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Usability Testing Hardy Heron With a Girlfriend
toomin writes "Reviews of the latest Ubuntu version, 8.04 Hardy Heron, are everywhere, but most of them are undertaken by geeks familiar with Linux. This guy sits his girlfriend down at a brand-new Ubuntu installation and asks her to perform some basic tasks. Some of them are surprisingly easy, others frustrate and annoy. There are lots of little usability tweaks he stumbles upon just by seeing the desktop experience from the point of view of the mainstream user."
A Linux geek with a girlfriend?? Yeah right!
Something is surely wrong, when instead of fscking her right proper he sits her down with Ubuntu...
This is Slashdot, not PenthouseDot or PlayboyDot.
We don't have girlfriends to test the usability of our hardon's with.
Oh... Hardy Herron, who's that ?
That's how user testing should be done. It is really much too difficult for someone familiar with the program or OS to see what is not obvious or confusing to a novice user. The people that program the UI don't always think like a user - they usually think like a programmer, and that doesn't always work.
In other news, man tests usability of Duke Nukem Forever running on GNU Hurd by making his GIRLFRIEND play it.
"backporting." Ahem. Thank you. I'm here all week. Try the prime rib!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
1) Use internet. Successful.
2) Watch youtube. Unsuccessful. No Flash.
3) Use torrent. Successful (but this is not a novice user task)
4) Draw pic. 1/2 Successful. Chose wrong tool.
5) Burn music. Unsuccessful
6) Mouse speed change. Successful.
7) Theme change. Successful.
8) Desktop background change. Successful.
9) Scree resolution change. Unsuccessful.
10) Advanced image manipulation. Successful
11) MSN. Unsuccessful
12) Install & Use skype. Successful.
Note, the problem with 5) burning music was not the actual burning, but finding the mp3s on a windows partition.
So, 8/12. (maybe 9.5/12)
To be honest, I've seen experience computer users have more trouble doing the above tasks when switching from windows to OS X.
Kudos to Ubuntu.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
i hear that the new beta of girlfriend has built in ubuntu support
This is slashdot! I don't have a girlfriend, you insensitive clod!
I laughed heartily at the fact that a common user scenario includes how to torrent a Spice Girls album. Not that I think that's not the case; it was just pretty refreshing to see how blatant this guy is about it.
Where do I get this "with a girlfriend" release? .. of course with my luck, the "girlfriend" will be the openbsd version, and ship with all ports closed by default.
Find Japanese addresses in English on Google Maps Japan: http://diddlefinger.com/
His note that if you go too small of screen size you cant click on the buttons of the dialog. This happens a LOT in windows with dons of the dialogs and YES even the screen size dialog.
She would have failed that test under windows.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This entire review is focused on that Ubuntu should work and act just like Windows
... real geeks need things to be unique to their "domain", so they can lord over the rest of the plebs with their advanced technical knowhow.
Yes, because that would be FAR too easy
</sarcasm>
I'm a Hairy Hippie using the Horny Hardon, and I'm pissed off because neither of these codenames were accepted for the current release.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
That's pretty interesting. On a tangentially related note, a guy I work with just install Ubuntu as his first linux. A friend and I were talking about 8.04 and he overheard us, so he walked up and started asking questions about it which we answered. The next day he shows up to work and says that he installed it and is really liking it. What is this world coming to when a normal guy one day hears about linux and the next successfully installs it without asking the local nerds for help? It was really interesting, he said the hardest thing was burning the ISO, other than that he said it was easier to use and set up than windows. Trust me when I say that this guy is very very average when it comes to computer smarts, this was a huge leap for him and it was no trouble at all. That's how I know linux is heading mainstream.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
I wish I'd taken that train of thought a little further before clicking submit.
... it's not necessarily "better" because it's "different" ... in fact I think the opposite.
IF Ubuntu (or release of your choice), WAS more like Windows, just think how much higher the adoption rate would be for it. Imagine how EASY it would be if you could show people with only a Windows background, "look, you do the same things and get the same result - only this one is free, doesn't come cluttered with DRM, isn't susceptible to malware etc etc".
It could be the BIG selling point, if only you'd give in to the pressure. But comments like this just perpetuate the "elitist" attitude of Open Source
If only you'd see the wood for the trees, you could have your open source "revolution" we've been waiting for for 25 years.
well they have to when transitioning from XP to Vista...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
And most people would rather stay with XP instead of moving to Vista. Just like they'd rather stay with XP than moving to Ubuntu.
