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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?
Users always ruin the best software.
He knows what he's talking about. We don't need more RMS but more people like Shuttleworth. Pragmatically minded, not focused only on ideals. If somebody wants follow only ideas I suggest Green Peace or monastery.
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
It's just simply not ready for prime time. Hell it doesn't even have any decent touch screen support! It shows promise, but it still has a long, long way to go. :
Ok, sounds like a cool idea. I would LOVE the Amarok2.x devs to sit in on that session.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
and oh yeah, a dose of 'shut the f*uck up' too.
Wow, it's a good thing that asterisk was there. Somebody might have seen something profane.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
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
But it might be economically non-viable. In many ways the Linux desktop and free software stack is better than the version you can get from Microsoft or Apple. For 80% of the users it can do everything they need. For 90% of the users it can 90% of what they need, and for 100% of the users it can do 80% of what they want. While those are made up statistics, I believe that 80% of the market can switch to a Linux desktop tomorrow and be just as productive as it is today. The problem is convincing them to do it. What the Linux desktop really needs is a marketing budget.
I've done a bit of software dev here and there, and I've never had the luxury of being near the users when they first prop it open.
For that reason, I've developed a habit of showing a beta to a nearby co-worker, or a friend, and ask them "Check this out."
And when they say "What is it?" - I haven't done my job right.
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". Take someone fully new to computers and have them learn Linux or Windows and chances are they will figure out Linux faster. Take someone who has used Windows all their life and give them Linux they complain because things aren't exactly the same.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Because so many developers develop Open Source applications for personal satisfaction, they tend to focus on scratching their own itches.
A characteristic of usability testing is that your goal is to scratch the itch of your customers; your preferences have very little significance in the context of the test.
It doesn't take a genius to see a potential conflict in the two goals; on the other hand, a developer likes to see his code in actual use by actual human beings. To maximize this use, a developer must at least pay lip service to documentation and UI testing.
Many developers never make this conceptual leap, however.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
Desktop, workstation and server OS are obsolete ideas. In 20 years we probably won't even have these things or at least not worry about them. I can't say for certain what will replace the desktop, but I think it is going away in our lifetimes. Or perhaps we'll just have one platform that runs the same OS and same applications on our laptops, servers and phones.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
shit damn fuck
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
M$ needs competition. Apple is not. It is really a whole product (hardware & software), like a TV or a DVD player.
My biggest complaint about Linux on the desktop is the lack of a true universal UI (although it has improved much lately) and the difficulty in user software (a user should be able to run every application without tweaking text files) and ease of administration. When it achieves the same level or better of intuitiveness as Windows, then it can compete.
Basically, when grandma can install and run her greeting card creating software without any help, you there).
I will go to Linux when it has better games / simulators than Windows.
Most often developers and even advanced users place the "blame" on the users for being stupid and being unable or unwilling to learn. And is it helpful enough to developers to simply get "pass/fail" feedback without knowing what would be better from the user's perspective. (And even if the user thinks it's wrong, not good enough or simply too hard, they could still be wrong since their basis of what is "right" might also be flawed.)
I can still see much value in these exercises, however. It would serve to give the general pass/fail condition of various applications and OS interfaces. A series of such exercises could also rate/rank various competing distros to see how they stack up and to help organize their priorities further.
A users are a large pool of people who aren't geeks, nerds, or slashdot readers. Your grandmother is a user, My wife is a user and she cannot install and run the software she wants in Linux because it is too difficult to install and tweak Wine and the software she wants isn't written for Linux. A real desktop OS has to be usable by a large base of users.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
My biggest complaint about Linux on the desktop is the lack of a true universal UI
Not much of a problem though, for most people, Linux isn't Linux but a Linux distro, that is if you have Ubuntu, you get GNOME, if you have Kubuntu you get KDE. Similar to how you can either get Windows XP or Windows Vista/7 with different UIs.
and the difficulty in user software (a user should be able to run every application without tweaking text files)
Most user-level applications don't require you to tweak text files unless you need some obscure setting. A few "pro" level applications (as in, your going to be programming or know something about computers) use text files because they are easier to edit, debug and generally give support for a knowledgeable user.
and ease of administration
Compared to Windows, Linux administration is a breeze. A Linux system ran by a normal user who doesn't screw around as root, will remain stable. Simply going to a site can get you a virus in Windows. Because of this and the -large- amount of viruses on Windows, it is pretty much required to run a virus scan pretty often. With Linux, even if you are running a vulnerable everything, chances are you simply won't get a virus.
Plus, with Windows update you never know what you are going to get, "features" constantly creep in (remember the search bar that was a "critical update"?) and large changes are considered updates. It takes a lot more work administrating a small amount of Windows boxes compared to Linux.
When it achieves the same level or better of intuitiveness as Windows, then it can compete.
Windows has not intuitiveness. The only reason why we think it has is because most people have been using it for 20 some odd years. A lot of the Windows conventions have been -proven- to be counter intuitive and plain confusing (anyone else wonder why Add/Remove programs is called that even though you really can't add in any programs from there). Windows is terribly unfriendly, we just have gotten used to it.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
You can still perform plenty of validation testing irrespective of what platform a person has used. If a given person can't figure out what your trying to do with the tools provided than the software needs work. When I used to do work for a manufacturer we took people off of the assembly line or equivalent, made sure they knew nothing about computers and used them to perform the testing. If they couldn't figure things out on their own, the test was considered a failure. Blaming the platform or the userbase is a sign of a poor developer, it's no different than blaming your tools.
The entire point of such testing is to remove assumptions and find out what happens in the real world with people that don't have the programmers base line knowledge. Developers have a way of assuming a given level of knowledge that users simply don't have. That's why people like Mark Shuttleworth have done so well, they've presented Linux in a way that simply doesn't require that baseline knowledge. The issue is not whether or not a given tool is capable, well written, more efficient or otherwise. The point he is trying to make is that the issue of acceptance and use by the masses comes down to usability by the masses (documentation can and should heavily influence this).
