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Shuttleworth Suggests 1-Way Valve For User Experience Testing
darthcamaro writes "No surprise but Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth has come out swinging in favor of the Linux desktop. Speaking at Linuxcon yesterday he detailed the things that he thinks Linux requires in order to win the desktop wars. Those include: co-ordinated software releases, better quality and design, some user experience testing and oh yeah, a dose of 'shut the f*** up' too. During his keynote, he extended an invitation to any open source application to submit their software for testing by user-experience experts. The sessions would be recorded for posterity, and the developer would not be able to interact with the user. "'If the developer is in the room, they have to say nothing. It's the shut the f*** up protocol,' Shuttleworth said. 'You sit and watch someone struggle with the software that you've so lovingly produced.'"
Sorry, the simple fact is there is no need for another desktop OS. Windows and Mac are fine. I don't know why people think Linux will _ever_ make headway in that space when there's no conceivable way it ever will.
Instead, how about focusing on being a workstation OS and a server OS?
Clueless users should have a meaningful feedback channel. And, to some extent, developers should try to fix the things that clueless can't figure out.
But, I'm afraid that these "experts" will be handpicked, for one set of characteristics or another. In the end, the community is likely to be hammered into someone's idea of what Linux "should be".
Shuttleworth's idea? If not, whose idea?
Hopefully not Microsoft's!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
shit damn fuck
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
80% will not even be able to get wireless to work.
I'm posting anonymously to avoid being a karma whore...
I wish he would take his own advice and Shut The Fuck Up! What Linux et al decisively do not neeed is cocknobs like Shuttleworth Daniel Bernstein, and Eric Raymond telling us how users should behave. You're a developer, well bully for you. The users rule in the real world, and what the users say, goes. Got that, DJB? You want to rewrite inetd because you have a cork up your ass, well good for fucking you. We users don't want to have to run a metric shit ton of additional framework apps just to satisfy your mighty ego.
It reminds me of the cockpolishers at FreeSwan, an open source IPSEC implementation. Even though the IPSEC RFC requires that you implement DES, the FreeSwan egomanics declared that DES was insecure and that it would not be implemented (breaking compatibility with more than a few COTS clients). And the be-all-end-all was when the FreeSwan knobs also declared that they would not accept any patches that provided DES, would not host links to said patches, and would ostricize any developer of said patches. Well done, Linux developers, ignore your users at your own peril!!
The problem is, we have this odd expectation that any software, from a compiler, to a game, to an office suite to a browser should be instinctive by use of other software. That is, they think Word processor == Word. So when you take another word processor such as Open Office, they expect it to work -exactly- like Word. Any differences are seen as "faults".
True
Take someone fully new to computers and have them learn Linux or Windows and chances are they will figure out Linux faster.
False
Take someone who has used Windows all their life and give them Linux they complain because things aren't exactly the same.
True
Free truths: MS Word is actually amazingly rofuckingbust. Open Office? No. Their word processor is up to the task, but everything else in the suite, especially their spreadsheet app, is poop unfortunately.
I'm a doctoral student at the same school. I know how much money she makes, and how she got the job: pandering to another Chinese. The same bastard who strung me along for two years (and would have continued) before I burned out.
Never trust a Chinese. Any apparent benevolence on their part is pretended, and not a single one would hesitate to throw a non-Chinese to the wolves for a couple of pennies. Everything they say about jews, is actually true about the Chinese.
Yes, her position is enviable I suppose.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Because you are white, you people invade our country 200 years ago because we refuse to sell your opium, and you link up with other coutries to destroy our property and seize our lands. You damn anglo-saxon has been working with the bastard jews trying to wipe us out, lucky we are still alive, and we now pwned your a$$.
"The New Age. The New Beginning."
You did it to yourselves, you fucking moron.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Oh, and dependable sound output, maybe even when using more than one sound-producing program at the same time.
Ah, right. ABSURD.
Let's see. Have they put the menu option to save a file in the File menu where it belongs yet?
PS: you demonstrate the problem with an awful lot of open source developers. Criticism is not "whining."
How about some more made-up stats:
100% of the user's 32 bit Windows apps will run under Win 7.
100% of the user's 64 bit Windows apps will run under 64 bit Win 7.
100% of the user's FOSS apps will run under Win 7 - and he can reasonably expect damn near everything in FOSS for the Linux desktop to be ported to Windows or begin as a native Windows app.
There are workable solutions for classic MSDOS and Windows games. gog.com
When the user goes shopping for a new PC he'll find a broad spectrum of Windows product in every form factor and at every price point.
So tell me again why he needs Linux.
Also it does work on Linux all you need is 2.6.30 and Xorg 7.5(possibly compiz too I don't remember) Just because you aren't intelligent enough figure it out doesn't mean that it doesn't work.
Yes, actually, it does. If I plug in a blender, hit the "Go" button, and it doesn't blend... yes, that means the blender doesn't work. It doesn't matter whether or not my IQ is 50 or 200, and it doesn't matter if I have a electrical engineering degree or not. Works and doesn't work is a pretty damned binary concept. And the latest Ubuntu doesn't work with a touchscreen.
Comment of the year