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Novell's Releases Linux Usability Testing Videos
sp3298622 writes "Novell is releasing primary desktop research, including over 200 videos and analysis of usability tests, at betterdesktop.openSUSE.org. Vice president of collaboration and desktop engineering for Novell, Nat Friedman: As a programmer, it's sometimes difficult to know how ordinary people with no technical experience are reacting to your software. Linux people tend to know other Linux people. In these usability tests, we selected test subjects who were experienced with Windows, but who had never heard of Linux, and asked them to perform basic tasks using the Linux desktop."
That's all I can say!
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
You know that ruddy "Linux vs. Windows Usability: The Quake Installation Test" troll is lurking around here somewhere.
In addition to BetterDesktop, the Tango Project has finally been announced!
<br>
"The Tango Desktop Project exists to create a consistent user experience for free and Open Source software with graphical user interfaces."
That headline is just embarassing.
Might this only result in the Linux desktop becoming more like Windows?
I knew my day would come... everone seems to be slashdotting the video feeds.
Please don't focus on the videos where poeple make nice comments. Focus, instead, on the ones where people bitch and moan that "this ain't Windows"...
So we can send goons to kill 'em afterwards!
Seriously though, take any complaints to heart; but only to make OSS interfaces better...
I wish I could filter out the annoying Pickens articles...
89% sounds like a very good success ratio for the date and time test. However, RTFA and you'll see that only eleven people participated, most of them female.
If you don't have a diverse testing population, you aren't going to produce meaningful results. The idea is fine and all, but the results are mostly useless.
"It is the stillest words which bring the storm. Thoughts that come with doves' footsteps guide the world."
Developers, you don't get to check in code until you've watched the video of users struggling with your program. OK?
While I've seen things like this before, I'm liking Novell's approaches to Open Source more an more these days. With the excellent SUSE 10 (still may replace Ubuntu on my main workstation) and projects like Beagle and Hula, they're set to really make a splash if they take this useability idea seriously. They seem to be gelling more on the desktop than anyone else of late, 3 years ago who'd have expected Novell to be doing this? Awesome.
fak3r.com
That's funny, that url points to betterdesktop.org.. Is this subliminal advertising now? o_O
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
200 videos + slashdot link = massive conflagration.
I don't get it.
It's a hard thing is to admit that free software has a usability problem. The natural temptation is to sit and watch these videos whilst screaming "You idiots! You don't click "Send and Receive" if you want to send an email! What's wrong with you?!?!"
It is difficult, but it's vitally important. These people aren't stupid losers- they are fluent in another operating system, where they can achieve whatever it is they want.
The problems on show here are ours, not theirs.
Martin
Like seamlessly cutting-and-pasting between applications?
For the former, both Windows and Linux are equally simple, because it's a simple task. For the latter type of task, Linux is substantially more complicated than Windows, but for Joe Bloggs it doesn't really matter much because they have no clue how to do it on Windows either.
What part of Linux usability is this study focusing on? Config? Desktop use? Install? All sorts of areas of linux have different strengths, and it varies greatly from distro to distro as well.
The Cheese Stands Alone.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html
but another entirely to start working on a solution. The barrier to desktop Linux lies in simplicity, and without conducting a study or showing you a video, I can explain it easily.
Go to the web on a Linux PC (provided you've got a browser pre-installed), and download a tarball of say, Firefox. You are a Windows user but you're 'elite', so you use Firefox, and since it's available for Linux, you want to have the same browser.
You have downloaded the tarball, presumably to your desktop. You double click on the file, and it gets opened by Archive Manager. And from here, you can bet that 99% of the Windows folks that would like an alternative to their PCs will not make the adaptation to Linux.
It has to be EASY. Apple set the benchmark for this -- and if imitation is the greatest form of flattery, then do it. Who cares about inflating Apple's ego? If Linux makes a breakthru on the desktop because it's as easy to use as an Apple, or even as easy as Windows, how does that hurt anybody? The true geek can rely on the the commandline only distros, or drop to terminal to get their tasks done using regular expressions and grep or whatever they want, while the 'idiots' (and I would venture to say, that I'm one of them) can use the nice GUI that's simple to follow and easy to use.
Then folks, when developers see that they can cross develop applications that work in Linux (with little overhead), and that people will be able to easily use and access them -- THEY WILL. The open source community just needs to see that fact and start making solutions happen. With the extremely fast and accurate nature of Open Source, the feats that have come from it are amazing. It's more amazing, that the basis of Open Source -- Linux -- remains fundamentally unchanged to accomodate the eager Windows users (read: ME) to switch fully to Linux. Until the snobbery stops and changes start, Linux on the desktop is going nowhere fast. And that's upsetting for a Windows user tired of his OS, and not wanting to get tied into another corporate entity (Apple).
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
But _should_ running Ad-Aware or installing firewalls, removing pop-ups be a basic task?
Missing Tests:
;)
1) Ooops! Find your kernels source, kill X, and install the drivers for your video card. Oh, and updated XF86Config. Or Xorg.conf. Whichever one you happen to have.
2) Damnit, another kernel panic. Find what obscure change caused it to happen this time!
3) Ah, so now you have a wireless card? Try to get it working! You might need to use ndiswrapper. If you get another kernel panic, go back to #2.
4) Ah, can't get above 800x600 resolution, eh? Yeah... find your monitors horizontal and verticle refresh rates. Google it, and you might get lucky.
5) Figure out how to resolve RPM dependancies. Shit, that package needs Python 2.4.2, huh? Ah well, 2.3.9 is installed. Guess you're out of luck.
All joking aside, this was a pretty intresting study.
For pity sake. I'm not normally a grammar nazi, but editors, please, could you not at least make sure that ARTICLE HEADLINES are at least written in some semblance of English? Or is that too much to ask? Sheesh...
Its been said a lot, but "out of box" support for most multimedia, including .avi, .wvm, and mpg are a crucial step for many end users. Installing VLC or several totem codecs may be an easy step for many, but not really for John Q. Windows
while they are sponsoring all those freaking projects like that (hula beagle mono) Suse Linux are loosing value because to gnome technologies
Hmmmmm .... take people who are experienced with performing a certain function on Windows ....
Then put them in front of a different system (like say a Mac) and see if they have any problems performing that same function.
Of course the "easiest" (and therefore the "best") user interface will be the one that is as close to 100% identical to the only one they've used before.
That's great for Novell because they're trying to get a slice of the Windows market.
But this does not provide ANY information that any person could not get just by spending 10 minutes on a Windows machine and copying down menu locations and order and wording.
Prior to Windows XP, Windows did so well with the average user because it was "good enough." It wasn't technically the best, in fact 9X was technically inferior in many areas to even Linux circa 1995-1997. So here's the problem. If Linux cannot meet or exceed Windows in every area that matters to a user, why switch to Linux instead of staying with Windows or going to MacOS X? I have a Mac Mini, it could end up being a major threat to desktop Linux for the people out there who are less concerned with having all of their options open and more concerned with getting a system that is cheap, small and just works. If you're not going to use all of the resources available on a new system, why spend $800 for a new Dell system when you can pay $500 for Mac Mini? For the average user there is no reason to pay the extra $300 if they get the software they need.
Desktop Linux needs to grow up in a hurry. That means it needs to be as easy for the average user to use as Windows XP is by the time Vista comes out. I've used a beta of Vista and was incredibly impressed... and I'm a Mac fan first and foremost. Vista is a major threat to Linux and will solidify Microsoft's control, not end it, if things don't change.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
10,000 /doters render http://betterdesktop.ximian.com/video/ unusable.
I read
OK Here is (I think) the complete list from the article:
I found it interesting that eight out of twelve succesfully completed the "Find out if the computer is online" task. I also wonder if these users could complete all these tasks in Widows.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
What's worse, some frequently used apps don't conform to any options standards at all. 'ps' takes a confusing mixture of options, some with dashes and some without, which are mutually incompatible. 'tar' needs some options without dashes, and some with. 'dd' uses a totally different keyword-based scheme like 'foo=bar'. And 'find' has its own little expression language on the command line.
Clearly, grandma isn't going to be able to use Linux until all of these confusing option schemes are made more consistent.
We've secretly replace their regular Windows desktop with Linux. Let's see what they think...
Sounds like an elaborate advertisement, eh?
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I have users who were quite skilled with Win2K who are lost with WinXP (until I show them how to make it look like Win2K).
So, which interface should Linux emulate then? Win2K or WinXP? Or Mac? Or something else?It is difficult and it is important
This approach will give you completely different answers depending upon whether the group you select is familiar with:
a. Win2K
or
b. WinXP
or
c. MacsYep. And so the "best" interface for Linux would be
Novell could have saved all that time and money and just spent 10 minutes with a Windows machine, copying down menu locations, order and wording.
There is NO "usability testing" being performed here. No one will learn whether a specific Windows implementation of a menu is less optimal than a different one.
All that will be "learned" is whether those users can find the Linux equivalent and that will always be easiest for them when the Linux menues are 100% identical to the Windows menues that those users are familiar with.
And we all know that programmers have no frickin idea how to satisfy a woman.
like shooting karma-fish in a slash-barrel. :)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
As a programmer, it's sometimes difficult to know how ordinary people with no technical experience are reacting to your software.
How about "always completly fscking impossible" for more precision.
Not that there's nothing to gain from training and experience in usability design. Far from it: it will let you skip many obvious problems, and help you resolve others that users find for you in better and more efficient ways. But until your interface is tested on "real people" in at least a couple of iterations, there is no way in hell you can call it "good", "finished", or anything of the sort. If you don't agree, you've probably never done any real usability trials. There are always surprises. Often really big ones.
Your fine tuned detail somewhere may work just as plannned, but it will easily be swamped by problems stemming from inadvertent signals the interface is sending which never occurred to you, or from assumptions you never questioned or even spotted, which utlim ately make people (rightfully!) misunderstand the whole metaphor and do the wrong thing.
There are good news though: If you are willing to really really accept that the user is right (the way people percieve your product is in fact the way they perceive it, and you won't be around to explain to them that their thinking is wrong), and have set aside reasonable time to correct the problems you will find, - usability trials are fun!
Seriously. Fun, enlightening, and humbling (but in feelgood way), and they will broaden your horizons by illustrating just how differently from your daily assumptions it is not just possible but common to think. Do them. You'll like it.
Just resist the urge to explain the problem to the subject (except to be able to move on to test other things). Write down the problem in stead. The trial is for your instruction, not theirs.
sudo ergo sum
A couple of days ago I did an informal usability test, where I got someone to try installing the new SuSE 10 distribution. While there are still some quirks and odd ends, it is really coming along nicely.
e -usability-of-installing-and-using-suse-10/
The test can be read here: http://johnny.chadda.se/2005/10/10/determining-th
Has anyone seen what they've done with flash on that site? Their titles are all individual flash applets just displaying some text in a fancy (but ugly) font. For a Linux site this is rather appalling.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
Eh... to open, and write into, a word processor: yep, both just as easy.
Sharing files over a network: well, on Windows the hard part is not sharing them. Cheap shots aside, though, Samba is easy to get going on desktop-oriented distributions, not really more difficult than configuring sharing on Windows. Printers: again distro-dependent, but I know where you're coming from there. I've had experiences with cups that drove me to... well, cups. Or rather large glasses of strong drink. I hear scanning's the same, though I don't have one myself.
Installation: Linux is definitely easier these days. Usually the only third-party driver you have to find is nvidia. With Windows? Better fish out all the driver disks that came with the PC, and expect a reboot after each and every one. That's before you start installing the applications, most of which would have been part of your Linux distro from the beginning.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Red Hat's Fedora... it seems the logical choice but as I may have motioned towards... I'm a total neophyte with Linux. I know the THEORY, I just don't know the application.