If your making software only intended for highly trained users that will go to school to learn how to use it (SQL, CAD etc.) usability may not matter as much because you can assume the user has a baseline of knowledge. If your not making software that requires specialized schooling to use, than you should be testing software in a manner as suggested.
You mean it's not a "real" desktop OS if most of the people using it are geeks? Are we not real people? Do we not count?
Aside from this, my experience is that the "clueless" users can install software from the repositories as long as they are instructed in how to do so (just as they have to be instructed on how to install software in Windows or OS X), and they are certainly a lot less likely to end up completely screwing up the computer, leaving reinstall as the only recourse.
Lack of Shockwave is a big problem with kids.. A lot of childrens' websites feature games that use Shockwave. This was essentially the deal-breaker in setting up an Ubuntu box for a niece of mine recently. Maybe someday these websites will stop relying on it.
Yes we do really need another OS. How else can we fight against the crap that Microsoft will try to shove down our throats. Having alternatives is a good way to encourage improvements. Vista literally forced me to use Linux because I found the performance so bad.
1. Why should software go through Ubuntu to get validated by UI Experts? I'm thinking he's trying to herd cats in order to create the mythical 'consistent user interface.'*
2. If he wants to make Ubuntu financially self-sustaining, Linux desktops that play well with media conglomerates aren't going to get anywhere.
Bottom line, I get the feeling he sees himself as the great entrepreneurial hope for all of Free Software and that it, in general, will be successful when his company is successful. Well, Mr. Shuttleworth, they were doing fine without you.
*A consistent user interface doesn't exist. Mac's Finder UI looks remarkably similar to the Disk Utility, it doesn't help you work with either one! If anything, one builds expectations the other fails to deliver.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Centralized effort is the key.
You cannot have thousands of distro of the same kernel all called themselves "Linux". You need a brand, a unique brand. (i.e. "Ubuntu", not "Ubuntu Linux".)
You need a centralized marketing budget.
You need to advertise about the pros/cons and comparisons between yours and the competitor's product (Ubuntu vs. OS X vs. Windows)
You need to make functionality and mechanics as similar as possible to your competitors EARLY IN THE CAMPAIGN without violating patents. Once you gain market shares, you can start going into some other path.
It needs one prominent, professional figure where even a non-computing person can speak of his/her name. Microsoft had Bill Gates, Apple had Steve Jobs.
On the Linux side, there is Linus Torvalds vs. RMS. An old Chinese saying said that, "You cannot store two tigers in one house."
There can be only one spokesperson. ONE and ONLY ONE. Then only we will stand chance against Microsoft and Apple.
New Economic Perspectives
The idea that an interface can be entirely judged by how well a user handles it in the first few minutes of exposure is, in my opinion, one of the bigger *problems* with UI design of late. A quality interface should both be immediately accessible, and SCALE WELL TO MORE ADVANCED USE CASES. In my experience, Gnome, OS X, and the bundled native applications that come with each currently fail miserably at the latter. The former head of Apple's UI team makes a pretty good case for this being a problem here, although the article focuses specifically on a facet of the OS X design philosophy which causes scalability issues, rather than the problem in general. To borrow a line from the article: "The beginner today will be the expert of tomorrow. The user with 200 photos today will be the user with 2000 a year from now. The user with 10 songs today will be the user with 100 songs six months from now. The user with one or two extra apps on the iPhone will be the user with 100 apps three months from now."
Developers need to sit and watch end-user's struggle with the software that they've so lovingly produced.... In order to create better end-user experiences...
The repository cannot be the only source of software. In Windows, you know to run setup (the word makes sense) to install. The "user" needed to be reached to make Linux a viable desktop OS are those who do not know what iptables and init.d is. My wife could not install and run the software she wanted to in Linux. She can on Windows and Mac and she has only used a Mac a few times.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
"You sit and watch someone struggle with the software that you've so lovingly produced."
"If we can't make design cool in free software we won't take first prize."
"Every time we create friction and differences between distros on that basis, we're just making life harder for users and making it harder for upstreams,"
- This guy is great, Linux will never get anywhere near the popularity of OS X or Windows if most it's programs suffer from having to be the programmer or substantial guesswork by the end-users to figure out.
Ave Molech Setting
Not being an Ubuntu fan, I usually don't pay much attention to Shuttleworth; however, the stfu protocol has potential. Of the registered TCP ports, port 8 is currently unassigned. 7 belongs to echo, so 8 being assigned to stfup provides a certain sense of symmetry.
Seriously though, as a method of testing, this would go along way toward producing software that has intuitively obvious interfaces instead of the software-engineered perspective. The SE has the advantage of knowing what's in the blackbox because he put it there, which leads to the bias where everything seems intuitive, even if it is not.
I'd pay to watch a split screen video of some first time users of Blender and it's developers.
It could very well be the best entertainment money could buy.
True story here: dad's computer had OpenOffice, not MS Office. My sister's experience with OpenOffice's Impress was terrible: she needed to print all slides from a .ppt file, and couldn't find this option. As she had a tight deadline, and I had nearly zero experience with presentation software anyway, I shrugged and installed MS Office. She ran Powerpoint and found her way very easily.
Just a bit later, I tried to find out how one prints all slides from a presentation.
Guess what? It's done EXACTLY the same way in Impress and Powerpoint. Same function, same name, same location. See, this is not a "Photoshop versus Gimp" style comparison; interface-wise, they were nearly identical (that was before the "ribbon" thing). If she found her way in Powerpoint, she should have found her way in Impress. Yet, she somehow panicked with the new program.
What can a developer do about users that won't even TRY?!
Circumcision is child abuse.
... as a developer.
They basically have labs with one-way mirror. User is left alone in a sound-proof room and given a set of tasks to perform. Everything is recorded (including facial expressions and sound), and any developer can take a look at the test either from the adjacent room or from his/her workstation (using Windows Media Player). The only input the user gets is when he gets so confused he can't accomplish the task from the list. In which case the person conducting the test just says "next task" and that's it.
