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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."
You know that ruddy "Linux vs. Windows Usability: The Quake Installation Test" troll is lurking around here somewhere.
200 videos + slashdot link = massive conflagration.
I don't get it.
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.
I usually *am* a grammer nazi so this shit bugs me. I think the Slashdot editors need to put this poster on their walls:
http://angryflower.com/aposter3.jpg
Intercarve Networks, LLC
What a Novell idea!
=Smidge=
That's what subm^H^H^H^Hpreview is for...
This slashdot-related signature is a stub. You can help kihjin by expanding it.
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.
Next week's article: Microsoft released a video of people who never used Linux, being asked to use a partly configured LFS system. The users were dropped at a command prompt and asked to simply fire up the windowing system, open the word processor, listen to music, etc. Every single user failed. MS points out that this is 100% accurate and solid evidence that Linux's TCO is 400% higher than Windows.
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.
But it ALREADY is in a semblance of English... I mean it looks like English, I can understand every word...
I just can't parse it.
"Novell's Releases Linux Usability Testing Videos"
Let's take it a word at a time.
Novell's Ah, it's got an apostrophe s on the end, so it's either possesive or contractive. As Novell is an entity I'm assuming that we're talking possessive here. Something belonging to Novell. Good start...
Releases. Well, this can't be a verb as we're expecting the noun that is possessed by Novell, so while it might be nice to think that "Novell Releases" is the start of the sentence, instead we're looking at somethings (it's plural) that Novell owns. So Novell's Releases. Some items owned by Novell that have been released. Excellent, now what about these mythic Releases...
Linux... This isn't so good. Linux is a noun, and not a verb... Three nouns in a row? It's probably not unheard of, but in this case I'm expecting a verb. I want to know what Novell's Releases do... Well, let's soldier on and see if the verb appears later... Perhaps Yoda wrote this.
Usability... Nope...
Testing... Hmmm, perhaps test is being used as a verb and the entire portion in front is being used as a compound noun as favoured by Germans...
Videos. Yes, that's it....
The "Releases-Linux-Usability" (whatever that is) owned by Novell is testing Videos!!! Are they testing VCRs? Video Codecs? Movies? Perhaps if I read the article it would tell me.
Or perhaps they REALLY meant "Novell Releases Linux Usability Testing Videos" NAAAAH!
Z.
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
Woot! And we got video of them, too!
That is all.
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...
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.
Yeah, I think it should read:
Novells Release's Linux Usability Testing Video's
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
If you apply that rule to Linux, then it's clear:
Ok, now we just have to find out what it means to linux a video
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Keeper!
:D
Regards;
Parse error: Expected verb, got '?'.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Umm... how will the users struggle with my program if I never check in my code?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Emba*r*assing, eh? Not embarrassing? ;)
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.
You remind me of a bad compiler.. I miss a semicolon and it spits out a page of unrelated errors.. :)
-1, Troll.
Another one bites the dust
Just say it, no need to soften the blow for 4 pages...