Hand her the disc, tell her to click the "Install inside Windows" option, and let her loose from there. Completely non-destructive, and so simple your wife could (probably) do it.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
you update to the new release, and have to manually fiddle with modprobe to get it to engage your wifi card properly =/
I managed to get that working, but am now left with a problem that frankly has me stumped, in 7.10 I had no issues what-so-ever watching a video while simultaneously talking to someone on skype. Since updating, these two things have become mutually exclusive...
launching a video, and then trying to make a skype call yields an uninformative error in skype "call failed: there's a problem with the audio output". Starting a skype call, and then launching a video results in the video opening but being unable to actually "play".
colour me clueless...I have no idea what to do haha.
Machine9dotNet
Wow, what a novel, totally-unheard-off idea! Usability tests! And actually, you know, doing them, instead of just talking about them. And with, you know, actual users. Wow! Quick, get a patent about that!
Frankly, this is why I gave up about Linux-on-the-desktop back in, I'm not sure, 2000 or so. When the Gnome User Interface mailing list was full of people with great and groundbreaking ideas, most of them blatant violations of everything that HCI had long dumped as bullshit, others completely untested, the rest copies of windos ("because that's what people know and expect"). Most importantly, there wasn't a single expert in the field on the list or - to my knowledge - in the entire Gnome project. Yes, including me, having read a bunch of books on the subject doesn't make me an expert, it just allowed me to spot the I-have-no-idea-but-I'll-pretend-I-do guys more easily.
Linux has suffered tremendeously due to this disregard of the normal, non-geek user. You know, the kind of person whose VCR flashes "12:00" because the UI on VCRs is total shit and only geeks really bother with it because we are the only ones who consider bugs and technical problems to be a challenge instead of, say, bugs and technical problems.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'd like to see the same test with Kubuntu. Not saying that it's better but I'd like to see the results with KDE as well.
I think many of these observations were valid and maybe points up the need for a "New To Ubuntu" mode that provides extra assistance for common transitional tasks. But, please, in consideration for those of us a little more technically inclined, provide a way to turn the new user mode off. Or offer it as a separate distro.
I'd be willing to bet the larger fraction of Ubuntu users are fairly tech savvy. If the developers try to foist Ubuntu Bob on users that don't want or need it, they'll lose their most loyal users. Bad for all of us. But if there isn't some kind of transitional assistance for new users, that will inhibit getting users from other operating systems into the ark.
The great thing about Linux is that it doesn't have to be all things to all people. You can shape a distro to the specific needs of particular users.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The article several times suggests that the solution to some of these problems is, essentially, user education: having balloons that signal "new item installed" or wizards open the first time you launch a program, telling you how the program works.
The problem is that this approach often doesn't work. For one thing, it annoys the piss out of experience users. For another thing, new users tend to ignore most of that information... mainly because they are being overwhelmed by new information and can't possibly assimilate it all.
Take, for instance, the problem that was encountered when changing screen resolution. The tester changed the resolution easily, but then she clicked the "Keep settings" immediately, which locked her into graphic settings that were hard to change back. Part of the problem, I suppose is that the system allowed the user to make a ridiculous change. But part of the problem is also, perhaps, that the user is very used to clicking "OK" on any dialog that gets in the way: there are too many new things to read and learn, and the easiest way to get things done (in the mind of a new user) is to dismiss those annoying boxes as quickly as possible. Would a second popup, that described in detail why this low resolution was a bad idea (and how to undo it when desired), have changed anything? Doubtful. Most users would just click "OK" without reading it.
All this to say that I'm by no means convinced that adding more balloons, wizards, and dialog boxes will magically make it easier for users to figure out what's going on. I don't know what the solution is: usability is a tough problem. There is a place for helpful information (balloons, tool-tips, etc.), reminders, and wizards. But too much of this becomes decidedly counter-productive.
One of our sales guys was having problems with his XP pro install, IE bit the dust and wouldn't show images, even the images in the about box for the application. He asked me if there was any decent alternatives to any of this stuff and I mentioned Ubuntu, but with a level of hesitation (becoming his technical support person for the next 6 months didn't appeal to me) I stated that it had some parts which were a little on the technical side and that he couldn't expect everything to work out of the box. It was a 3 year old laptop. Overnight he found the ubuntu site, downloaded the 7.10 ISO and did a full install (after backing everything up). Came in the next day, put the thing on my desk and showed me it running, including using his accounting package under WINE, his printer and scanner installation. I was thoroughly impressed, with the only question he had was how to setup his PCMCIA NextG Telstra card, about 10 minutes installation time. He had even converted his mail from Outlook to Evolution. After this, I have much more confidence in recommending Ubuntu to people who are used to using something else on a regular daily basis. Before this I'd usually install this stuff for other people I knew, get it going and leave them to it, no more virus or spyware phone calls. Nice work Canonical.