The experience is really humbling. You just realize that people out there are FAR, FAR less experienced with computers than you thought, and even working their email client is a challenge for most.
You make your assumptions on the basis of what's convenient for you. Guess what, people out there are not you, and what's good for you is torture for them (the inverse is often true, too).
We ended up redesigning the entire chunks of the UI sometimes, some features got cut, some scenarios overhauled. And in the end we still didn't do enough of usability testing (IMO), but such is life in commercial software development - you work against an arbitrary schedule.
why we don't all wear the same shoes.
a sperm donor?
While nobody (at least nobody who knows what they are talking about) will say it is always easy to design software that way, it should be the goal. Saying "Well users should just have to spend time learning how to use it, it is a really good system!" is broken. Users shouldn't have to spend a bunch of time training just to make your software work, it should be self explanatory.
I've run in to this in the pro audio/video world of software. Some of it is extremely easy. You fire it up and you can start editing basically right away. A manual is basically never necessary because options are apparent in menus, and there is good built in information. However I've used other software that I couldn't do ANYTHING in without getting out the manual and reading a good bit, I'm talking not even able to import media, or get things to play. The interface was so complicated that even the most basic task required explanation.
Now that doesn't mean that software can't have complex features, or things that you need a greater understanding of what you are trying to do to use. After all, you aren't going to be able to use a multiband dynamics compressor effectively if you don't understand what one does. However if you do understand it, you shouldn't have to spend time reading about how to use that specific implementation. It should be designed such that it is self evident.
1. Get developers in the room, where users are testing, no user interaction is allowed.
2. Film the developers.
3. Publish on youtube.
4.....
5. Profit!
"Windows has not intuitiveness. The only reason why we think it has is because most people have been using it for 20 some odd years."
Exactly. Those old exclusivity agreements that MS insisted on are still paying off. People are used to MS, and anything different is "wrong".
Not to mention - Dell, Compaq, and other OEMS basically did all of MS hardware compatibility for them. Linux is still struggling to make some hardware work that was "designed for Windows".
Just a few years of unfair advantage can translate into decades of revenues.
"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
Whatever. I had to explain disk images to a fucking Ivy League professor (a young one, not some doddering 80-year-old). People are fucking stupid. Especially Christians.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
How about marketing the advantages of Linux to end users and corporate purchasers in a method they can understand?
Dell might sell Ubuntu machines, but they don't offer it on the whole range and they don't advertise it, you have to go out of your way to find it...
As an example...
Linux has package management, the iPhone has the App Store, both are very similar concepts from a user's perspective... Apple have marketed the App Store well and users love it, they would love having the ability to do the same on a full size computer too...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Amen to that. Fortunately, there is a godsend for Ubuntu users: Amarok 1.4 series PPA. You just add it to your package sources and install "amarok14". Thank you Bogdan Butnaru.
It is 100% worthless.
I have a job to do, it involves many facets. I need to be able to do all of them. It isn't an option to say "No I am not going to do this part of my job." Well, my Windows system does 100% of what I need. It runs all the different kinds of software I need to do the various parts of my job. Ok, great. Now if Linux doesn't, it is worthless. Why? Because there's no point in running a different OS, if I still have to have Windows. If Linux does 80% of what I need, and Windows does 100%, then I might as well always be booted in to Windows. Why would I boot to a different OS, if it can't do everything?
Also, in terms of switching, it isn't good enough to say "You can do everything you need." It most certainly isn't worth a switch if you can do everything you need, but it is harder or more complicated to do. It isn't even good enough to say "You can do everything you need just as easy." Even if everything works as smooth as it does with what you currently have, it isn't worth switching because there's no advantage.
To be worth switching, you have to show how things are going to be BETTER. You have to show that you can do 100% of your job, and that it'll be better. Otherwise, it really isn't worth it.
I think that is part of the problem that often when people say "Well you can do what you need to do in Linux," they haven't really looked at what the person does. What the truth can be is "You can technically do what you need to do, but it'll be a whole lot of work, a good deal of retraining, and not nearly as smooth as what you have now."
I don't think Linux can succeed on the desktop as we know it today. There are several reasons I think that.
One of the main obstacles, at least to my personal enjoyment of Linux, is X. X has its virtues but seems to me to be problematic for the desktop systems we use today.
Then there is the quality of desktop applications, which is simply a matter of numbers: There are too few people developing and testing on Linux compared to those who develop and test on Windows. This can be seen particularly well in cross-platform applications. Firefox is a telling case: Compare Firefox for Windows with Firefox for Linux. (An exception to this is cross-platform GTK apps, but it would be strange if GTK apps worked better on Windows.)
And then there is sound. I feel that I have to become an ALSA programmer in order to achieve on Linux anything even a little out of the ordinary, like, for example, getting two sound cards to work in parallel: one for my music player and one for everything else. On Windows I simply go to the program options and select a soundcard.
I don't see Shuttleworth mentioning any of the above, but most probably he knows better than me. :-) Or, maybe, he has invested too much and cannot give up so easily.
Quit whining and user test. The "I'm l33t because I can use the command line" crowd should just shut up. The sysadmins whose ego is wrapped up in being able to edit config files with "vi" need to grow up.
User testing is straightforward. You need a setup which lets you record synchronized video from both the user's screen and the user's face and voice. Then you give people with various levels of experience various tasks, and record the results. You go through the video, and note when they got stuck, when they couldn't find what to do next, and when they had to back up and undo something. Then check the notes for any problem that occurs more than once. This isn't rocket science.
User interface design is not about eye candy. The key issue is avoiding user dead ends, backup, and redo. Nor are "wizards" papered over command line programs the answer. In such systems, there's usually too little info coming back; the "wizard" doesn't understand problems reported by the lower levels.
Apple used to be fanatical about this, before they had to bolt the Mac model onto a UNIX model. One of Apple's original rules was "You should never have to tell the computer something it already knows." If you find yourself typing in serial numbers or IP addresses, the interface is broken.