:)
Besides I prefer to learn the hard way as it usually provides shortcuts for things later on. I still regularly drop to DOS windows in Windows to get things done quickly
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
The best way to do usability tests is actually to conduct small tests with 5-7 participants. Any more and you just get loads of people tripping up on the same damn issues over and over again. It's a much better idea to do a small usability test, fix the issues tha come up and then do another small test to find any new ones. Repeat until you only find very minor issues. If the point of usability tests was to get an accurate statistic on what percentage of users can complete a ceratin task then you'd have a point, but it *isn't*. That said, having a diverse testing poulation is still desirable but it certainly isn't required. As long as the people testing aren't the actual developers yoiu'll get valuable feedback anyway.
Just use Debian, Luke 8)
I think the real problem is when the user wants to install his favorite application which is not pre-packaged by the distro. Another one is setting up Wine to play San Andreas!
Try to find Jacob Nielsen's "Why You Only Need to Test With 5 Users" or "A mathematical model of the finding of usability problems" for some more insight into population size for usability testing.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
Why do you assume that Windows developers will package their apps correctly but that Linux developers will not?Again, you assume that the Windows developer will do everything 100% correctly, but that the Linux developer will do everything 100% wrong. Why is that?
With a statically compiled app, there should be ZERO problems with a
If it is not statically compiled, the only problem you'll have is if it calls some uncommon library that the developer did not see fit to link to on his site.But Windows does not work like that and Windows has a much larger desktop share than Macs do.
Therefore, being the easiest way to install an app will not get you desktop marketshare.
So, I wanted to install Quake. I use Linux a lot. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty comfortable with it. I've heard Windows was great for people who want to play games with no hassles. I knew microsoft made it, so I pointed konqeror at microsoft.org, and away I went. Ooops. MS is a company, not an organisation. Microsoft.com! Okay, so I tried to search the website for an .iso, so I could install Windows. Nothing! I realised that it was Commercial Software. I should have known this upfront, but I'm no windows expert. So, for the privelige of *playing games,* I went down to a local computer shop and invested over a hundred dollars in a copy of Windows. (I guess there are a lot of hard core gamers who wouldn't have a problem with putting down hundreds of dollars just to play games, but it isn't something I normally do.)
Installation was pretty smooth. I had to download nvidia binary drivers to get fully accelerated OpenGL, just like Linux. Windows is a supported platform for the drivers. I had to reboot the whole OS after installing them, because Windows won't let you easily drop back to a command line mode and just restart the GUI. No worries - I didn't have a server running on the machine, and it only takes a bit longer to reboot than to just restart a GUI.
Caution - Windows only comes with a special limited feature browser that doesn't support tabs, or anything. It is apparently only provided so you can download the latest version of a real browser after you install Windows. Windows doesn't come with a lot of useful stuff that you expect from a Linux distro...
So, I start reading docs to find out how you install apps on this new OS. I was having a pretty good time. Then, I learned that there is no equivalent of apt-get. If there is free software you want to download and install, you have to do it manually. So, I used the funny miniature "IE" browser to get the Quake source online.
Ooops, bad idea. Windows doesn't come with a compiler. You can download a free version, but the full featured "Visual Studio," costs a lot of money. I didn't feel like investing the effort to understand the differences. I decided to just get binaries. Again, there is no tool to automatically download and install an app, so I had to manually google for windows binaries. Thankfully, Quake is a very popular game, so it was very fast and easy to find, but still, it is an extra layer of inconvenience.
After a flurry of clicking "next" and eventually "finish," I finally had the game installed. Hooray. I tried to run it and I got a "BSOD." (Crash error screen) Of course, I already pointed out that Windows comes with no development tools, so it wasn't like I could try again with the debugger to see what happened. I had no way to see exactly what the issue was. What's worse, I couldn't get back to the system. This *game* had caused the equivalent of a kernel panic. It wasn't just the app that had crashed, but the whole system! this, from a system that is supposedly really great for games! It lets a game kill it!
Okay, so I rebooted into Linux. I already knew of a website with binaries for Quake, so I went there in Konq (Which came installed by default! I didn't have to go and download it!), downloaded a package...
dpkg -i Q
That was all there was to it. This "Windows is great for games" garbage is just horrible propaganda.
Now, if only I could get sound to work in Linux...
Might this only result in the Linux desktop becoming more like Windows?
It might, if the Linux desktop hadn't already been imitating Windows for the past ten years.
Take a (non-existant) Unix only user and give them Windows. They have the same issues. Take someone fluent in spanish and transport them to India. Same problems.
Think of this without bias. If you had been thrown into Windows XP for the first time and asked to do the same thing, would you know that Outlook is a frigging e-mail program!!!??? Its icon doesn't even have anything to DO with e-mail. Changing a date - woo-hoo! Right-click the date. Thank GOD they got that right!
UI design is flailing in the OSS community because the resources M$ throws at UI design don't exist - especially in the FOSS subset of the OSSers. Do you have millions of dollars to do user usability testing - as in the people who wouldn't volunteer freely to "beta" something - the ones that outnumber the beta testers 50 to 1. Do you have millions of dollars for focus groups and other UI related tasks?
The difference is money. Give the same efforts that M$ puts into UI usability and testing to the FOSS folks and you'd have - well a better Windows, but definitely a much better UI.
"It's a hard thing is to admit that free software has a usability problem."
Admitting fault is seen as a sign of weakness. Read through the "blocking ads" story sometime.
"The natural temptation is to sit and watch these videos whilst screaming "You idiots! You don't click "Send and Receive" if you want to send an email! What's wrong with you?!?!""
You idiot! Don't go to that site and read the content! It's a trap! They want you to indirectly pay for it! STOP! The free beer sites are over here...until they turn Nessus.
"It is difficult, but it's vitally important. These people aren't stupid losers- they are fluent in another operating system, where they can achieve whatever it is they want."
Stupid user. Told them the NYTs was a death trap, but no they wanted to read the content.
"The problems on show here are ours, not theirs."
The advertisers made me do it.
Those are very interesting questions. If only there were an article somewhere that answered them.
Of course, what would be really great would be if some people would not just assume certain tasks were "simple" and move on, but actually watch some real live users try to acomplish them. They could even videotape it to see exactly what the stumbling blocks were. Then someone could write an article about it so others would understand what they assumed was simple actually causes problems for people. Of course, to understand that, those people would have to do something with that article. Starts with 'r'? Rhymes with 'mead'? Anyone? Anyone? Sigh.
Actually that's not true in all case. If you dig through TFA it shows how the participants self-rated their experience level with computers in general on a 1-10 scale. At least a few participants in some of the grouping were at 1/10 ("no experience"). Note that this is self-reported, so I expect all the experience scores are somewhat inflated. Even a participant claiming to be at 8/10 may still not be what we consider "fluent" in this context.
The problem is not the contributions. The problem is getting those contributions accepted by the maintainers.
/opt/kde3 and later on you can move this entire directory to /usr/local/kde3 without the need to recompile anything. On GNOME we sill have the issue that every path is hardcoded inside the binaries so you can't move the entire location if necessary. One of the bad concepts of GNOME.
Over the years I realized that the request of contributions is just a poor excuse to avoid conversations with the developers or users who want something to get changed.
Some stuff in gnome-vfs for example was so utterly broken that it wasn't touched for a really long time. There wasn't even a maintainer for it (only a guy who kept putting some stuff in there whenever it was needed). Now some other people seem to have taken over the maintainance of it and the process continues.
But within the GNOME development team I found out (due to own experience) that it's quite difficult if not highly impossible to get some ideas through or to convince a developer that a different approach would have been wiser or better. Not to say save a lot of time. But people kept using the broken components for years.
Even now not everything inside GNOME is sane or reliable and a lot of stuff seem to be reinvented over and over again. See DBUS for example or basic things like "specifications" as found on freedesktop.org. GNOME makes freedesktop.org sound like it's a place for developers from GNOME and KDE to met and declare specifications but this is not always true since KDE had solved most of the necessary things that GNOME still urgently needs years before and their specifications and solutions are often by far better thought through and much more mature - and over the years proven that it also works practically and not just as concept.
For example you can compile KDE with a static prefix in say
Another bad thing about GNOME is that the developers do have nice ideas at time but they lack the power or durability to make the changes or visions they have complete. GStreamer for example is indeed a nice technology and it somehow made it's path inside GNOME but still it doesn't feel like it's truly part of GNOME since some apps use it, others avoid using it and stick to xine. Now if these apps stick to xine then chances that GStreamer gets fixed and a whole part of GNOME is low.
Another thing is that plenty of the developers seem to have rotating focus on stuff. Today they work on this one, then tomorrow they focus on hacking on Mozilla or hack on 'dead ideas' they have that no one really takes serious so all the resources of working and fixing GNOME get's lost with playground stuff.
We all know that GNOME was meant to be a corporate desktop. But then a corporate desktop needs different resources and a different approach. Serious project leading is required, strict guidelines are required, and people with brains to enable them.
It can not be (now that the HIG as guideline exists for some years) that applications developer still ignore it. I don't care for third party stuff. But I do care for the important and key elements of GNOME software that should be a good example and follow these guidelines.
GIMP, DIA, Evolution, Abiword, Gnumeric only to name a few are in no way HIG conform. Some are, but others not. I filled in a bug for Gnumeric not long ago pointing the developer to the HIG v2.0 where it says that the Toolbar should obey the rules of Toolbar & Menus capplet (which is a core part of GNOME) unfortunately the bug was closed as not a bug and no further comments have been given to it.
Also printing is a necessary importand thing in GNOME imo and it can't be that I load up GThumb to print a *.gif file and it ends up in printing a totally black picture on a white sheet of paper, wasting nearly 1/3 of my black ink cartridge.
It's also inacceptable for a corporate desktop to have a document reader and viewer like Evince that prints a whol
AAAAAAAAH! AAAAARGH! THE PAIN!!! GET IT OFF ME! GETITOFF-GETITOFF-GETITOFF-GETITOFF! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
(Yes, this is a joke. And yes, this insanely long sentence with so many interventions until I get to the point was added to prevent the lameness filter.)
He's not trolling nor ignorant, he's addressing a real usability problem which is not totally solved in the Linux world.
It's good to have a central repository for installing distro-packaged applications, but what's wrong with also having the file manager doing "the right thing" when clicking on a separately downloaded package? (The right thing being to open the clicked package in the package manager). Redundancy is often good in UI, and downloading packages from the developer scales better than mantaining a central repository.
Autopackage is meant to support this two ways of installing software (repository-based and distributed-packages-based) but it isn't popular enough yet.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
I must commend Ubuntu for making Samba a snap to get up and running using their GUI. Same with printers and disk drives, it's all done via a 'Wizard'.
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
The tests involved extermely complex things, like clicking on a link and reading an article.
Personally I think the hardest task for an average user to perform on linux at the moment is driver installation, and lets face it for most people getting all their hardware working is the first step towards adopting a new system. I recently tried installing drivers for my ATi Radeon 9800 Pro a pretty mainstream card from a well known manufacturer, needless to say it's not straight forward by any stretch of the imagination. You simply can't expect joe public to ever learn how to compile his kernel and even messing around with kernel modules is probably asking too much.
Linux is certainly making progress synaptic does a great job of alleviating dependency hell and almost entirely masking it from the end user. I'd like to see the linux community not necessarily looking to emulate the functionality in Windows or Mac OS X but instead looking for what would be the most elegant solution. Perhaps something like an online database of drivers that manufacturers could update, which could be automatically 'pushed' onto your computer overnight and silently rebooted (with your permission in a preferences box) so that you don't even have to worry about having the latest drivers it all becomes automatic would be neat, in the event it failed to reboot it could roll back to the previous driver and notify you in the morning of its attempt.