Task Mangler
I never thought anything could beat Hungry Hippo, but I think we have a new winner here!
Summation 2
Using a list of common tasks to test a piece of software is simple, brilliant, and done all too infrequently. I can't count the number of times I've been using an application and can't work out how to do something that hundreds of other people must also want to do, and yet the developer has not made this task obvious.
Open source tools often suffer from this because they are so proud of their features. I remember trying to burn a data CD under Linux 3 or 4 years ago and the tool I was using did not make it at all obvious how I drag files into the workspace and then burn them. It did, however, make the SCSI options for me CD drive immediately available.
Web pages often suffer because they are style over substance. Yes, it looks very pretty, but how do I buy stuff? Well done for having text on the front page that tells me how "obsessed by quality" you are, but where is the contact address so I can ask you questions about your product?
Software libraries suffer when they are more interested in recruiting developers than serving users. I remember trying to use a Perl tool that required a specific module. The web page for the module had a great deal of links about writing applications using that module but nowhere on the whole page did it tell me how to download and install the module so it could be used with an existing application.
When designing any piece of software think: what will this be mostly used for? Does it make it easy to do that?
I think Windows achieved 12 out of 12 at least 5 or 6 years ago!
I'd love to see the same test done a default current (let alone 5 or 6 years old!) windows install.
Advanced image manipulation? Torrents? Finding stuff on a non-windows-format partition? I doubt it.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I can't be the only one who read this as "Usability testing hardy heroIn with a girlfriend".
I mean, I'm sure it will work, but that is likely to soon require a replacement girlfriend...
Just another ignorant American.
Of Windows was easier.
The test was how well can a windows user do common tasks on Ubuntu. I sure hope they are better on Windows. Everything is easier when you know how to do it already.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Hi... I'm a girlfriend of a computer geek? Anyway, he helped me get set up on Ubuntu. If you have a girlfriend, show her how to use Ubuntu. Please! Don't leave her stranded on Windoze. Sure, there's a learning curve... but if I didn't have my boyfriend to show me how to get the hang of Ubuntu then I never would have managed it on my own. Just having a computer-savvy guy who could show me the quirks... how to patiently look up fixes on the ubuntu forums rather than sitting here mad at the machine if something breaks... damn that's sexy. Be prepared for your girlfriend being a little confused/frustrated/annoyed at little things that you just didn't even think to be confused/frustrated/annoyed at when you were setting things up on your machine... but once she gets the hang of it, she won't go back. The number of programs freely available to install immediately is fantastic. I agree that Gimp should be set up more like Photoshop. (I hate how each image gets it's own window. What a window-hog. Also, it needs better colour support.)
This is why the problem is so persistent, it is inherent to the open source way of devoloping software. It won't go away any time soon.
What could change it would for example be if a seller of a commercial linux distro would actually pay application developers for modifications, including usability: "-You get $1000 if you can make pidgin girlfriend-friendly following these guidelines", meaning: wizards, simplifications, naming conventions, themes and so on.
Well here's some more anectodes:
My wife switched to Ubuntu after her XP-installation trashed the hard drive. When she first tried to recover the OS with the supplied restore-cd from LG neither the WiFi card or sound worked. Then she tried Ubuntu which worked without turning a dial.
Now she's been running Ubuntu for over six months and she's hooked. She even managed to install Hardy Heron while breastfeeding our 7 week old daughter. - If that isn't usability for the masses then what is?
Break the sound barrier - bring the noise.
The number of comments in this thread from people who are dismissive of usability tests is indicative of the gap between Linux fans and everyone else.
Usability is more than checking to see if a user evenrtually figured out how to get something deon. E.g., it's disastrous if they can't figure out how to open a file. But, the fact that they managed to open the file is not necessarily an indicator of a good design.
Usability is something people pay cash for. Just ask Apple and the Photoshop folks.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
If one eye goes bad, we have a spare. If one lung goes wrong, we have a spare.
If one pooper goes bad, we explode.
Believe it or not, not everyone buys their laptop with built-in wifi with the idea of someday installing linux on it. Lets not even get into that many, many people don't even have a clue which chipset is used in their device...
Machine9dotNet
Yeah, and it's a huge part. It's the 800 pound gorilla part.