You must not have ever looked at the add/remove programs panel if you think you can't add software from there. The reason nobody uses it is because software is designed to not need it. It helps to actually know what you're talking about before talking but like most nix geeks you're too obsessed with your own self-righteousness to bother.
My wife, mother and yes, grandmother all run linux. They have no computer knowledge, and while they don't install software themselves they didn't when they were using Windows either... but linux (or rather gnu/linux distributions) just works. Oh, and none of them read slashdot as far as I know.
You mean it's not a "real" desktop OS if most of the people using it are geeks? Are we not real people? Do we not count?
Of course we don't count. We're the ones who don't believe in the fairies and the magic blue smoke that everyone else knows make computers run. Therefore, we are considered either (a) insane or (b) to have esoteric, gnostic knowledge available only to a chosen few, that is designed to be completely incomprehensible for anyone else.
Or maybe people just can't get past the idea of users and developers being one and the same. It could be either possibility.
Aside from this, my experience is that the "clueless" users can install software from the repositories as long as they are instructed in how to do so (just as they have to be instructed on how to install software in Windows or OS X), and they are certainly a lot less likely to end up completely screwing up the computer, leaving reinstall as the only recourse.
I wholly agree. My aunt screwed up her Windows (XP) laptop quite badly, and she didn't want me to break copyright law for her sake (she didn't have a Windows installation CD). So, I went with the legal cost-free option instead. I spent an afternoon with her, having her watch me install Ubuntu, and then I showed her around the interface. She knew her web browser (Firefox), and I pointed her to OpenOffice and the repositories, so that she could do her office stuff and get new applications. She had two other questions after that. What antivirus/firewall did I recommend (my answer: you can't run Windows programs, anyway, so no worries), and something mouse-related (which my father was able to answer). I was able to help her with anything she needed as an end-user.
I haven't heard anything since. More importantly, it doesn't look like she hates the different OS. I'm pleased with myself.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
Let's compare shall we.
....etc .....
Imagine your grandmother wishes to install something simple like Firefox :
The windows way:
---
1. Open IE.
2.Type www.firefox.com(Avoid spyware bars*this is important*)
3. Let's say her browser isin't Highjacked*this part is also important* and it brings you to the right page.
4. Find and download the installer or binaries, not the source, for your operating system, whatever it is, she must know, and sometimes cpu, 32 bits, 64 bits, PowerPC
5.Double click on "FirefoxInstallerWhereEverItIsWhatEverItsCalled.exe"
6.Norton(or other) comes up saying : "running exe files likes this one can harm your computer" All she knows is her computer is farked up enough and does not want to damage it further, she might not install it.....
The Linux way:
---
1. Open Synaptic
2.Do a search for Firefox in the properly identified search bar, no spyware bars here.
3. Check the box next to Firefox.
4. Press "Apply" : Synaptic automatically downloads and installs and sets the shortcut for for Firefox.
P.S. : Learning about synaptic for user takes about the same time it takes to learn to search google for aps.
So you tell me which way is easyer.
Leaving aside the fact it has been renamed since Vista, probably the same reason there are programs listed in Ubuntu's Add/Remove that can't be removed from there: inattention to detail.
Why is it that every UI discussion immediately turns into a pissing contest between OS fanboys? I've used nearly no software that couldn't stand improvement in the UI department. Even from relatively simple things like a smartphone, from a company with a reputation for getting UIs right, there are several absurdities present in the iPhone UI. Ever looked at most programmable thermostats?
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Whatever. I had to explain disk images to a fucking Ivy League professor (a young one, not some doddering 80-year-old). People are fucking stupid. Especially Christians.
Was that before or after he told you how much money he makes, how he gets a year off after 6 years of work, and the awesome retirement plan? Not to mention the fact that he's paid to do jack-all.
I suppose I'd rather be uninformed (not stupid, as you imply) and on easy street, than whining about people like that on slashdot.
I think the biggest barrier to Linux adoption is lack of ubiquitous support from hardware and software manufacturers - it is a chicken and egg problem, quite the blocker.
Another barrier is the fact that everyone uses 'Linux' to describe all Linux distributions. This means that a single word is used lots for a variety of very different UI's. Get a bunch of Linux users in a room and there'd be so much fundamental variation that they'd have to spend some time learning how to use each others systems (if they weren't techies which as desktop Linux users today they probably are). No one seems to address the issue that talking about 'Linux on the Desktop' is so many times less specific than 'Windows on the Desktop' that it doesn't even make sense to talk as though the two phrases are equivalent.
Arguments about the lower chance of installing malware on linux becomes moot when you're using at as an argument for promoting widespread linux use on the desktop - and remember that most malware is injected through flaws in userland apps or in front of the screen.
And you're right that windows has many UI deficiencies (also that maintenance - not policy enforcement - is a PITA), and appears extremely intuitive because we've gotten used to it: but although that means the IT landscape would be better off after a Linux distribution makes headway in the desktop space, it makes Windows' dominance very sticky and difficult to overcome.
I think of it like this: Windows desktop dominance is like being in the bottom of a big hole, and Linux desktop dominance is being at the top. Sure, it's better to be at the top, but that doesn't make climbing any easier.
More importantly, it doesn't look like she hates the different OS.
Sad, when the criterion for success is !hate.
"Windows has not intuitiveness"
Erm, that's subjective, it depends on your intuition. I picked up using Windows far quicker and easier than other OSs, it instantly made a lot more sense to me (the more minimal interfaces of 95/98/2000/2003, not so much vista/7 which I find moves the rug beneith your feet too much). I find OSX the least intuitive of GUIs I've used (excluding some of the lesser known Unix/X interfaces).
See what I did there? I used terms like "I find" to express recognition of the fact that different people have different experiences of things, and described my own, rather than making the oh so common "generalising from self" mistake. Please don't state something as fact simply because you haven't thought that there might be people out there with differing experiences to you. Try open your mind a bit.
"anyone else wonder why Add/Remove programs is called that even though you really can't add in any programs from there"
Actually I'm wondering why you haven't noticed that you can.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
So what?