You could allow users to rate drivers and add the ratings to the database, this way you could specify you only want to automatically update to new drivers that are rated 3/5 or higher for example. This could be like linux's answer to Windows update only better.
Why use people who have experience with windos? It doesn't take a study to realize that they will be trying things - surprise - the way the are used to doing them, i.e. the windos way. As a result, everywhere the choosen Linux UI differs from windos will show up as a "usability issue" when in fact it's not.
Putting people with no computer experience there would be much more enlightening, especially when it comes to finding what things are intuitive and which aren't.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"Has anyone seen what they've done with flash on that site?"
You should call Flash Protective Services and report them.
You are correct, in theory. You are incorrect in this specific instance because their testing procedure will not yield the information necessary to find a "better" interface.
That is because they are only testing prior Windows users.
Those Windows users have been trained to seek certain items in certain places.
Even if you added a button that said "Complete this test with one click", the users would NOT find it unless they could not FIRST find the Windows button/menu that they were trained to look for of if that button was in that location.Again, I agree with that, but that will not be achievable through these tests.
Microsoft Word used to have an option to use the WordPerfect keystrokes. This was because the people with the most experience found it very difficult to maintain their productivity while learning a new system. Even if that system was "better" for other people. Back then, the most experienced and productive people had spent years learning WordPerfect for DOS.
Novell has learned nothing in these past years. To make it easy to migrate users, you make it an option to have an interface that is 100% identical to what they are familiar with.
Real "usability testing" requires more people with more experience levels on different systems, including people with little or no computer experience at all.
If you REALLY want to make the system easy to use, you have MULTIPLE options:
# 1. Basic level. Almost no menus and lots of "I want to" included in the icon's name ("I want to send an email to someone" or "I want to look at web sites").
# 2. Emulation level. 100% Win2K look-alike.
# 3. Whatever other interface you design.
The key is to build the interface to the user and what the user expects/knows.
I'm just trying to give you an example of the problems *I* had. I went to atrpms.net (I think that's the site) to download a copy of Nessus in RPM form. On the Nessus site, I only found source and I was having problems installing it, so I figured RPMs would be helpful in that case, just making it a 'set it and forget it' type of thing.
/. as well as Linux junkies.
However, I downloaded oh... 10 different RPMs -- the server, addons, glib this, blah blah... and I kept getting dependancy problems when installing. I'm speaking from a NON-PROGRAMMER point of view, and as amazing as it may be, there are Windows junkies that live on
I have a keen interest in getting Linux to work with some ease that I'm accustomed to in Windows and that AS a Windows user, I can figure out in OS X. Linux doesn't offer that, and I know that every other Linux junkie here will heroically defend the idea that Linux is hard to use and fight me tooth and nail on any comment I make. But in the end, it won't make Linux any easier, it won't win any more of the desktop market, and no apps will be written for it. And I will be *stuck* (I don't WANT to use Windows, but I *have* to) with a OS that's easy and familiar instead of venturing out with training wheels. It's like going from going from Windows, a bike, to Linux, a spaceship. There's going to be quite a few problems in me learning it because it's alien to me. And the notion of it being alien to me is one that escapes a LOT of people here.
When the oversight is seen that Linux can be a lot more, AND appease Windows junkies like myself will it gain the support of a lot more people on a fundamental level. So I insist, please go on making snide remarks about my questions and concerns with Linux as a Desktop OS. I am sure that will solve all the usability issues it has.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I'm also seeing the New Math in Turn Off Login Music, where 3 Male subjects + 10 Female subjects = 11 Total. ???? And then the Experience Level of the subjects there are a total of 30 subjects?
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Its really not a hard issue to sort out. If you want people to adopt make it look like something they know. Gimpshop's success showed if you want to use gimp make it look like photoshop. If you want users to use linux make it look like windows. Linspire started with that ethos, then sadly started "improving" the user interface. I am a techie and I can't use the interface. BTW I am sure that novell, didn't release ALL the videos, I am sure there were some really catastrophic samples that were too damaging to show.
And, by the same token, if the Windows developer did not spend the time to PACKAGE his app in a Windows INSTALLER you'd have the same problem.
Why do you assume that Windows developers will package their apps correctly but that Linux developers will not?
Well, possibly because 99% (conservatively) of all Windows programs are packaged correctly - and this holds true on everything from, say, MyMinesweeper to DB2. At best I'd say that 90% of the software I install from source works first time (sure, all the really major apps do, but beyond that). Probably 50% of the apps I go for offer an RPM for my distro (RHEL4) and, of those, only 75% work without needing some manual futzing.
Windows development makes it easy to create correctly formed install packages. Linux development does not. Heck, its surprisingly difficult (from the perspective of someone who's been doing s/w development since '84, on UNIX since '92) to even get a "correct" autoconf going. And yes, a lot of autoconf'd software is pretty broken (and by that I mean that for the most part it will work on Linux because a lot of people crib from existing Linux autoconfs and a lot of Linux systems have the same general setup, but it falls over annoyingly elsewhere or often has random dependencies on things that aren't actually necessary).
But for Joe Schmo developer - what's the path for him to get his app into the distributions trees again? How is this simple? And why is it his problem to do a separate build every time a new distro comes out with a slightly changed packaging procedure?
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Sounds interesting! But I can't find any data regarding that comparison. Sure, there are tests about logging in, but no data about comparing KDM and GDM.
3 Gnome-apps, 2 neutral apps. Where's KDE-apps? Looking at the data-section, I see this:
Again: Where's KDE? Going thropugh the test data I see that every single test was with Gnome. Where's KDE? So instead of being called "Better Desktop", maybe this should be called "Better Gnome" instead? then again, what can we expect from having a Gnome-guy running the show? So much for equal handling of the desktops....
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Thanks for that. Hard to get modded anything but troll when you ask questions or make comments about how "good" Linux is, versus how good it "could" be.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I think they mean this.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Where were the hidden cameras?
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cedega ./setup.exe
While it's not trivial, it's certainly not rocket science.
Anything that's not prepackaged by one of the major distros is going to be something that would be in a rather raw form even if it were a windows application. That's pretty much what the lack of an RPM or DEB means.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Did these tasks involve things like opening a word document and writing in it? Or did they involve things like adding a new printer, or sharing files over a network. Oh, and what about installing?
Here's an idea, RTFA and find out; it's all there.
Because I'd like to start using Linux in the GUI form first and figure out the intricacies later thru use of the terminal and command line.
:)
The GUI form however, is still difficult to use for the average Windows user (me). Fix that, and you have another convert to preach the word
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Getting the desktop to look like anything except blurry ass requires an hour of reading about how to install your video drivers. Why? Because after installing your package using the really nice script, it still doesn't work. So you google again and figure out you need to edit that ghastly xorg.conf file. And then Google to figure out why the resolution is stuck. And then Googling again to figure out why the refresh is stuck at 54 Hz and giving you a massive headache. Dual monitors? TV out? You may as well just go cry yourself to sleep unless you're an uber-leet nerd, because that stuff takes hours to set up. That shit is a matter of one click in Windows; my mother can do it.
Then there's networking. Support for your wireless adapter may or may not even exist. If it does, it's probably in one of the generic Prism2 drivers or something like that. Great, but it doesn't help me a whole damn lot - mine says Netgear on the front. Back to Google again. It's also intresting to note that Linux's DHCP client and the server in my Linksys didn't get along real well, even on a wired connection. There's no way someone who doesn't know how that crap works would be able to troubleshoot that.
Of course, there's always multimedia playback, right? The install I liked best so far, Unbuntu, couldn't play anything out of the box. I know it should have been able to, but for whatever reason my install was futzed no matter how many times I reinstalled it. I never could figure out how to make it play videos. There were several settings for decoding and such (as well as about 10 different players to choose from), but nothing seemed to change no matter how I tinkered with those settings. Oh, and Unbuntu comes with several options for audio input and output including ALSA and ESD. WTF is the difference? I've heard of ALSA before so I'll use that one. Oh wait, that one doesn't work, but the ESD one does. Well, as long as I hear sound I don't really care. At this point, I don't even want to Google it.
This is why there aren't more Linux desktops: there are severe usability issues. I find it easier to get a webserver complete with PHP and MySQL up and running on Linux than a desktop. Why? Because I don't need video drivers, audio, or wireless networking. I also don't change my server hardware every month or two. Linux makes a great server, for sure. But as great a server as it is, it's a shitty desktop. And you'll please excuse my anger, I just got finished configuring my Linux install and promptly broke it...again.
Here's what desktop distros should be working on:
"I do a grep for shit, bollocks, and tits before checking in code. I'm professional..." -RECURSIVE_META_JOKE, reddit.com
I'm primarily a Mac user myself, but you've got to recognize that 90% or more of potential Linux customers are people who are currently experienced with Windows.
Is the Windows UI ideal? Of course not. But it's what people know. So unless you've got something that's a clear and very intuitive improvement on Windows, you're probably better just sticking with the Windows de facto "standard."
Mac OSX is actually a good example. They've got all sorts of cool and intuitive ways to toggle between different windows, but they also stuck Alt+Tab in there (well, Apple+Tab) so that Windows guys would feel comfortable.
Of course, this is all assuming that the goal of Linux on the desktop is to win converts from Windows and other OS's. It the goal is simply to make the UI as advantageous as possible for a few intrepid and adventurous folks, by all means, have fun.
Obiously one of the participants is either in the middle of gender altering surgery or androgenous.
I think figuring out how to make Linux more usable for existing Windows users is worthwhile in itself, whether the hard-core Linux crowd likes it or not.
Furthermore, I doubt your true usability test could provide a successful argument for Linux in the corporate world. Why should a CIO care which OS lets people learn basic tasks faster, when every job candidate had better have those skills -before- bothering to send in a resume? Corporations are no longer willing to teach (at least in the U.S. it seems).
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Problem is, this is a spurious query.
You want to install UT2004 on your PC.
Windows: Insert CD
Open CD in filemanager
Read README file to see that you should run Setup.exe
Double-click on Setup.exe
Linux: Insert CD
Open CR in filemanager
Read README file to see that you should run "Linux/Setup
Single-click on Linux/Setup
After that, it is the setup program given that does the work and not Linux.
I mean, if you want to use his scenario with Linux, you'd have to compare it with compiling and installing a tarball for Windows. Which means installing dev tools. After all that, you can then start on the tarball.
There is no big blue "E" so that means no internet, right?
All Your Base Are Belong To Us!
What's keeping Linux off of the desktop market is the problem getting info out of the video and sound chip companies so Free drivers can be written for them and included in the various Linux distributions.Strange, for me apt-get install nessus seems to work just fine and is very fast.
Dependency checks have been fixed for quite a while now. Even yum and urpmi seem to be able to handle all of that without a problem.No worries. Just don't say that something doesn't work because it doesn't work the way you're familiar with.
On Windows and on Linux, if all the factors are the same, there is no difference in the amount of effort it takes to install a new app. It just comes down to learning the process on each system.Which gets back to my other posts about people who are familiar with Windows having an easier time with Linux if their interface is 100% identical to Windows.
But just because it is easier for you, right now, does not mean that it is the best interface or even a "good" interface. It is just what you a comfortable with and you do not want to leave that comfort zone.
That is all about you and nothing about Linux.I fully understand it.
But I also understand that this it is about you and people like you.
If we followed that logic, we'd never have Windows because everyone was more comfortable and producting using their DOS apps in DOS.
The question is, do we want to make Linux easier for you to use or do we want to find and improve any weaknesses in Linux's interfaces?
The two may have the same items (or maybe not), but they are not the same.Again, those two may share items, but they are not the same.
Microsoft Word had an option to emulate WordPerfect keystrokes because the users at the time were all familiar and productive with those.