Testing for useability needs to come in much, much earlier in development, and it needs to involve a much wider cross-section of human beings. And as it's being done, development of adequate documentation and help needs to go hand and hand with it.
It's so easy to disparage girlfriends, the middle-aged, and the elderly--in short, anyone whose job or study is not technical--that I think it's becoming ingrained in the cultures responsible for developing the various operating-system distributions and open-source software packages. This is going to cause them to suffer over the long haul. It's what makes them such a tough sell to people in business.
There's an immense population of middle-aged people, for example, still in the work force. And interestingly enough, they've actually now all got 20 or 25 years' experience as end-users of computer systems. They're not stupid. They all have jobs that they need to get done. They're not interested in being part of user communities and forums. They're not interested in the ideals of free and open-source software. They're not interested in sticking it to Microsoft. They're not interested in that warm feeling of accomplishment that until recently accompanied getting your printers hooked up to OpenOffice--after wasting hours of productive time doing it. They're interested in using their computers as tools to accomplish their current day's work.
Issues of usability and documentation aren't much fun. They're probably the least glamorous and most boring functions of developing the software. That's why they get such short shrift in open-source development. Nobody really wants to take them on, so we're treated to excrescenses like having people guess how to get out to a command line to install their audio player or their scanner or their printer.
Large-scale developers of proprietary software know precisely where their bread is buttered, and they attend to all this as a matter of course.
"Girlfriend" articles seem to appear quite regularly every few months, so at least somebody is thinking about this even at a ridiculous level. A lot more people need to be thinking about it at a much more serious level.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
You have to shop around.
And if you buy a Windows machine, what version of Vista does it have? Now play a DVD on a vanilla version of Vista Basic. Contact someone on AIM on Vista. Edit photos on Vista basic. Run torrents.
What, they require installation?
Ah, we're back to Ubuntu being easier.
And how difficult is it to install Ubuntu anyway? Pretty damn easy.
Fud fuddity fud.
Because Apple feels (usually for pretty good reasons) that a user has no reason to go there.
Applications are installed in the Application folder, documents and files go into the Documents folder in the user's home folder and that's about the only access that most users need.
Messing with the lower-level file structure or files directly - rather than through utilities - isn't something that Apple wants people to do, so it doesn't serve much of a purpose to let users access them. It may drive Linux and Unix users nuts, but it makes sense.
I'm sorry, but I'm sick of things like this - his girlfriend HAS to be some untutored user who has no clue about computers, tee-hee. As a female computer programmer, should people assume my husband is computer illiterate? No? Then why assume his girlfriend is?
Isn't it enough to say that the installation was tested with a novice user instead of putting stupid assumptions and implications right in the freaking headline?
And of course, what kind of replies do I expect to my post around here? People marveling that a woman is posting on slashdot that will be modded up as funny. Given the nature of my post, I also expect some responses telling me to calm down or calling me a feminazi. There, I've taken care of those responses, you can stick to ones that actually address what I've said.
The big stumbling block I think most UI developers hit is the fallacy that elements of the interface need to mimic something "popular" or "familiar" (typically a Windows UI, given their market-share).
Doing that amounts to a short-cut, where you're settling for pleasing people who "already struggled to learn a previously designed interface" - at the expense of winning over a crowd that never mastered that one in the first place.
I'd say usability testing like what was done in this article is the ONLY way to succeed, if you're going to proceed with a true goal of "ease of use". Anyone savvy enough to help build an OS is FAR too removed from comprehending all the points of confusion the "average user" might run across.
(And again, this is why a developer typically thinks so "inside the box" when it comes to concepts like "open file" dialogs, "save" and "export" options on menus, or assumptions about which plug-ins and "extras" a typical user will need.)
Personally, I think "file extensions" are a pretty evil concept, the way most operating systems today handle them. I'm not saying they're "pointless". Rather, they're too technical in nature for the casual user. I think Apple was on the right track when they decided, years ago, to let the OS decide what application a file belonged to via hidden "resource fork" data, instead of the 3 character extension on the end of the file defining it. The problem is, Apple tried to do this when it went "against the grain" of what every other OS was doing, and it created too many headaches for moving data between platforms.
In addition, it used to create a lot of problems where an app would "marry itself" to a certain file-type, and that wasn't always the most desirable behavior. I think they need to brand "metadata" onto files so apps can check there to know what a file is, but provisions are made to allow *several* apps to become preferred options for working with a given filetype. (EG. When a user double-clicks a document, a dialog opens asking if they'd like to open this with "MS Word, CoolJoe Writer, or Starview? Or click here to modify your selection of preferred programs used to work with this type of document.")