Look, your wife is well served by Windows. My father is well served by MacOS. Great. There are operating systems for them.
I use desktop Linux. I've used desktop Linux since 1996. I use it because it's well suited to my needs, and I do not care who else does or does not use it. If it fits their needs, they can use it. If something else fits their needs, they can use that. As long as there are enough users to keep development going, why would I care about more people adopting Linux?
In fact, changing Linux to make it appeal to your grandmother is just likely to make it less useful to me, because your grandmother and I have different needs. Which is why we just might need to use different operating systems.
So long as the data on the wire are standard, the end node operating system doesn't matter. Use what works for you. Shuttleworth cares about market share because he's in it for a buck. What's in it for the rest of us?
Tell me again why I should care about your "world domination metrics"?
Are you new? If there isn't some sort of user base, then there isn't a product. Alternatively, if there is only one option and no competition, then stagnation occurs.
Seriously. Get an education... or at least a clue.
The repository is an important source of software, and by itself will satisfy many people's needs. Neither MS Windows nor MacOSX have anything really comparable.
That being said, one thing that would be nice would be a common installation procedure for commercial software. It's possible to make one package for MS Windows and one for MacOSX, but Linux distros have different formats, splitting an already very small market.
The shortage of software is a problem, but it doesn't mean Linux is doomed for the desktop, or that MS Windows and MacOSX should be the only two. WINE hit 1.0 not that long ago, and may well be suitable for non-geeks (I run little Windows-compatible software myself). Moreover, if Linux gets more popular, software vendors are likely to start offering more products for Linux.
Right now, there's plenty of people who effectively can't run Linux, because they can't get the software they need or want. There's also plenty of people who don't need that software. I'm looking at setting my mother-in-law up with Ubuntu, since all she needs is email, a browser, word processing, and card games.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It sure can. Unbelievable isn't it?
Quick way to get 30% Funny 70% Troll: defend Opera browser on
Hey, "clueless user"? And you wonder why people get irritated with Linux or free software zealots and no one wants to use your apps?
I am a "user". Given my experience building things you wouldn't understand, I would argue the point of "cluelessness". I don't give a crap one way or the other what your ideals are, or how fervently you "believe" in open source. I just want to sit down and write a report. If it works easily and reliably, it's a good product, and if it doesn't, it's not.
BTW, I spent the last few days writing an engineering report using OO.o. Does my "cluelessness" make my comment on the good and bad things about it invalid?
Brett
You can use the 'Add/Remove Programs' item in the XP Control Panel to add programs.
"Add or Remove Programs helps you manage programs and components on your computer. You can use it to add programs (such as Microsoft Excel or Word) from a CD-ROM, floppy disk, or a network, or to add Windows updates and new features from the Internet. Add or Remove Programs also helps you add or remove Windows components you chose not to include in the original installation (such as Networking Services)."
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/win_addprog_window_component.mspx?mfr=true
more than 1% market share for all linux distros combined?
I called it a mighty Sperm Whale, she called it Finding Nemo.
Well if a million users expect a certain UI widget at a certain spot doing certain things, what's there to stop someone from fulfilling this expectation?
If the goal is mass appeal to Microsoft fanbois, well, make it appealing then. It's much easier to change a bit of code than try to evangelize some million users. Improving any one's deep ingrained wrongness can backfire when everyone is used to it and has to adapt to everything new at once, that's life, always has been.
Car analogy: all car makers seem to have different layout of their reverse gear in stick shifts. We can't rip out all stick shifts, we cannot standardize, because people who've always driven a particular will lament for weeks when something changed. So we have a status quo for decades which nobody quite wants to change.
Microsoft got heavy flak, no, nuclear artillery, for every single change they did to the Windows UI in the last 10 years. People actually seem to like the "Windows standard"-mode of XP and all users at my company fought tooth and nails to keep that when we migrated to new terminal servers - they like it so much that people constantly ask if they could somehow revert Vista or Windows 7 to that look.
So Microsoft get's their own dose, really. Since XP, GUIs (and their userbase) have come to a point of maturity where progress can now only move forward very good reasons. We may use other window managers, different layouts or whatever, but to the general public, the Windows XP non-kiddy GUI mode has been the definitive gold standard for most regular people - for now more than half a decade.
When Microsoft could copy over the descriptive buttons from MacOS ("Overwrite:" [yes|no] and "Keep this setting [yes|no]" to File exists: [overwrite|don't overwrite] and "[Keep setting|abandon setting]" etc.), we're actually finished building a UI metaphor.
Go do volunteer basic computer literacy session for your local senior center. Don't try to convert them to linux or get them using Firefox or anything dumb like that. Just ask what their problems are, and how you can help. You will quickly understand how broken and unintuitive computer software is.
i agree with you however it would be nice if there was a easy mode where you do the search for firefox and you dont see 20 packages related to firefox but just the primary package. then have it ask would you like to add support for xyz.
I use synaptic when ever in linux and i always hate digging though the results.
Compared to Windows, Linux administration is a breeze. A Linux system ran by a normal user who doesn't screw around as root, will remain stable.
How exactly does one administer Linux *without* "screwing around as root"?
What exactly do you consider a workstation or a desktop? A corporate machine verses a home machine? A computer used for things like browsing the Web and Email, verses one used for programming or 3D modeling? I've done all of those things on the two main computers I use the most, a one a desktop and the other a laptop.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
Actually, I have linux set up on my parents' (and, by extension, my nephew and niece's) computer at their place, and my nephew was able to get a native windows app up and running with no issues whatsoever. Granted, I was surprised, but all he did was download the app, double-click it and start clicking "next". The app happened to be some free driving game, complete with 3d acceleration. I know this isn't always going to be the case, but wine really does work well. Aside from that, my wife and I run mostly FOSS apps on our windows laptops for both personal and business purposes anyway (Firefox, OO.o, Eclipse, Tbird, Pidgin, etc.), and the apps that aren't FOSS have linux freeware executables (Reader, Skype, Flash Player, Earth, Picasa). The one, solitary reason I still run Windows is that both the vendor-supplied and Open Source drivers for ATI r6xx chipsets in Linux still suck. They're improving, but glxgears is not the same as CS:S.