But no one today is arguing that WordPerfect was the best interface.Again, by your logic, WordPerfect's keystrokes would be the "best" and Microsoft Word should have skipped its own interface and gone with WordPerfect's because people like you found it easier.
But what is easier for you right now is not necessarily the best interface. For many functions, a GUI is more efficient and easier to learn.
Don't confuse your current needs with the definition of a "good" interface. They are not the same.
If we mimic Windows XP people will be lost when they are used to Windows Vista etc. I sure agree that care needs to be taken to make things simple but it dont think cloning Windows is the answer. Making a copy of somthing that hard to use is wasted. I am a network admin and i see the difficulties people have with Windows everyday. Windows XP totally blows their world apart since they are used to Windows 98. Same thing will happen with Windows Vista.
The solution would be to think long and hard about whats the best way to do things and then stick to it since change seems to be the biggest problem. Just dont change to much and try to KISS.
There arent that many parts i feel must be changed in Linux. For mass adoption a common third party package format for Linux applications would probably do the trick. Make it easy to install applications and drivers that arent managed by the dists repos. Other than that i really cant think of something thats hard to do on Linux.
HTTP/1.1 400
Keeper!
:D
Regards;
I briefly toyed around with Linux several times as well before committing to a switch last Christmas. There is a learning curve, but there is a learning curve to everything.
Here is a tip: Choose KDE as your GUI choice and then choose the "Redmond" theme. Choose Windows 95 style mouse clicking.
On a distribution like Xandros 3.0, it is close enough to MS Windows that you shouldn't have any real problem doing basic tasks.
Yes, there is the learning curve to work through for things like the directory structure and file permissions. And you'll have to remember to logon/logoff. As long as you stick to GUI type of applications instead of command line applications it isn't any more difficult than the first time you tried running a new GUI type application on MS Windows.
Limiting usability tests to people that have no experience with windows is a pointless waste of time.
It would be like GM testing their vehicles with people that don't have a drivers license. Why would GM develop and test a product with a market that won't use their product? That makes no sense.
Linux developers and vendors need to understand, inter-operate with, and mimic the windows way.....for now. That is necessary to win the trust of business and personal users. After Linux has a monster market share, then the developers and distributors have free license to move that user-base in any direction that makes sense.
Microsoft sort of did this with Novell. Their desktop OS worked well as a Netware client, and when it came time to replace the Netware stuff, NT4 server was an easy choice - it was designed to work with all those windows 95/98 desktops that were deployed on Novell networks.
People don't want something new....they want something that works with the stuff they already have.
-ted
Funny story. My experience was a little different. I went to Comp USA, and for $299 I took home a PC with 17 inch monitor, speakers, and Windows pre-installed ... and they threw in a printer. I gave them another $40 and brought home my favorite game. I plugged the machine in, inserted the mouse and keyboard and speaker connectors (all color-coded), hooked up the monitor and turned it on. I had to click away a welcome message. Then I inserted my game CD, the installer started automatically. Five minutes later I was in gaming heaven. No compilers. No internet connection. No messing with drivers - the installer did have to install the latest directX version, but that was all automatic. I guess I just got lucky. It can't possibly be this easy, can it?
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
First Subtask: Understand what this task actually means. Edit the EXIF data of a JPEG file? Add a symlink to the file? Or what?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
First, I don't want users to mess with system settings unless they are allowed to (e.g. unless they are admins in 'wheel'). I'm happy to support regular users, but not regular users that think they should be adminitering a system they don't understand. I'm not trying to be elitist by stating that only 'qualified' users should try to be admins. Its perfectly fine to drive a car, but that doesn't mean you should be that car's mechanic.
More significantly, why should the clock be off in the first place? Even a supposedly 'user hostile' OS like OpenBSD supports NTP. So, rather than have the users fix a broken clock, why don't we have the computer periodically sync its clock to the correct time. I can't set the clock to within 100 ms, but that is trivial to set it within 20 ms with NTP. Forcing users to fix a problem is inferior to preventing the problem.
Think global, act loco
Romanes eunt domus.
With ~200 videos, you'd think there would be a .torrent we could use to lighten the load?
Anybody? Bueller??
You are right in that 11 users is not going to give you statistically sound results about how usable a system is, or how it compares to other systems.
However, research in the discount usability / guerrilla HCI area has shown that you do not need many user observations to find the majority of serious usability issues - which is the name of the game here.
After five or so users you tend to see the same usability issues cropping up again and again. From a pragmatic point of view, usability professionals are trying to find the most usability problems at a cost effective price.
Claiming that the results are not meaningful and "mostly useless" really is missing the point.
For more info check out this link or Nielsen's analysis (1 and 2) for more info.
I don't want userfriendly crap. I want control.
I am getting fucking tired of every single piece of software having to be designed to the greatest possible fucktard of humanity. The main reason I switched from windows to linux is not because of stability or security it is because windows is now with XP a fisher price product. To make it easy for drones to use it becomes impossible hard to do tasks that MS decided was to hard for its average user.
If you can't figure out how to use linux, take the hint. It isn't for you. Now go away.
Suse can do what they want with their product but stop including all of linux. Fine if Suse wants to make their desktop into an other dumbed down gui for the drooling. They got a reason to want to attract the largest group of customers wich is ofcourse the morons. A lot of other opensource projects have no such motivation. They are projects developed by their own user who thought that maybe others might have some use for it.
The real spirit of opensource is not programmers writing for users. It is users being their own programmers. Don't like it? Chance it youreselve. Now I am going back to coding an app with 10000 command line switches in japanese with 1 status feedback.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You can not design something without the average user being part of the process.
Where I use to work the software development people sometimes were not engaged in what was happening on a manufacturing side. They "developers" thought they new how to do the manufacturing technician job but it was of those, "I think I understand what I thought you said".
They would start a job trying to get a specification together and so the people they would talk to were the managers of the manufacturing technician. Well guess what - they did not really know the job ether and what was ended up being developed would drive the technician up the wall with how things in there words was "screwed up".
What happened on latest projects was before getting to far into the project spec, they also included the technician in the interviews. Then once a somewhat rough spec was put together and some idea of the direction it was going. The next step was to videotape the technician doing the job as it was currently being down. One month was spent on just taping various people doing various aspects of the job. Each taping session went through a post-mortem review with all parties involved, the spec writer, the software developers, the managers, the technician, and anyone else they could drag into the meeting. The tape would be gone through and question like "Why did you do that? That's not written down anywhere" would be said every five minutes. Even the managers were asking what was going on.
What was brought out in all of this is that unless you are actually doing the day-to-day job in manufacturing, you do not understand the process no matter how many design meetings you have with them. This became the standard method on following projects.
You like a certain interface.
... the "best" interface depends upon the person and that person's experience and comfort levels.
... the concept of the "best" interface needs to change to include the user's current experience level and whether that user wants to learn more or not.
... the "best" interface for someone doing data entry in an office would probably not be the "best" interface for a programmer working on a multi-media player nor would it be the "best" interface for a game player at home.
... as long as you had options for expanding that. Example, with the most basic functionality, the icons/apps in the 4 corners of your screen could not be changed or moved or re-named. These would be used for things such as "How do I do something?" and "Add new applications" and "Add new hardware" and "Call tech support". With each level of advancement, the user has manual access to more system configuration functions.
... or this one?".
Other people prefer an interface they were trained for.
Now, would you think that there is not one "best" interface?
Maybe
Maybe
Consider
I'm thinking that having a default interface for the most basic functionality would be "best"
Level 1: wallpaper, mouse cursor, sound scheme
Level 3: add icons to desktop, still no changes to the 4 basic icons
Level 5: multiple monitors with different resolutions
Level 7: full control of desktop, can remove the 4 basic icons
Level 9: overclocking the video cards via application
Once you start thinking like that, all you have to do is decide what "basic" functionality belongs at each level and then "test" the "usability" of that level against users of that level or higher experience.
Sure, Gramma might scan in pix of the grand kids (level 1), but should she be offered the option to do bidirection Floyd Steinberg dithering? Or should the machine offer to show her 1 through 10 different possibilities? Then the machine picks the most common (this is where the testing comes in) options, applies them and presents them with the old standard "Do you like this one more
Hmmmmm..... it seems this "interface" issue gets beyond the "desktop" metaphore that the OS/window manager presents to you.
You show a total lack of understanding regarding the motivation of free software developers. People might rant and rave about destroying windows on slashdot, but the people out there actually doing the work don't care about Windows. The goal of most developers has nothing to do with stealing windows user base by making their system appeal to them. The goal of most developers is to create the best software possible. Software must be reliable, efficient and easy to use enough for people to want to use it; whether people use it or not is wholly symptomatic. If free software developers are doing their job, the problem is not theirs, the problem is in the hands of the users for not using this software for their own gain. As the quality improves, the insentive to use it grows and not using this software becomes more of a problem.
So if you are some one dimention charactor sitting at home plotting to distroy Windows, migration becomes the top priority. But if you are a developer who takes pride it making top class software, thinking about windows is simply a waste of time, it is condemning oneself to always playing catchup. We would always have to think about compatibility before something potentially groundbreaking is done, and that conflicts with our aims. If I wanted people to use something who's greatest merit is its similiarity with Windows, I'd just promote Windows, it's as simple as that. If someone spends all their time making sure that everyone likes them they will amount to nothing. If software is good, it will be used, if not, it shouln't be used. Windows doesn't matter to Linux, Linux can keep going without another defection from Windows for decades. Linux gains fairly little from the computer apathetic and it can live without them for as long as it takes to become something attractive to them in its own right.
So if this means some people don't like Evolution or whatever, so be it. A successful person has a huge share of both friends and enemies, they make every desision based on what they should do, rather than what people like and if people get angry that is something that must be accepted. Linux will get nowhere thinking about those who "are fluent in another operating system" because people can become fluent in many things; people learn, that's what makes our species so good.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
See how they manage to work with the Linux CLI.
You might be suprised how many people grew up with the CLI and who think that vi is a horribly modern app and can't they please have good old ed back.
Just because you know have a generation of kids who can't handle a task if it doesn't involve clicking on shiny buttons does not mean all computer users are brain dead zombies.
With OSX Apple gave Mac users the CLI and MS is hard at work improving their own CLI to be able to compete better with Unix.
At a certain point you have to dare to ask the following question: Is it possible that this person is just to stupid to handle this piece of software? If a person shoots himself in the foot with a gun, is the fault with the design of the gun or with the person shooting himself?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yes it is. This is why windows is king of the hill.
amen.
i tried switching to linux. i loved it. the distros are brilliant today, they come preinstalled with practically everything i need on a daily basis. but i couldn't install software. i just couldn't do it. it took me forever to install PRAAT, and i was vastly confused about how to install a new version of firefox, after downloading the appropriate files.
i ended up thinking: "am i missing something? is there a hidden interface somewhere that will let me install the damn app just by clicking a few buttons? am i an idiot?"
(no need to answer that last question, everyone, thanks....)
i work partly as a network administrator (all Windows), and i personally use an ibook. i've done a small amount of webdev, i know the difference between the internet and the web (and other applications of the internet), i'm the person who people call on to fix their mucked up windows boxes (usually trivial fixes.) so i'm reasonably experienced with computing in general. i've made and used some linux live-cds, and i ended up installing Ubuntu on desktop where i work. but the linux software-install was just killer.
i ended up succeeding how? by googling about the installation, and copying some CLI text that i found into the shell. i'm sure it's only a matter of time before i'm familiar with the process
with Ubuntu 5.04, i also had major problems changing my desktop resolution. an web search revealed that i'd have to put a bunch of arcane (incomprehensible TO ME) code into a config file somewhere. anyway, the latest updated version of ubuntu works great, resolution wise. (there's a simple desktop GUI for it, and it works.) i also haven't been able to set up linux/windows filesharing. the linux box sees the shares, but tries to read them as "desktop configuration files" and can't/won't open them. haven't had much luck searing for a fix.
honestly, PEOPLE WILL SWITCH. when they realize that they can do everything with a distro of linux that they can do with windows-- ONCE THEY CAN ACTUALLY do the trivial things they're used to, slightly beyond simply browsing and emailing and typing documents-- WITHOUT PAYING 200 DOLLARS. i'm patient. i see the future as linux, once it fixes these bottlenecks for the masses. i know it's a process. my point is only that the designers have to be aware of the BOTTLENECKS that hinder the UNINITIATED.
