puts software out and then complains when people don't like it.
I've installed plenty of distros in the past two years. Everything he said is true. Heck, Mandrake even wanted me to check the button for the 3-button mouse, then shake the cursor all over the screen to get it to work (huh?).
:P
In Windows, it just knows when I plug the damned thing in.
Red Hat still asks you to partition things, and to mark out swap space, etc. It also asks you for a lot more network configuration than Windows does (Windows lets you just check "Typical settings"), generally asks for more questions on things like security levels, program groups to install, and so forth. Hell, check out the look on someone's face when they're asked to install a "bootloader"--what's more, their choices are things called "LILO" and "GRUB," typical OSS project names definitely showing how useful they are to people outside of development communities.
He's right--to say Linux is easier to install than Windows is insane fanboyism. It's just not true, and there's nothing wrong with admitting that so it can be addressed.
I agree that the "community" knowledge out there surrounding Windows is terrible. You mainly get a bunch of "I wanna be a MCSE when I grow up" types telling people to reinstall because they don't know how to fix the problem either.
Don't get me wrong -- a lot of people really know Windows, but with a few exceptions they aren't out there helping anyone. This is mainly because Windows isn't "just for fun" -- You see people asking questions, and you are thinking "Why should I help this idiot do his job?" Windows has a huge pile of printed documentation, but even the average 'expert' hasn't bothered reading it.
a) I feel the programmer's JOB is to be the slave to the user. If the programmer's NOT programming for the user, then he's not doing his job.
b) "Protection from harm" was purposefully left subjective. Why? So that the implementors could choose hot to implement, and not be restricted by why _I_ or _you_ believe they should be restricted to. This is what makes programming an art, and not a science.
c) As for the implementation you speak of, "safe mode", in my opinion, doesn't need to exist. I believe it's possible to implement an operating systme that never needs to be shut down with the one exemption being to release the bindings to the hardware, the kernel, in order to grab new bindings on restart. This being said, the hardware is not where we would like it to be yet either, because it still uses too much power to allow for this kind of always on functionality. Of course, many still use their systems this way, for the cost easily is worth the time of not waiting for an operating system to boot.
I want an operating system as I said, and I'm willing to pay for it too. If that means dedication, programming, long hours of typing to realize that nothing is being done of it, so be it. I feel that I am idealistic in some ways, but in others, I can see them being implented not only in my lifetime, but even with enough time left for me to sit down with my children and have to relearn it all. For something like this, we need people to think long before they write, to draw diagrams of where they are and where they want to be, to explain in english everything that they are attempting to create and then, and only then, be allowed to create it. Sure, this operating system may implement pieces of AI, but it doesn't have to, it can be procedure for it to act a certain way. Sure, it might require a bunch of OS geeks to bend over backwards for me, but that's where money comes in play, and also, the want of a better product, and the want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. And a bunch of lawyers never hurt in today's world either, with companies like SCO and such lurking around to get you at every stop. And yeah, lots of innovation is bottled because of patents... we're working on that problem as we speak.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Yeah, I hate this one myself. I hate spending ages downloading something, then realising that I've still got several components to hunt down and install/reinstall/upgrade first.
apt-get really is your friend in these situations. OK, it's only as good as the repositories for whatever distro you're running. But if it contains the program you're after, it'll contain the dependencies, too. Then it just does the whole thing foe you.
(But in a rather nice verbose way so it actually tells you what changes it's making. Maybe not essential for newbies, but I certainly appreciate learning these things.)
Actually, I'm finding that an increasing number of projects are actually doing this. And not only do they list the dependencies, but quite often they link to the Project Page for the dependency in question.
That would be nice, too. If for nothing else than for use in "If all else fails" scenarios. I'm not sure how viable it'd be, though. Both technically and license-wise.
TiggsPlus, for the things that do get static binaries, statis packages would be nice. Or at least an install-script. Actually, the latter would be nice. You can run it and get the work done for you, but then you can also look at the script and see exactly where what things are being put.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
Thats not the point - the point is children aren't necessarily in the "hand-holding" category that the original poster put them in. In fact many children are quite bright, and will pick up stuff like this much faster than adults... They're still in that curious learning phase that adults have forgotten about.
Come on now, writing ANY type of program at 7 or 8 is AB-FUCKING-NORMAL, I don't care how smart you are, when you're 7 or 8 you're flying kites and playing little league, so I call bullshit. I call bullshit cause you think the dweebs and nerds here will give you credence and props cause you were one of the maybe 5, 10, 100? kids globally 'programming at 7 or 8'. Sorry Doogie Howser, you were learning to read and write at 7 or 8, and if you weren't, in all honesty, how normal of a child were you? Really?
Cheers. I learnt BASIC when I was 9, on an old "amstrad word processor" I found in my Grandad's attic. I had definitely learnt to read and write by then ;-)
That's probably not *so* unusual for hackers today, to be honest. It's not normal compared with Joe Average.
> Hello??? There is no database of supported hardware..
nonsense, SuSE for example has had a db of supported hardware for at least 5 years. And there are many more specific sites (alsa, linuxprinting.org, sane) which will give you the status of currently supported hardware.
http://cdb.suse.de/index.php?LANG=en_UK
http:/
I've said it before, I'll say it again:
a ge s.html
/home/$user/lib/$lib_name, click the AppDir, and boom, it just runs.
AppDirs, AppDirs, AppDirs.
No dropping to a commandline. No GCC flags for the user to get hung up on. No need to be root. Just unpack it, click it, and it runs.
Toss ZeroInstall in the mix so that all the requirements are seamlessly pulled for the user, and no one has to worry about installation again. If you want to know if current apps would work as AppDirs, take a look here:
http://www.cs.sunyit.edu/~geerp/rox/appdir-pack
It's a collection of regular programs like Aterm and Dillo placed in AppDirs. Now imagine if all the requirements for those were also available as AppDirs. Just click the AppDir and let ZeroInstall get the libraries for you, or grab them yourself and pop them in, say,
Simple, n'est pas?