Not at all. If I look at the Gnome desktop in three different distros I'll see three different (sometimes VERY different) desktops. If I pick up a Windows 7 or OSX box I'd expect to see a different interface because it's a markedly different OS than the previous version. The core of the current Ubuntu or Suse distro is pretty much identical, it would be nice to be able to tell how old up-to-date the Linux install is without having to dig through file version information.
"tweak text files"
Agreed, this is old news, but there are a LOT of serious user interface issues still. Sure, we've been using Windows for over a decade, so there are some conventions that people are used to. For instance, when we install a program we're accustomed to seeing an icon or folder appear under the Programs list and maybe the desktop. There is absolutely no reason why Linux programs don't do the same, except that the distros have different versions of that same interface piece. When I installed Google Earth on my wife's Windows box she got an icon on the desktop and another on the Programs list. When I installed it on my Linux box I had to do a 25 minute search to figure out how to start the frelling program and another ten minutes to find out how to create a simple shortcut to it. If they can't figure out something equivalent to the way InstallShield works in Windows then they're going to be hosed in the consumer market (supposedly rpm is supposed to provide that function, but either it doesn't work as advertised or the programmers using it are lazy).
"Compared to Windows, Linux administration is a breeze. A Linux system ran by a normal user who doesn't screw around as root, will remain stable."
So will a Windows install if users aren't logging in with elevated permissions. In a decade of desktop and server support the only issues that I've seen with systems that weren't caused by elevated permissions were hardware problems.
"Simply going to a site can get you a virus in Windows."
Then your system admin is an idiot. Plain and simple. There is absolutely no other reason for that being possible.
"with Windows update you never know what you are going to get"
Agreed. Pissed me off for years, but they've pretty much stopped that after XP SP1.
"you really can't add in any programs from there"
WTF? There's a clickable link right there for "Add Programs", where your admin can advertise available programs through Active Directory.
It sounds as though you've worked with a bunch of lazy assholes who didn't even bother to read up on the most basic abilities of Active Directory and Group Policy. Unfortunately there are a lot of them out there, and Windows' ease of use lets them get away with it. Let me guess, they're always very mysterious about what they do, your Exchange server goes down for a day or two every month, retrieving files from backups is problematic if it's even possible at all, your SQL Server database gets corrupted at least once a year, viruses get loose on your network fairly regularly, and printers drop off the network at random. Am I right? Fire the bastards and hire someone who knows their head from their ass. Grey hair is not a bad thing to see on your system admins.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
this is the same Mark Shuttleworth who removed update-notifier and then when hundreds of beta-testers said 'please put that back' on the infamous https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-notifier/+bug/332945 he personally said 'no, I'm not listening to you'.
He said it politely:
"I'm marking the bug wontfix on the basis that we are confident the behaviour as at 9.04 release is a good one. I wouldn't be surprised for the conversation to continue though I do ask that it continue in a good spirit. If significant data shows this to be a suboptimal choice in future, we will revisit the point, but for now the question is settled."
but it was still a WONTFIX in the face of overwhelming public opinion to the contrary.
I'll believe he listens to users when he actually listens to the users.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
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
My big middle finger vote to "STFUbuntu!"
The title must include the exclamation point.
And the version in Vista (which no longer allows you to add programs) was renamed to "Uninstall a Program" to keep its name consistent with the operation it performs. (They also added a separate control panel, "Turn Windows Features On Or Off" which you can use to, for example, activate IIS or Telnet.)
That actually makes for a pretty good example of how to "focus on the details" and keep the UI self-descriptive, rather than an example of Windows getting usability wrong like the grandparent is trying to make it.
Comment of the year
Car analogy: all car makers seem to have different layout of their reverse gear in stick shifts. We can't rip out all stick shifts, we cannot standardize, because people who've always driven a particular will lament for weeks when something changed. So we have a status quo for decades which nobody quite wants to change.
Well, cars also have different lights controls, wiper controls, radio controls, gas trap side, instrument cluster layouts, etc... Yet I dont think that most people think of those features, or the position of the rear gear, as critical when purchasing a car.
So, bad car analogy. (even though the rest of your comment makes sense)
As long as the pedals and the steering wheels are in the same position everything else pretty much goes, everybody can still use the car.
And how about a similar user testing regimen and protocol applied to the Linux OS rather than applications?
Pot, Kettle.
Kettle, Pot.
Why don't you two get to know each other.
-- My apologies if the above facts contain any opinions, or vice versa! --
You say that with such conviction, someone might be tricked into thinking it's true.
But I'm absolutely certain Microsoft not working harder with third parties (Nvidia, Creative, to name a couple) resulted in millions, maybe even a few billion dollars in lost sales for Vista. After all, Vista was death by a thousand cuts for the enterprise, and that cost them dearly. Some, not all, of the problems were not even Microsoft's fault. Lazy or unmotivated third party vendors released poor drivers despite having over a year of release candidates and betas, and continued to release these drivers in monthly or quarterly installments that resulted in marginal improvements. I think Nvidia alone accounted for nearly 1/3 of all blue screens. Microsoft released numbers documented here:
http://www.crn.com/hardware/206905475;jsessionid=MNAOZ34HU4KWHQE1GHPCKH4ATMY32JVN
So no, I think Microsoft painfully learned that they could not rely on the OEMs to do the hardware compatibility testing "for them." And even if those crashes were encountered on primarily enthusiast PCs with high end graphics cards and sound cards, those statistics and the anecdotes about them reached businesses at the speed of rumor, and before you knew it, Vista was sunk as a business sell. It did alright, after all it still had Microsoft's force, long term support contracts meant businesses could deploy as little or as many Vista desktops as they wanted, but it didn't do great.
You'll keep having that issue too, because hardware manufacturers are in general running into the ATI/nVidia issue: Their drivers contain patented, licensed, proprietary code - and not all of it owned by them. This is the main reason ATI drivers lag behind Intel or nVidia for *nix, and why nVidia only releases binary blobs.