Everything you know is wrong, and tabbed window managers are teh future!
http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/
Emmmm....may I ask you, in what time you got hacked by worms? :)
Ok, no offence and no, it was no joke. I suupose you got some of XPSP2 boxes. If you not, well, then you got very well protected with OEM default installed firewall or something else.
In fact, for at least two hours you should spend of downloading security patches alone, if you don't have one of these things by default.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
these people try to figure out how to do things. its even more painful to realize that the linux desktop still has so far to go.
I'm currently whining over on the SuSE Linux (English) list.
I installed the latest SuSE (10.0), and it went as smoothly as anything I've ever done on a computer.... of course, I'll have to uninstall XINE, go get DeCSS and unbroken XINE, etc., before I can view a video. But, as far as recognizing my computer's bits and getting me going -- including performing an immediate online update of everything that had acquired updates in the few days since release, it was flawless. If I had not wanted to do some hard-disk housekeeping, the whole thing would have been accomplished with five or six questions: Who are you? Where do you live (country)? Language/keyboard? What time is it (and timezone)? What password do you want for your administrative user, root? What name and password do you want for your everyday user? OK, we're done... sorry? what was that?.... um no, we don't have to reboot... yes, we just did a full system installation of the kernel and 1600-odd applications (not an update), and no, we don't have to reboot - you can log in as yourself right now... go ahead... no foolin'.... see?
On the other hand... my wife has an old machine with a DVD-ROM drive in it, but no ability to boot from DVD/CD, and no BIOS provision for changing boot order. No problem, right? We just go to the first machine (the one that installed and configured so effortlessly above) and ask YaST (Yet Another Setup Tool) to generate some boot diskettes, which can be used to get started on that second machine.... well, no. YaST needs to get boot-diskette images from the first machine's DVD, but somehow a bogus entry must have been written to fstab, because YaST says there's no source media there (even though it can be browsed in Konqueror).
Well, there's a fallback position. If we know about it, or if somebody on the list mentions it, we can use "mkbootdisk", in a console (su - root, of course) to do the same job that YaST couldn't do.
Fine... but mkbootdisk --help yields a seven-line cryptic "help" that LOOKS perfectly straightforward, until you try to run the command and realize that it hasn't told you a few things. Well, look at the man page for the real... oh... there's no man page.
Google for a bit.
Try just running the program to see what happens... hey! it says that it is writing 7 diskette images. Cool. But where? Well, search on the filename.
Um, what IS the filename to search for? The --help didn't have anything to say about that. Google some more. Find it on the 37th item out of 13000 hits, meaning that you slog through three pages of un-helpful google links before getting lucky. How silly of us, the filename is plain ordinary "bootdisk1", "bootdisk2" and so on. Fine. Search for those. An hour later, Konqueror is still searching (that'll teach you not to have a couple of big hard disks on your machine), so go to bed. In the morning, the search has completed............ with nothing found. Have you notice that we've gone through an entire holiday (Columbus Day in the US, or Canadian Thanksgiving) and started a new day without getting anywhere close to starting to maybe install this Linux on that old PC?
Hey, maybe it **would** have been worse trying to install Windows, but did they really need to make it so tedious and difficult (like extracting hen's teeth) to do it in Linux? Especially SuSE, now made by the same folks who are doing this usability testing? This is still my favorite distro, but come ON!
By the way, I've been using Linux for years, but always as a low-fluency desktop user. I use the command-line when I need to, but I don't remember all those commands and the joys of regex and grep, because each time I "learn" how to do something, I don't do it again. If I was one of those Linux gurus who maintains a school network, or develops software, or manages databases, and so on, I might do certain tasks often enough that they'd become ingrained. But, like most people, if I only do a thing once every year or two, and if it's subtly or grossly changed the ne
the problem is that in Windows, you would:
1) Insert CD
2) click install when the autorun.inf file automatically launches setup.exe
unless the windows user has specifically turned off autorun, and if he has, then he's not the target audience for this kind of test.
I went to atrpms.net (I think that's the site) to download a copy of Nessus in RPM form. On the Nessus site, I only found source and I was having problems installing it, so I figured RPMs would be helpful in that case, just making it a 'set it and forget it' type of thing.
First off, Nessus is not an app that a beginning user should be setting up on his desktop of all things. It is a network sniffer. If you need to use it, you should know what you are doing with a basic Linux system first and that includes CLI stuff. They don't, AFAIK, package it, because they aren't interested in what flavor of Linux you run it on. That said, some Live CDs come with it and other networking tools preinstalled. Did you ever think about using one of those? I'm not suggesting you change distros wholesale, but use what is appropriate for the project.
So, back to your distrobution of choice, Fedora. I would say that if you wanted to install any app on it, you would ask a question in the appropriate forum section at the Nessus or other software support site first, specify your distro and wait for an answer. You could also go to the support site for your distro and ask in the software forum, doing a search of both forums for an answer before actually posting.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
Well, except for the fact that your $299 PC didn't have a good enough video card to play the game in question. It looked really bad. You went back to the store to buy a better video card and came home with a nice one for $200. It wasn't top of the line, but it met the specs on your game box.
You followed the intallation instructions to a "T" but the card didn't fit any of your expansion slots. You went back to the store to get a different one, but no one was knowledgable enough to help you out. Finally some kid in the aisle overheard you and explained about AGP and PCI-Express. He steered you to the right card.
After following all the instructions you finally get your game set up, but the graphics look crappy. You complain that your $200.00 card isn't even as good as your PS2. You enjoy bad graphics until Xmas a half a year later when your nephew explains the concept of "Native Resolution." You love your gaming PC now and just think, it only took you half a year to get it right!
TW
P.S. I'm a frequent Windows PC gamer, but I don't have any illusions it's as easy as you make it. Newbies have a steep learning curve.
Hopefully this is a general trend for the industry. Maybe everyone will start using these techniques that have been available since the early 70's. Maybe instead of designing from the seat of the their pants they will start testing their interfaces just like we do with all software.
This isn't hard. Usability labs like this aren't necessary. I only have to sit any member of my immediate family down, my parents friends, co-workers, etc. to get an idea. Maybe more serious testing needs specialised workers but by no means do we need these specialised facilities.
If you want a cool way to benchmark in terms of speed, acuracy, and rate of habituation try GOMS. No testers needed. (For those who know about GOMS, please clean that article up. I haven't had time.)
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
As long as it stays that way, you should be ok
The test should include, upgrading the common instant messenger (gaim) from what came with a distro to what actually works, and upgrading a few things like K3B, Video drivers, Web browser.
I have yet to see a single distro do that where you can walk someone through it on a phone call in under 30 min, heck even less than 1 hr.
Gave someone Suse, yahoo, and some other protocols didn;t work even though it was the newest version recently released but came with a year old version of gaim. In order to upgrade that, we had to upgrade gtk. Then they wanted to burn MP3's to a disk, so now we had to upgrade k3b, which entailed having to upgrade a whole slew of programs from KDE(Suse only had experimental upgrades available that broke X) to the command line burning apps.
Total time was not pretty. Debian was a different sort of nightmare as most everything it comes with is ancient, and you have to find servers that have more recent packages and add them to the config files.
I use linux all the time for servers. It excels there, but as a desktop, I spend more time fixing it, than using it. Linux very much feels like a patch work of random applications. And that is bad for a desktop solution.
How can I get my little brother or mother to use this, who are not idiots, but do not want to know what video card they have, or the difference of gnome and kde?
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
It's funny. I don't often comment, but this time I feel like I have to.
Well, possibly because 99% (conservatively) of all Windows programs are packaged correctly - and this holds true on everything from, say, MyMinesweeper to DB2.
<Arthur Dent voice> This must be some new usage of the word correct I wasn't aware of<Arthur Dent voice>
I really have to disagree with you. You see, I've had to scrub my system after uninstalling programs because these correctly written installers couldn't clean up after themselves. I've also found any number of programs which require me to have a company name on my home machine. I'm sorry, but it's home. I don't have a business. But, without that having something in it, I can't finish installing the program.
As for problems with rpm, I'd rather not go there. I've helped people install Request Tracker under Fedora Core 4, even, and it's hell. Using rpm's, and yum, and even trying to get it working from rpm's online, and it sucks. Anytime somebody wants to tell me how wonderful RH or Fedora is, I wanna smack them. It hurts to use. Gimme Debian any day.
But for Joe Schmo developer - what's the path for him to get his app into the distributions trees again? How is this simple? And why is it his problem to do a separate build every time a new distro comes out with a slightly changed packaging procedure?
Would you really like to compare the different packaging methods on Linux with the different packaging methods on Windows? MSI, Installshield (and about 4 different subtypes), NSIS, InnoSetup, Wise, a few other big ones, and let's not forget those who say that all of those are broken and so therefore roll their own. And with each succeeding version of Windows, the "official" procedure changes slightly. Why is it Joe Schmo's problem to deal with the ever changing Windows target?
GPL made simple: What was my stuff is now our stuff. If you improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff.
But Linux's TC0 is higher than Windows!
Nobody's gay for Mole-Man.
You're missing the forest for the trees. Who cares what his *example* was? His point applies regardless.
In fact, you're even demonstrating his point by focusing on a triviality instead of taking his message to heart.
Comment of the year
Good comment. Thanks.
./configure, look at the error, try to guess what package it's missing, install that package, ./configure again. It sucks. Luckily this problem is being approached from a few angles now. Autopackage (http://autopackage.org/), klik (http://dot.kde.org/1126867980/), and zero-install (http://0install.net/) all look really promising. I've tried klik, and it really rocks. Give it a go if you have a chance.
Software install is definitely an issue still. When the software you want is included in the distribution, then the install is easier than on windows. Open up whatever package manager you have, and chose the programs you want, and install them. As a bonus, you seamless updates to new versions for all those programs. But installing something that's not in the repository is a pain in the ass.
I know how to compile stuff, but that doesn't make it any less of a pain. Do I have all the required dependencies? There's no easy way to check, just trial and error.
In your post a bit up, you used FireFox as an example of a hard to install application. This was a poor choice for an example as FireFox is included with just about every distribution. The post I'm replying to makes a bit more sense. You seem to be having problems installing software that is not included with your distribution. I agree this can be a problem in Linux. A lot of improvement has been made in this area. However, with user feedback and contribution, more can be made.
.dll that wasn't included with the download. What's worse, I was never warned that the .dll was needed until after I had installed the software. I then had to hunt for it. It took a while. Back in the Win95 days, I kept having problems with installers overwriting system files. Microsoft fixed this in latter Windows versions by protecting system files from the installation software. However, Windows still has a problem with software wanting write access to the C:\Windows folder. Comparing Linux to Windows software installation in not a good example of how Windows is easier to use.
Now the rest of your post is a bit confusing to me.
I have a keen interest in getting Linux to work with some ease that I'm accustomed to in Windows and that AS a Windows user, I can figure out in OS X. Linux doesn't offer that...
Your problem so far has been software installation, so I'll comment about that here. OS X does have a nice software installer from what I've heard. However, I haven't used OS X a lot, so I really can't comment. Windows software installation can go smoothly, or horribly wrong. I once installed a spell checker on Windows that took days because it depended on a runtime VB
And I will be *stuck* with a OS that's easy and familiar instead of venturing out with training wheels.