She was convinced that something was "wrong" with her computer that I had installed Suse. Finally got her a Mac with the understanding that I don't know Mac much and could not offer her tech support. Anyway, I wound up fixing/solving all her issues with that as well. Almost daily issues at first, then weekly, and finally after 4-5 months, I rare get asked to do much with it. She only uses it for downloading songs, making powerpoint, webbrowsing, and some camera picture stuff.
To be honest, both Linux and Mac generated about the same amount of workload for me
..........FULL STOP.
The problem with programs being "helpful" is exemplified in one of the main features of the Firefox 3 beta that Hardy comes with. That URL bar, where starting to type a URL you've been to before brings up a list of matches? In the new FIrefox, the developers figured it would be better if the page titles were matched too, not just the URL. And while it's doing that, they decided to display the page titles larger and below the URLs, rather than to the right of as before. And it doesn't just match from the beginning, but from anywhere in the page title. So you type the letter "t," and whereas before you would have seen the several URLs beginning with "t" that you've recently visited, now you see every page where the letter "t" occurred in the page title or URL. Then you type "h," and instead of (in my case) being down to "theoildrum.com" and "theonion.com" there's a long list of every page title or URL with the letters "th" in them. Adding "e" doesn't narrow it down much.
Oh, and while there used to be a way to revert Firefox to its old, much more useful, behavior, that option was removed two months ago because the developers are so in love with their "helpful, friendly" method of showing every page from your history with "the" in the page title.
Okay, here we have the best-funded project in open source, free software. We have Google as the main funder - who know something about simple interfaces and usability. And we have Ubuntu choosing to default its users to this new Firefox, despite the Mozilla project's upfront statement that it's not considered ready for regular use yet. (And it's not in other ways too: Elements swim around the page much more than they do in Firefox 2, meaning that while it may be faster on the back end, on the front end there are longer periods where you just can't look closely at it without quesiness.)
So here are developers trying to make their packages ever-so-helpful. And they fail, for the precise reason that Microsoft so often fails. The best tools, for people who will use them every day (or even weekly) are well honed, not cluttered with cruft.
It's also why the girlfriend test is of limited utility. What matters isn't how it looks to a brand-new user, but how it looks to that user after a month of use. That's the point where they say, "This looked promising at first, but damn do I miss the better fit-to-hand of the tools in my old OS." As in any new relationship, the most critical test isn't the first date, but where you are after a month together. Optimizing for the first date often directly undermines the long-term viability of the relationship.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I've performed usability tests in the past and regardless of if you're a coder or a usability expert, they almost always reveal usability issues that seem unintuitive or which people want to "explain away" because they can't wrap their heads around what is happening. Usability testing is, however, a very underused scientific process in computing today.
That said, over the years a lot of general guidelines have emerged that can help designers avoid some of the really common mistakes that happen over and over and over again. From my own use of Ubuntu, it is clear there has not even been consistent use of those guidelines to get the low hanging fruit before going to the expense of a real usability test. There is much work to be done.
Personally, I think "file extensions" are a pretty evil concept, the way most operating systems today handle them.They are, indeed, a common usability problem, especially when one goes into hidden extensions and multiple extensions. Expecting users to know what three letter combination mean "program that does stuff" and which ones mean "data you can read or see or hear" is absurd, especially when they can only sometimes see them and what they see is not always the "real" extension. It is certainly an area where OS's could be significantly improved.
Ubuntu certainly has come a long way in terms of usability for the average person. But it's still not nice enough for the average person.
I built a computer for my fiancee and put Ubuntu 7.04 (and later 7.10) on it. She thinks it's just OK. She recently quit her job to go back to school. She wants a laptop, and she insisted that it have Windows XP. I didn't even suggest that she let me put Linux on it. Her current Ubuntu workstation is used for casual tasks that aren't that important: MySpace, YouTube, email, listening to music, etc. Since these tasks aren't of great importance, she's willing to wait for me to fix things that break (and they do break). But I can't expect that of her when she's got a paper to turn in or an online assignment to complete.
I know there's a huge debate (maybe even a holy war) about whether open source desktops should innovate or just copy Windows. Fortunately there's enough choice that different projects more or less have both avenues covered. But---and it pains me to say this---emulating Windows (pre-Vista Windows anyway) is probably the way to go if converts are really wanted. Even though doing things in Windows isn't always consistent or elegant or even easy, it's familiar. Computer geeks like myself like differences: they are fun to explore and play with and foster ideas. But the rest of the world just wants to get their work done. They don't care what's going on behind the scenes, and they don't have the patience to mess with "restricted drivers", the command line, "Synaptic", or different document formats just to get something done.