The controller code, shader code, etc can all possibly be originated from different corporations, that the manufacturer licensed the code from. I don't think too many people stop to think about this. They just whine about it being a binary blob, or the specs aren't fully open, or accompanied by working drivers and full source code.
I look at it this way. You want full driver support in your operating system, you need to play along with established rules. Just like you expect them to honor the GPL, BSD, MIT or whatever license, OS developers need to honor and respect the contractual/licensing obligations the hardware manufacturers have as well.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
Yup. Cloud computing is coming along.
New Economic Perspectives
"Windows has not intuitiveness"
Erm, that's subjective, it depends on your intuition. I picked up using Windows far quicker and easier than other OSs, it instantly made a lot more sense to me (the more minimal interfaces of 95/98/2000/2003, not so much vista/7 which I find moves the rug beneith your feet too much). I find OSX the least intuitive of GUIs I've used (excluding some of the lesser known Unix/X interfaces).
Well, your methodology to test your intuition is probably flawed. I dont think its possible to conclusively test what your intuition would be on one given person.
Because, as soon as you start using a computer, you stop "intuiting" and start learning. And when you switch to another OS, you cant "intuit" right away, first you need to "unlearn" which is painful.
If you first started on MacOS, then switched to windows, and found windows more intuitive, then your result is valid, otherwise your result is tainted and you cant say for sure if the fact that you found MacOS less intuitive is because its inherently less intuitive or because you were partly conditioned by using windows.
For my own case, I would say there is nothing intuitive about any of them... you have to learn for all of them. Some might be easier to learn for an individual for some reasons that are specific to the individual or specific to the OS.
Since Photoshop 4, I have been impressed by each version Adobe releases. Besides a few extra nifty tools, each one feels a bit more intuitive and streamlined. I could have done the same things in older versions, sure, but it in double the time, etc. IMO their ability to understand needs from multiple kinds of users is what has kept them popular and makes me happy to give my monies. -matt
Never driven a stick I assume. The position of the rear gear refers to how you have to translate/rotate (yes, even that decision is not standard) the stick so that it goes into reverse. Get it wrong and the car will go forward instead. Even worse is getting into reverse accidentally.
The controls for the wipers and lights are also pretty standard, and the gauges and their approximate location too.
That's the kind of glossing over the details that make it hard for me to switch to Linux.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
For corporate networks, the network administrator can make programs available for download from the network. That interface is what one would use to install them. In Vista, now there is a seperate icon to "Install programs from the network."
I want a pony.
You buy it for me.
Holy slopin' dipole this guy is arrogant.
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
Actually, you Can use Add/Remove Programs to Add software, there's a tool on the left side of the gump that you point at setup files, and I would imagine it tries to make sure the program is setup properly. I have never heard of or seen anyone use it though.
The repository cannot be the only source of software. In Windows, you know to run setup (the word makes sense) to install.
1. It's not. Most developers who release non-free software for Linux do something like setup.sh, which is exactly the same as setup.exe.
2. You're wrong. Installing software from a central repository is easier and more convenient and more maintainable and just plain better in every single way than downloading and running some random crapware's setup.exe file.
The "user" needed to be reached to make Linux a viable desktop OS are those who do not know what iptables and init.d is.
Nice strawman you've built there. Here, let me help you knock it down.
1. This doesn't have shit to do with repositories or installing software. What the fuck are you on about?
2. I'd bet you twenty bucks that not 1 in 20 Ubuntu users know what either of those things are.
My wife could not install and run the software she wanted to in Linux. She can on Windows and Mac and she has only used a Mac a few times.
So fucking what? I can't put a Playstation game in a Wii. Obviously the Wii is not ready for the living room, huh?
I could make a list of desktop software that I use every day that I can't install on Windows, either because it's not released for the platform (gmusicbrowser, Krusader) or it just requires a level of dicking around that I'm not willing to do (the last time I tried to install KDE 4 on Windows, which admittedly was a while ago). Obviously Windows is not ready for the desktop! Tell your friends!
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
https://www.opendns.com/start/device/ubuntu
and right clicks work fine for me on gnome-terminal.
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."
We just had a flame war on UI .
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
Basically, when grandma can install and run her greeting card creating software without any help, you there
I'm pretty sure 99% of the grey haired grandparents out there can't,or are afraid to, install that software on windows either.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Of course we don't count. We're the ones who don't believe in the fairies and the magic blue smoke that everyone else knows make computers run.
Fairies and magic blue smoke? So that's where I've been going wrong -- I thought it was daemons.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
thats a really bad example the reality is search in google for firefox and get directed to a download page which detects your operating system and region/ language and offers up a button which says click here to install firefox (appropriate version) but also offers a link to other versions if you require them.
you really can't get easier than that.
There is likely to be a warning that installing this might not be a good idea.
which tends to suggest it isn't harmful. Strangely most malware sites really really want you to think installing the malware is essential for your pc's well being and practically begs to save you from disaster.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
If you want victory against Microsoft and Apple, there can only be one leader.
An Old Chinese saying: One house can not store two tigers.
New Economic Perspectives
Well you then continue to use ur XP and have 1 antivirus for 1/4 the internet and another antivirus for 2/4 of the internet and then use some spyware removal program to take care of 3/4 internet and you are safe and when you spit all that money for antiviruses there goes Vista and spit money there and then comes out Win7 then again same thing and around and around we go or you will just buy Win7 cause Vista was such an epic win for M$.
Linux is making no headway in the homes of non-geeks mainly due to marketing and due to ease-of-use perceptions. Back in the day when I tried Linux, even as techy, I found it a pain in the ass to set up and be happy with. I haven't gone back to try again in several years, but there are other reasons for that. People don't associate the word "easy" with "Linux" and so they don't want it. Changing that perception would, I think, go a long way to getting people to use Linux. If all I wanted was email and internet, I'd use Linux in a heartbeat - because I know it's possible and a heck of a lot cheaper. Most non-geeks buying computers depend on the pimply dude in the bright blue shirt driving the black and orange Beetle to tell them what computer to buy. Which goes back to sales and marketing.