If you're looking for training wheels, why not use a distribution that comes with them? I supose this is a point that many Windows users fail to grasp. Linux is the kernel. The GNU/Linux operating system comes in many flavors, from simple to use, to everything and the kitchen sink included, to here is a boot sector, compiler, and book. If you know what software you want, and aren't ready to do some of the more advanced tasks, do a little research and find a distribution that meets your needs.
One other gotcha I find with Windows users; if you really are having problems with the software, check the software's project page. If that doesn't help, email the programmer. Just about every programmer I've emailed has been friendly and replied. There are some programmers that don't accept direct email. However, they generally have some kind of feedback service, be it bugzilla or a message board. I've always found help when I needed it.
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
The article continues: "Researchers discontinued the usability tests ahead of schedule due to the test subject pool's greater than 90% fatality rate."
Note to the emotionally challenged: This is humor, not a troll.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
On this you have a point. As it happens, many games will play well on a $299 PC (rule of thumb, if the game is more than 2 years old, you can't buy a machine it won't play well on), but the really demanding ones need a beefier PC. And nowhere on the "box" will it warn you about this. The average person is lost in a sea of Semprons and Celerons and Pentium 4s and Centrinos and Athlons with no real way to figure out which is best ... nevermind the embedded graphics and the various flavors of graphics boards. All of that said, this is not a Windows deficiency (in fact it's sort of a Windows strength since it will *work* with virtually any combination), and Linux does not enjoy any advantages in this area. The technology is simply too complex for non-techies to understand (even us techies get confused - how often are you asked to recommend a machine ... I find myself asking about 20 questions before I can give them an intelligent answer).
Thankfully, the industry is addressing this, at least to some level, by offering configurations for "gaming", "web browsing/email", "office work", "audio-video editing", etc. That goes a long way towards solving this problem. And assuming I bought the appropriate box, the experience I described above is what the typical user will see.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
My experience was different. Today I woke up, had breakfast (two bowls of "honey nut cheerios", except they're the off brand because the bagged cereal is waaaay cheaper), then went over to my girlfriend's place. Of course she was still asleep, so I read the editorial page until she was ready to drag herself out of bed. Paul Krugman has been speculating that Bush isn't going to follow through on a lot of his promises for relief to New Orleans.
Anyways, she woke up, we chatted while she had breakfast, and then we walked the dog.
The point? Who gives a crap about video games? I have a girlfriend!
The greater point: the post you're responding to was a joke, and it went a good ways over your head.
The greatest of all possible points: I have a girlfriend!
Seriously, though. Linux isn't a good gaming platform, because game publishers don't support it. When I chose Linux, I pretty much left gaming behind. The funny thing is, I don't miss it.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I installed Novell Linux desktop recently on a laptop with WinXP already on. Mostly all cool, except video resolution is 800x600 in Linux, and 1024x768 in WinXP. I find where to change it to be 1024x768 (I think) in Linux GUI (Gnome ?Yast2) and it says this change will take effect when you restart. Except it didn't. So I spend 4 hours trying to update bios, googling all over the internet, hitting Novell's site, etc. etc. Finally I notice the little box when I shutdown that says " Save current setup" I check it and restart; it works. If I remember correctly, in command line mode one always has to write config after changes like that are made, correct? If so, why doesnt the operating system via the gui tell me? Why does it tell me it'll make the changes and then not do it? Because in Windows you just pick a resolution & if it supports it it will make the change because you told it to. This is the point of user friendly interfaces, that the code is built in to make simple tasks simple. It's written once so that 30 million people don't have to puzzle over the same things all the time. So that if I make a change that needs a config save, let the OS tell me what to do & when & how to do it. (or actually do it itself, like it said it would). Let the machine do the work so I can do the work I need to do on the computer.
Then what the hell are you doing wasting your time on /. then if you have a girlfriend, eh?
Thanks for the information -- I've been on LinuxForums.org a bit to get some information, unfortunately time is a constraint lately so I haven't had enough time to tinker.
I think I'm going to give Kubuntu a shot later tomorrow.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
After you get married, you will have more time for gaming.
"Regular people" use Windows. Therefore, yes, for the short term, if you want more regular people to use Linux, it will have to become more like Window. That's the Embrace phase.
The next phase is the one that is much more interesting...
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
This
If I wanted shit to just work I'd run OS X.
What an incredible faggot you are.
Okay, seriously. Anybody got Torrents to the movies of this /.'ed site?
They aren't trivial under other operating systems either: installing a scanner, digicam, or a video camera is beyond what most people can do on Windows or Macintosh. (Well, iSight perhaps being the exception, simply because the software is effectively preinstalled.)
The number of steps involved in a driver or application installation process doesn't necessarily matter if those steps make more sense to a wider audience. Let's see, which is easier to understand to a complete newbie?
... Google the application name (assuming that you don't know the URL), download the application, then double-click to follow the simple installation process.
... Type some cryptic combination of letters and symbols that represent things that most consumer-level computer users couldn't possibly understand.
And, you know, the least I can say for Windows is that it works quite well, and - other than the operating system itself - you don't necessarily need any commercial software to make it fully usable. I could really care less that most Linux distros are "complete" immediately upon installing them. You know, maybe I don't like Konquerer or Mozilla. For every complaint that IE isn't a complete Web browser, you'll likely get several complaints that Konqueror is excessively bloated.
In fact, KDE itself is so bloated that it comes off as clunky to most inexperienced Linux users who would rather not have to tweak their operating system just to get it running smoothly. Although Windows isn't "complete" immediately after installing it, I can at least take comfort in the fact that the user interface itself works quite well.
Ummm, I was completely aware the post was a joke. I was responding to the post because, sadly, many on these boards are so blinded by their hatred of all things Microsoft and so devoted to all things Linux, they wouldn't know it was a joke. And for the record, it is my 3 teenage sons who are the big-time gamers, not me (though I will admit to enjoying an occassional Warcraft III network game with them).
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
-1, Troll.
Another one bites the dust
I really have to disagree with you. You see, I've had to scrub my system after uninstalling programs because these correctly written installers couldn't clean up after themselves. I've also found any number of programs which require me to have a company name on my home machine. I'm sorry, but it's home. I don't have a business. But, without that having something in it, I can't finish installing the program.
Yeah, some uninstallers aren't very nice. But at least there WAS an installer. It's a fundamental difference in mindset between developers for Linux and Windows, probably due mostly to too much variance between distributions.
Sorry you had to type in a fake company name for some program.
Would you really like to compare the different packaging methods on Linux with the different packaging methods on Windows? MSI, Installshield (and about 4 different subtypes), NSIS, InnoSetup, Wise, a few other big ones, and let's not forget those who say that all of those are broken and so therefore roll their own. And with each succeeding version of Windows, the "official" procedure changes slightly. Why is it Joe Schmo's problem to deal with the ever changing Windows target?
It's Joe Schmo's problem because he is the developer!!!!! The choice of packaging is pretty much transparent to the user. The USER is the most important person, not the developer. And the fact that the developer has so many *free* tools for packaging his software for Windows he shouldn't be left with much to complain about either. BTW, the Windows target can change all it wants and the same old system variables will still point to it.
If there was just a tiny bit of standardization amongst linux distributions, software installation could be pretty easy. As it is, I don't blame developers for not wanting to create packages for every flavor.
You don't need security patches if you simply uninstall the problematic applications and replace them with better alternatives and installing some top-of-the-line antivirus software. And yes, everyone should use some sort of antivirus, as it's only common courtesy, considering the fact that Linux users are bound to have some friends that use Windows and sometimes communicate via e-mail. .jpg or .png file can cause serious issues in Windows, so why not have the decency to catch such files and stop them from being spread all over?
Seriously, even something as simple as a
I'm sick of people proclaiming that fluid-all-width-taking desings are unusable... just resize your browser window and shut up!!!
I can also say your comment is pretty unreadable since it expands on all available width if I follow your logic.
I guess this is the way it should have been written:
Would you really like to compare the different packaging methods on Linux with the different packaging methods on Windows? MSI, Installshield (and about 4 different subtypes), NSIS, InnoSetup, Wise, a few other big ones, and let's not forget those who say that all of those are broken and so therefore roll their own. And with each succeeding version of Windows, the "official" procedure changes slightly. Why is it Joe Schmo's problem to deal with the ever changing Windows target?
Sure. I can use the packaging tool of my choice as a developer and produce something that has a very high probability of installing on a wide variety of Windows platforms. Hell, using something like Installshield (often free with even cheap compilers) or even most of the free install packages, its damn near guaranteed. The GUI may look a little unusual on a significantly newer or older package than the installer was designed for, but chances are it'll work just fine. That just plain doesn't happen on UNIX systems.
Oh, and uninstalling? Personally, I've never been brave enough to uninstall most packaged Linux software, after far too many bad experiences of random things breaking afterwards. Its easier just to add hard drive space.
By the way, your "Company Name" comment was a little bogus - I could put a stupid meaningless check into any install script, UNIX or Windows or whatever. Sorry that it annoyed you, but its far from a standard piece of an installation process.
And your RH comments? Hey, this is the platform that our latest Linux customer wants us to certify our product against their tech stack on. What am I supposed to do, suggest that they change distros because the pacakage manager is inconvenient? Although this thread is wandering off into another discussion entirely.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
> "John Madden All-Pro Glibc Updater 2006"
Don't you mean "John 'Maddog' Hall, Pro Glibc Updater 2006"?
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
pardon the expression but: "duh". The reason is that his use of Quake as an analogy is showing how Linux is a complete user AND development environment. Your criticism misses the entire point because you're being too literal. You wouldn't happen to be architect or engineer would you? Those are common types that miss the forest for the trees like this.
Although Windows isn't "complete" immediately after installing it, I can at least take comfort in the fact that the user interface itself works quite well.
Actually, it's the user interface I hate most about windows. Most of the software I use on Linux is now actually ported to Windows, so lack of applications is no longer a problem, but the user interface in Windows suck *#$@! That said, I don't particularly enjoy KDE either, but it's still miles ahead of windows. Also, on Linux, I don't have to use KDE.
AccountKiller
Using the MS Word option to use Wordperfect feature as a comparison on how people learn is not comparing apples to apples.
Keyboard based shortcuts can never be intuitive in a complex application, look at any 3D or 2D gfx editor or word processor. Of course people need an extended period to learn the short cuts, this is why companies make money selling templates to show the short cuts. Software makes always put in lots of keyboard short cuts, because keyboard entry is faster than mouse/touchscreen for an experianced operator/user. Anyone who used a green screen order entry system would know this from the decrease in efficiency when the system was converted to a gui based system, I wont even talk about the issues of a web based order entry system.
You don't see people selling templates on how to use a gui though do you?
Also a gui should be intuitive. I spend a lot of time developing touch screens for automated systems in factories. The design of the gui has a direct impact on the learning curve for the operator, irrespective of their background or experiance. There are several factors in the tests that Novel did, one is the intuitivness of the OS and the other is the intuitivness of the applications used, which from my experiance with linux, varies greatly from app to app.
So if your going to compare how quick something is to learn, at least use apples when comparing to apples.
It's a good thing that we get usability studies on commonly used desktop environments used in Linux, but I think the people who evalute them need to know a little more about Unix/Linux before giving recommendations on how to solve the problems the users encounter.
One example: In one of the tests the users have problem setting the time. The recommendation is that this should not require root login. And sure that would make the task of setting the time much easier, but it would also possibly break things like kerberos or NFS file sharing. There is also other users to take into account. Letting ordinary users change the time also have security implications as it makes the track record of various loggs useless.