Right now sound isn't working on her Ubuntu machine. All I did was run the update. Looks like a buggy ALSA driver got installed (do a search for "ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:864:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave"). But for the life of me, I can't find a fix, other than to upgrade to 8.04.
When I initially set up her computer, there was some version mis-match or something like that with the packaged flash player. The solution was to download a specific version of the .deb file and do a manual dpkg (or apt-get) install. Relatively easy for me, but my why should I expect my fiancee to have to go through all that? Even in the article, the author said it was YouTube's fault for redirecting a browser that doesn't have Flash installed. It doesn't matter---in Windows, when you go to a Flash site without having Flash installed, you get the same behavior: "Click here to install flash", and you're done.
I installed Skype on her computer; it mostly works, except that the emoticons aren't animated like they are on the Windows client. Not a big deal, but it's just one more thing that makes Linux feel like a downgrade to her. This is one example where the Linux world lacks the polish of the Windows world. Polish may not mean anything to the geekier among us, but it does make the typical person feel like they've take a step backwards.
She recently got an iPod Shuffle... this sort of works. I forget the name of the application that auto-loads when the iPod is plugged in, but about half the time it crashes. No error message or anything, the whole Window just disappears. Sometimes we'll start sync'ing songs to the iPod, minimize that application, go do something else for a while, and... where did that program go? Looks like we have to start the process all over again.
There's been a number of other issues, off and on, that require my intervention (i.e. track down the bug or quirk on the web, then install/uninstall/upgrade/downgrade a package, and possibly hack some things on the commandline). But the biggest killer for her is still OpenOffice.org. That program also crashes randomly. (Ironically, one of the crashes was when I was having her make a list of things she liked/didn't like about Ubuntu, and what she needed for a laptop. I can't think of a more simple/straightforward task: start OOWriter, create a bulleted list and save.)
But the MS Office to Ope
It sure doesn't sound like my experience.
The linux community tries in a lot of aspect to stray far far away from Windows out of principle yet fail to impliment the things Microsoft actually got right.
This is historically incorrect.
When Linus started making his kernel Windows NT was a new, unproven kernel and DOS and windows was a joke. Linus was familiar with UNIX and Minix in his academic background and built what he knew. The GNU software that completes the picture started as part of an effort to create Free replacements for UNIX software that was rapidly becoming closed.
The "Linux community" doesn't purposely try to be different from Windows because of its hate for Microsoft. From the start, GNU and Linux aspired to work like UNIX and be compliant with standards like POSIX. Not only were DOS and Windows less familiar to the interested parties, Microsoft products made no strategic effort to be compliant with any proper standard back in the day.
Also, it would be nice if you could give some examples of what MSFT *got right* that Linux-based OSes fail to implement (apparently "on principle"). Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE and the like all adopted the "automatic update" model amongst some other Microsoft advances.
The typical user should not have to open up a term window to install a program. It should be click and guide you through the rest. That was always my biggest complaint.
What are you talking about? I haven't opened a terminal window to install a software package on my desktop for years now! It isn't hard to find a "beginner's wizard" for installing software packages either--you can do it right from the GNOME equivalent of the start menu. Is it perfecet? No, but it's actually better than windows already--it is only different, and the biggest issue is that people are lazy and don't want to re-learn. It is a big reason Apple still has a small market share too.
Anyways, I find if you try to imitate the familiar you run into more frustrations than if you just try to make things work logically. If it looks different then users' expectations will be different. There are multiple XP-themed KDE desktop linux setups out there and none of them gained traction like GNOME-based Ubuntu that looks like nothing else in particular, except perhaps vaguely Mac-like. They suffer from an "uncanny-valley" sort of problem--they look so familiar, that when an imperfection is found it has an amplified, more jarring negative effect on the user.
Interestingly, that is a problem Vista has had--even more so than XP had. People expect the same, see somewhat the same, and then they are presented with messed up control panel dialogues, UAC, and so on and get extremely annoyed. It has proven more irritating to users than the dramatic win3.x to win9x transition.
Given that, I say forget about anti-MS "principles" AND brain-dead imitation. I think that Ubuntu, GNOME and even KDE 4 have not made great efforts at mimicking MSFT in their default behaviour and appearance to their benefit. It's easier to compete when you stand on your own.