The proper question to ask, would be why should an ordinary user need to change the time in the first place? Why not make it simpler to hook up to a time server. That way the user wouldn't need to worry.
What the ordinary user should be allowed to change would be what timezone used in his clock.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
I agree with point 2. Users should be able to set a 'personal' timezone. As you point out, this is not the same as setting the time, which was my original issue.
Issue 3, 4. I still don't see why users should be doing this all all. The clock is within acceptable accuracy or it is not. Given NTP, there is no reason that a networked computer should have an inaccurate clock. Anytime that the user needs to be an admin, the computer has already failed. Fix the root cause, not the effect.
Finally, I see nothing wrong, and a great deal good, with enforcing the user/admin split. Even if I can do both, I really like to have them seperate. I don't expect to work under the hood of a car at the same time that I am driving. Neither do I expect to admin while I am using a computer. If the computer is working, I leave it alone. It if doesn't work, something broke. I really want to stop it from breaking in the first place. This is almost a textbook case of where a computer is able to avoid the problem in the first place.
Think global, act loco
Not that I mind a simpler Linux, I'd really like to see it, but with a good modern distro installing software is rarely hard. Sure, it's a bit different from Windows, but not worse IMHO. The worst problems are usually elsewhere.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Frankly, I think you just insulted my mother. She knows how to do "apt-get install quake3" or "emerge quake3". She also knows how to insert the disk when it asks for it. And you know what? Later, when the game tells her to patch it, while she may not remember it, I can certainly give her a link to "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" or "emerge sync && emerge -uDN world" -- which updates not only Quake3, but the entire OS and (almost) all installed programs.
Cryptic? Maybe. But so would typing in "wget quake3.com/.../q3.exe" or whatever. But you're using Firefox, so the cryptic symbols are hidden. Guess what? Linux can do that too. In fact, although there are several good portage and apt frontends, I can write a frontend myself to the basic stuff. Takes about two minutes.
Maybe I should submit it to Slashdot?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Ok. So the first thing to learn is that for many Linux distributions the smartest way to get software is through the distributions repositories. This is different from Windows, but I don't think it's harder. At least not on Mandriva which I use and as I described there's a nice GUI to handle it. You're right that someone trying to go from the tarball would find it very difficult without more experience than can be expected of average desktop user.
Besides I prefer to learn the hard way as it usually provides shortcuts for things later on. I still regularly drop to DOS windows in Windows to get things done quickly :)
Well, I'm sure you'll feel at home with Linux eventually then. Unfortunately the average Windows user would probably stall on the kind of learning curves you seem to enjoy. In the meantime I hope you have fun.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Pretty scary worms you've got, taking over a computer with no internet connection...
Mine does. If it's an .rpm. (I use Mandriva). This still leaves the problem that the publisher of the program must make packages for the different distros, which as you note scales poorly. And then we're stuck with tar-balls which are generally hard to handle without human (techie) intervention. Even with autopackage, klik etc. I have a feeling that this problem is not going away really soon.
In the meantime I prefer the URPMI GUI to InstallShield packages and newbies might too, once they discover the "Install software" option in their menu.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
if the game is more than 2 years old, you can't buy a machine it won't play well on
Q2 (for the mod gloom) is a little more than 2 years, yeah. My 7000kr (divide by 7 for about $£) comp bought 6 months ago had an intel sempron-g. I have to use gl_flashblend, but there's still parts of levels with dynamic lightning, in which case the framerate goes below 10.
At least something that's improved is the noise, but maybe this has just to do with no swapping going on (I asked tech support at a place for the cheapest comp with 2gb ram, with dell it would of been like 13000kr). It's quiter than the laptop, even quieter than the ceiling fan on lowest setting.
the sun is god
Here is the secret to satisfying previous Windows users:
Make one of the installation questions, "Are you a previous MS Windows user?"
If they answer 'Yes' - then load FVWM'95 X window manager - and a set of GUI tools that mimic the underlying Windoze interface to various unix features.
If they answer 'No' - then load whatever X window manager the user wants (such as KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment etc...)
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
(BTW: you forgot to add "google for crack & keygen" and use it).
compare with :
1. Click on the graphical administration tool (YaST2 under SUSE, DrakConf under Mandrake,
2. In the tool, click on "install".
3. choose package from list on DVD / package repository (no need to google around)
4. no install proceedure at all, just enter root password when asked.
so easy, a complete n00b could do it. My girlfriend did install alone all missing packages to use her new scanner/printer this way (and she's studying psychology, not CS or engeneering. only had limited user experience in Linux).
Googling & Clicking is the best way to be sure to end up with a computer full of spywares. When a software is realy popular like some P2P how many website do provide genuine original versions vs. repackaged with spyware ? And then just think about keywords "weather" and "taskbar" : sure to bring spyware disaster. And then think what viruses avarage joe may catch, when trying to find a crack to get the application he downloaded working.
- Most linux distribution provide a lot of packages on the installation medium, most (or all depending on distro) of them are open-source (and therefore peer reviewed with fewer risks of evil content hidden). No need to go and find software from un-sure places, no need for cracks.
If PC survives to spyware, then after 10 or 15 of such installations, you'll start to have all obscure conflict problems, instability issues, etc...
- The package on the installation medium have been compiled for your distribution, against the exact version of libraries you have and have been tested. Almost no conflict at all.
All installator are multi screen and ask weird questions. It's either difficult for the newbie, or the newbie just presses continously on "Next" button, sometime unkowningly accepting weird stuff that range from suddenly lot's of file associated with new application (he installed realplayer just for some on-line streaming, but now, everything he clicks on is started inside realplayer) to waiving his privacy and installing spywares to overrinding critical files.
- The standart graphical in user-friendly linux distros don't ask question. Packages are already pre-configured for the correct path locations, etc...
In linux, the graphical tool takes care of all dependencies. No need to hunt for the correct driver.
Having a centralised administration tool, also means that the auto-update feature will handle updates of all installed things, not only the OS, but libraries, drivers, applications, etc...
- Until recently, Windows auto-update feature only updated the OS. Things are finally starting to get better, altought the new "microsoft update" only updates Windows and Office. You must still separatly download latest Detonator or Catalyst, etc... or critical updates to non-microsoft softwares.
This last point is even more critical for the realy inexperienced user, who usually buys cheap prebuilt computer box, shrink-wrapped games, and hopes that the game will start when he pops the CD inside the computer.
Most of the time things don't work this way because games are mainly tested for mainstream graphic cards (usually Ati & nVidia), whereas cheap computers have obscure cheap and crippled onboard graphic chips that need either a patch or a new driver version (or both) in order to get the game working.
(Have earned a lot of money when I was younger by helping people in such situation)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Apple's method of installing programs is very easy - just copy the app and run. No registry entries to worry about, no system libraries to update, etc.
Just because Windows has a greater market share does not mean the linux community should emulate them. Concentrate on the customer and the rest will follow.
I don't make predictions, and I never will.
You mean like this?
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
Yeah! I'm an architect...and an engineer! um...yeah.
But no...I wasn't commenting on anything he said...was myself trying to show a well crafted troll...which I obtained and you obviously fell for. Re-read what I said and read between the lines. Of COURSE the point was I was being to literal.
Perhaps my post was a little too high-concept. But I achieved what I wanted, which was to amuse myself and no one else.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
It took us about 7 years to get Slashdot to switch to CSS.
How many years will it take before shit like this:
"
Novell's Releases Linux Usability Testing Videos
Posted by CmdrTaco on 9:15 11th October, 2005"
becomes this:
"
Novell Releases Linux Usability Testing Videos
Posted by SomeoneWhoIsLitterate on 9:15 11th October, 2005"
I tell you, that's when I start to pay for the subscription -- when they prove that they are editors!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Schwo?
...you'll likely get several complaints that Konqueror is excessively bloated.
..I can at least take comfort in the fact that the user interface itself works quite well..
..KDE itself is so bloated..
Type some cryptic combination of letters and symbols that represent things that most consumer-level computer users couldn't possibly understand.
Oh my goat. RTFM.
Talk to dillo, she's schfifty-schfive, she looks like my daweg, but she gets it owwwn furious like, main.
You ohbviously haven't tried RATPOISON. That shit knocks your socks off, and you didn't take off your shoes, thats like schwoah and schweaty feet, schit main.
The real path to male liberation
the single best thing to happen to Linux on the desktop since CDE.
I saw another comment posted that was exactly on-target. If something is a clone of something else, you expect it to act the same. I used KDE, which pretty much is the cloned windows interface. I'd get pissed off when particular things didn't work. Without me even realizing it, I was getting frustrated because I expect it to be windows because it looks and acts like windows. I've been using Linux for a decade now. However, because of this simple fact, I got pissed doing things in Linux. Then, I moved to WindowMaker: I simply like its look. Funny thing--is it's nothing at all like windows. I now notice I don't have any usability problems and find it simpler and easier to do things than I have in a long time.
Ultimately, a completely different interface will be a boon to users. Users will catch on quicker and find things easier because they will not expect anything and learn what is given to them.
This story is cut out of whole cloth, isn't it?
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
That Novell is doing usability testing. I guess they figure someone might then assume that they have done this sort of thing in the past (someone who has never used Netware Administrator or ConsoleOne).
However if there two places where Novell might actually know a little more about usability than someone else, it would be Linux and SAP. So I guess it can't hurt...
I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. The funny thing about this is that it was a troll to begin with.
There is no doubt that I exageratted the point, However, while linux has gotten much better over the years, there are still moments where one is caught up in dependancy hell installing some application, game or whatever...
Seriously, if you cannot relate to this in some way, shape or form and simply laugh about it, you are in serious denial.
see Switch to Linux
"You must be either lying about using Linux or you are trolling."
This whole article was a joke.
"I _do_ use Linux (Fedora and Ubuntu) and have _NEVER_ had to recompile my system binaries, patch the kernel or update my dependencies to play a game"
again, satire or maybe I should stop using custom installs and just take the "install everything" approach, right?
Windows made a dent in the market because they (at the time) listened to the people and put together an OS that could be easily installed, the achilles heal is the trade off for security (among other reasons).
Futher more and more to the point, I find it somewhat interesting what Novell is doing, Having spent a great deal of my professional career managing Novell environments, I do applaud their current efforts, They have never really been in tune with their customers.
By the way, I use MythTV on Debian and Fedora in 2 rooms of my home. I use Fedora at work as well as Windows. I Monitor our entire environment at work with JFFNMS and implement open source solutions when possible.
Shouldn't that be...
Novell's Releasing Linux Usability Testing Videos
OR
Novell Releases Linux Usability Testing Videos
???
from the better-use-of-grammar-in-headlines dept.
But that by far is the hardest part. Thats why its still a problem- nothing about making cross distro binaries is easy.
Open Source Sushi
Thats because Windows is a complete (set) of OSes, while Linux is just a kernel. Apples and Oranges. The true comparison would be to compare a single distro to Windows- say Ubuntu or SUSE. In both cases, if the software is not in an repository or a distro specific package then that software has not been released for your OS yet- just as if the software was never packaged for your version of Windows. Yet unlike and Windows you can get the "unreleased" source code if you want and install it before its released for your OS.
The biggest problem former Windows users have is that they can get new software packaged for Windows the day milestones are acheived because Windows is so popular- they cannot do this with any Linux based distro because none are popular enough to warrant the same treatment.
Linux is a not a single OS. Its the basis of many other OSes, and there is no glue to hold them to together. The fact that you can't install "Linux" programs on all Linux based distros is not because developers are ignoring your demands, its because even the best developers in Linuxland can't find a way to make such binaries. Autopackage does not integrate well enough. All other attempts have failed. The brightest OSS minds have tried and have given up- there is not good way to cross the chaos that is the Linux distro market. The individual package manager is king.
If the fact that no single distro is popular enough to warrent packaging with the same priority that Windows software is packaged is the reason why you do not wish to use a Linux, then you and many others might never be happy with Linux based OSes. Thats fine, it works just well for me and many others. As far as I'm concerned the new Firefox and whatever else program is not released for my OS until I can install it in Ubuntu's package manager. It might be behind when Windows gets new things (aka not the day slashdot says its released) but when I do get the updates it works well. Each to his or her own.
Open Source Sushi
Maybe people interested in improving useability could work on summarizing results/insights of all the videos and then tell each project the problems found?
Then folks, when developers see that they can cross develop applications that work in Linux (with little overhead), and that people will be able to easily use and access them -- THEY WILL.
You are missing a pretty big point. Linux does not have cross distro binaries because the developers don't want to be like Ms's Windows or Apple's OSX or because that would be too easy. Linux does not have cross distro binaries because its not an OS. Its a kernel for many OSes like SUSE or Ubuntu. The reason the community doesn't release things in magical binaries that install on all these Linux based OSes is because that is a VERY hard problem to overcome. Despite using the same kernel, and maybe the same xserver, the distros are so different that there are almost no common threads. Its chaos.
Not some "pull together for the good of Linux and fix the problems guys" kind of chaos either. Its "after three years of hard work in the future we might a solution that works 60% of the time at most" kind of chaos. Like almost no way to hold it together. Why? Because anyone can do what they will with Linux- they have to incentive to work together. In fact many Linux companies compete with each other and want to lock each other out with incompatibilities (even though they can't really).
The only way it will get easier is if one distro gets so much more popular than the rest and all the others that want desktop market share have to copy that one. Then that one will get the same priority Windows gets now- fresh double click install file the same day as Windows releases. But one won't "win" until a mass of users migrate....so....see you at the 2010 "Year of the Linux Desktop" party? At that point I'll be a Linux user for 6 years because I can live with the fact that until I can install a piece of software in my distro's package manager, it is not released for my distro yet and I can't have it. Why do I really need the new Firefox the day it comes out?
Open Source Sushi
a note :
that was a take on so called 'quake install troll'
it was a joke. may i repeat ? =)
Rich
I don't want my program to automatically insinuate itself into my system just because I've installed it; it ticks me off no end when I emerge gimp and it sets itself as my default picture viewer or mpeg sets itself insted of totem. Being friendly is nice but there's only so much of it that any person can tolerate. * I don't want programs to autoset themselves. * I don't want a shortcut anywhere * Don't start up with my computer * Don't register automatically Do you want Linux to "advance" to the point where you keep clicking "yes" on popup boxes that ask you if you're sure? Or worse yet, "wizards" that do jack all but hinder manual installation?
How do you kill that which has no life?
...because Microsoft themselves have shipped viruses on big batches of CDs more than once, and other major suppliers (including PC manufacturers) have shipped them dozens of times as well.
You might also consider wondering where the grandparent got the latest version of DirectX from (and yes, major manufacturers including Microsoft have shipped viruses from their websites too), and whether some components of that conflicted with the requirements of other software on the machine. It's Windows. You can never know for sure.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
First, the obsession gets worse. And you start a few grand (and typically expensive) projects together. Then you start your first child, and take excessive care of your spouse until the birth. Then forget sleeping for two years, at which point Child #2 is on the way. Possibly rinse and repeat several times.
By Child #4, possibly earlier, accidents that would have summoned an ambulance for Child #1 cause stentorian bellows of "don't come bleeding in here!" -- and meanwhile... get used to early mornings, because young children have lots of energy. And late nights, because that's when you're doing all of the things that weren't appropriate or practical before the kids burned out for the evening. Like clean up after them.
Then the children get a little older and start getting into things that weren't possible at younger ages, or they simply never thought of them. By now, your debt from houses and stuff will be substantial, and you'll be working corresponding hours to pay it off. You will envy the innocence of youth, of people who can make statements like "after you get married, you will have more time for gaming". (-:
Then puberty hits and you have more cause to worry, and unless you're stuffing up your childrens' upbringing, more opportunity to get involved with them as partners rather than dependents.
They head on towards adulthood, and you wind up doing stuff like co-signing mortgages even if no disasters strike, and spend time helping to establish them in their new households and/or have to work harder to pay or part-pay for tertiary schooling, cars and the like.
At this point, depending on the number an spacing of your offspring, you might get a breather for a few years -- and then suddenly it's grandchild time... (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Asks me what I want to do every time I plug my camera in. Webcam Just Works(tm) in video-enable apps. Both show up on the "acquire" menus in The GIMP and so on as scanner sources (so does my USB scanner).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Seems you were wrong this time ... your comment is at +4 insightful, mine is at -1 troll. There's very heated (and often very insightful) discussion of the pros and cons of Linux here but I see highly rated Linux criticisms quite often, so it's definitely not one-sided. I can see how you'd feel a bit vulnerable, but come on, it's just a net board so just stick to what you mean.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
I pride myself on high post ratings.
:)
I know... it's sad. But it's the only joy I have at work
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Me too. And now I have my first -1, I feel so worthless. Gotta go to counseling.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Great call. Except people dont, be you for, or against it, it will also be compared against the dominant monopoly, which at this point happens to be windows.
I am sure if instead of comparing we subject windows to the same treatment, we would start to see just how pants that is too.
The truth is that user interfaces for the unwashed masses still have a way to come. But we must also recognise, that as someones sig points out, a tricycle is easier to use than a stealth jet. A clothes line is easier to use than a washing machine.
In this respect, no linux may not be suitable for an average learner or users desktop. But for advanced user, who wants to do that much more, who wants to code, who wants to get under the hood, then linux is perhaps the best OS available. This is not about politics, but recognising that different users have different requirements. Again- a 3 year old does not need a 2 meter dashboard to drive a tricycle, but a serious fighter pilot needs every instrument, and should know how to use them when required.
Perhaps recognising that different people have very different needs is a vital point that everyone in the "OS Wars" have neglected. I use colinux - I use both OS's together, for different applications, because currently, neither have all the abilities I require.
Linux may be "hard" for some users, but I can do things with it I couldnt in Windows. Windows may be "hard" to run an AMP solution on, but sometimes thats the way it has to be. Solaris may be "hard" to set up, but the app someone chose that beats any other competitor in functionality runs on it. As a computer scientist, I deal with it, in fact I thrive on it. But dont expect Joe public to want to do so. His use of computers may be nothing more cognitive than "I wanna write a letter, then email, then get beer". I respect that, his expertise may be in carpentry, and I would pay him for that. I get paid to tinker with computers.
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
1) The networked drives (E through to Z) on XP have different names.
.doc files accessed' and '20 recent .xls files accessed' option for Start > Documents.
/.
:-) ) and I would like it to just *work*.
Before XP: O:\ NAME
XP: FolderName on 'This File Server blah blah blah (servername) (O:)
What the heck? This is my work machine. Most of my documents are on O: H: or L drive. Every single time I go into Explorer (or worse! an applet that's pretending to be explorer) I can't easily see the part which I NEED: O:
This drives me nuts.
2) Shortcuts
Why, in the highly advanced world of XP, is there not an easily way to always get to the five folders I use every day when opening and saving documents?
Now.. those people in the crowd who use windows shortcuts will probably say 'Make a shortcut on your desktop or similar to O:\Projects\This\That\Over\There and you'll be ok. Sure. This works. Until you need want to go to O:\Projects\This\That folder to save/open something. It goes 'back' to where the shortcut was made from. Argl.
3) Recently used files
I've given up. The START > DOCUEMNTS folder *is* a good idea. However.. I ask these questions:
Q1) There are only 15 files in there. How can I expand this to 20, 30 ot 40?
Q2) I access 10 common files every day. Is there a better way to open these files than my current method of 'Drag a shortcut to a folder that is in the Startbar'. This manual method gets around the 'It's not in Recent Docuemnts, and I can't wait to go folder diving again to try and find it'.
Another solution here is to have explorer shortcuts to the folders you use regularily. However, you need to know how to change the explorer shortcut to do this. Where's the drag and drop open? Nope. Doesn't exist. No applet either for creating one.
A solution here could be to have a nice docking window/bar where you can create virutal folders and shortcuts quickly and easily. Just drag the file from an Explorer window onto the dock, create folders for holding them, assign shortcuts to open them, etc. The windows taskbar and START menus do this.. but it is clunky (ever tried creating a folder or putting something in the START menu?).
What would be good is if there was a '20 recent
Yes. I do know that you can create toolbars.
Yes, I do know how the windows Start menu system works.
3) Finding files
This has been covered before on
4) The inability to change bad defaults
5) Look&Feel
There's lots here.. but the easiest one is;
'Microsoft upgraded the whole OS, including Explorer. So, why do chooser boxes (open file, save as, etc) still have tiny non-resizable windows that use the windows 3.11/95 applet?
Is there ever a need to lock the size of a file open/save box? (of example)
6) Invisable System Resource Hogging
Nasty item here.
I have been using windows for over a decade. *I* get frustrated and annoyed when the machine locks up and is 'busy' and I cannot do anything at all until it stops. Try moving over 1GB of files around (drive to drive is good). Windows locks up and shows CPU usage of 100%.. but on the Task Manager no process is using near 100%. Most using less than 2%. Windows loves strangling the processor in the background. How about a nice way of informing the user that the system is currently tying up the processor?
7) Program crashes
What ever happened to NT isolating memory and programs from everything else that runs so that a crashing program does not crash your computer? I still have yet to find a way to explain nicely to my parents 'yes, IE is integrated into the OS - it's not a seperate program. You crash it and you will probably need to reboot'. *sigh*. Explained many times. They still use IE. They still hate it.
---
I'm sure everyone else here has pet peeves and horror stories. What it comes down to for me is that I have to use windows at work (I got a new one ripped for me when I used Knoppix for a while
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
Of course you're right, Linux enjoys no advantage. The prmary technology in competition with this mess is the game console. I still prefer PC games over what I usually see offered for consoles. The type of game and the flexibility of configuration, modding, etc are very appealing to me. But every time I see some technically illiterate person plunck down $150 for a console and they're actually playing it within 10 minutes of opening the box, I can't help but feel a little jealous.
:-) he's going to have a tough time convincing his wife. "You want to pay $1000 more so the games will be prettier?" Ouch.
You also pointed out that naming the level of the computer as "gaming" helps the situation. Maybe. On one hand, it makes it easier for the newbie to get an appropriate rig. On the other hand, unless he already knows what he's doing he's going to freak out at the suggestion he should pay double or more the price of other computers who's processors list the same clock spead. Even if you convince the newbie guy (likely... guys like powerful toys
TW
Yes.. okay.. but how do they know which X window manager to use?
I went for ages using Enlightenment (on FreeBSD in 2000) by flipping a coin to choose a window manager.
I did look at the other window managers.. but Enlightenment seemed to be the best at the time. I now use KDE.
Perhaps there could be a fact sheet for window managers (and other programs) so that people can rate programs of similar function.
Knoppix is great in that you can reload the desktop to all of the window managers easily.
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
Uh, excuse me, but I'm a mechanical engineer in the construction industry, and I don't appreciate your comment. In fact, you seem to have gotten it backwards. In my experience, it is much more common for the architects and engineers to design and specify the forest, but leave the trees up to the contractors.
This is NOT flaimbait, in my opinion. I think this is a valid point. Linux really is about 'choice' and '0.1 alpha' software. Linus Torvalds made Linux from scratch and for fun, not for the average person to try to figure out. This really was made originally for technical people. We can't just ignore that fact. Many technical people are drawn to this platform for this reason--the choice and the 0.1 alpha software.
Sometimes Anonymous Cowards do have valid points, believe it or not.
Microsoft-free since March 28, 2004