:)
As for me, I won't go to Linux because I mainly use my home computer for gaming. Thus, it's a Windows box. Windows has a very strong command over the gaming rigs due to the sheer volume of titles. Even today, the majority of PC game releases do not have OSX or Linux versions. There are, however, some notable exceptions (didnt Valve say they were gonna start doing Linux versions?). But just a few publishers going there isn't enough. It won't really take off for the gamer world until "most" games come out for Linux.
So without gamers and non-geeks, what other market for the home desktop do they have? Probably, the ones who are already using it?
Down with the career politician! SUPPORT TERM LIMITS
Sounds easy enough? It isn't. In the age when Compiz is THE default manager running over Gnome, we have the ancient long-standing problem: you have the cute "desktop cube", you have 4 desktops and you have only one wallpaper for all of them. Of course Compiz allows you to place 4 separate wallpapers, the problem is they will be obscured by the default Nautilus wallpaper.
And now Nautilus allows you to switch the whole desktop off (wallpaper + icons), it allows you to set transparent wallpaper (through which Nautilus default background will be seen), it allows you to set background gradient style and colors, but it doesn't allow you to tell it "don't draw background, let some external program do it."
I think this problem is as old as the "desktop cube" and possibly older. There are 3rd party patches but they haven't been accepted into Gnome.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Can we just say "fuck" when we mean "fuck"? What's this "f***" crap?
Bow-ties are cool.
If we listened to users we'd get a ribbon bar in every app, because it looks useful, but really isn't.
Really what users want is 100% compatibility with MS-Windows applications. They want to load the latest beta of MS-Office 2012 and have every feature just work.
Hating on RMS may be fashionable, but it's still childish. By understanding the copyright system he'd taught all of us not to just disagree but to actively work to subvert the system, or actually use the system. He may not have invented free software single-handedly, but anyone having any interest in open software of any variety owes him some debt of gratitude.
RMS and people like him have fundamentally changed the way we view and discuss software and more broadly our increasingly important digital rights.
As for Shuttleworth I don't know so much about him, but generally I believe the proof is in the pudding and while Ubuntu might be the best or most popular desktop Linux distribution he seems to be more focused on assembling and polishing existing pieces of software leaving very little to differentiate his vision from the rest. Ubuntu isn't fundamentally much different from RHEL or Suse or Mandriva and that makes it hard for me to think of Shuttleworth as much more then a funding source for a popular and fairly vocal distribution.
Quack, quack.
Start Talking Faster U!!!seven! (http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/STFU)
So what Shuttleworth is saying is that we are all slow and need to start talking faster. Once everyone has mastered fast speech it will be the year of the linux desktop.
One of the main obstacles, at least to my personal enjoyment of Linux, is X. X has its virtues but seems to me to be problematic for the desktop systems we use today.
Care to elaborate? This sounds like yet another anti-X troll with no basis in fact whatsoever.
You did it to yourselves, you fucking moron.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
(anyone else wonder why Add/Remove programs is called that even though you really can't add in any programs from there).
For what it's worth, you used to be able to Add programs that way. I don't know if you still can. Back in Windows 95/98 you would hit "Add Program" and it would tell you to insert the install disc or something. It would look for "setup.exe" or "install.bat" or a few other similar programs and run it. Also, Add/Remove Programs is where you go to install additional Windows components.
"Why would I install another OS when mine comes with one that does what I need?"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Windows has not intuitiveness. The only reason why we think it has is because most people have been using it for 20 some odd years.
Exactly, it's just like the QWERTY keyboard. Everyone's so used to it that it's really hard to change, but it's most definitely not a good design.
The controls for the wipers and lights are also pretty standard, and the gauges and their approximate location too.
Ahh, you've never driven a car with pedal-operated high beams, I see. Control for wipers and light are pretty standards across Japanese cars, yes, but not so much broader than that. It takes me a while to familiarize myself with American car control layouts when I rent one. And my one German car was just full of tiny unlabeled switches everywhere that you just had to memorize from the manual.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Because you're a cross dresser?
like this guy: http://mod.arcadebelgium.be/gfx/gallery/yodawgubuntu.jpg
Windows has not intuitiveness.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned.
- Unknown
If we want to be adults, perhaps we should actual make clear points and not stoop to cursing?
You seem to be under the impression that "cursing" is inherently bad. I do not agree. There are times when it's right to use the linguistic equivalent of a scalpel, and there are times when a sledgehammer is more useful...
If you want to say that this was not a case that "shut the fuck up" was not a case that called for the use of the word "fuck" - then that's a valid viewpoint, though I would tend to disagree. What "fuck" brings to the equation in the case of the use in the summary is the right level of emphasis.
It's like the expression "a picture is worth a thousand words" (which isn't true, BTW - even if you used enough words to convey what would come through in the picture, someone would have to actually read and understand that huge message before they got what the picture could have conveyed at a glance... Basically there is no equivalence. The picture conveys something words can't.) - these words exist for a reason. If you're not willing to use the potent words in your vocabulary, you're throwing away a lot of your potential to communicate.
But at any rate, my beef here is with people using-but-not-using "curse words". Like they want to say "shut the fuck up" - but, oh no, "fuck" is a bad word, so we'd better not say it. How is saying "f***" any better in that case? How is it inherently bad to say "fuck", and why is it any better to communicate the word with 100% clarity without actually saying it? I think if people want to use the effective vocabulary they shouldn't be half-assed about it.
Bow-ties are cool.
Thats really quite a lousy analogy, manual shift cars are easy to pick up and usually have a little diagram where the gears are. It's far more complicated figuring out where the headlight and foglight switches are, which stick is used for indicators and which for wipers.
The accidentally selecting a wrong gear problem isn't as bad as you seem to think as using a clutch you progressively bring the clutch up to biting point where the car will try to move in one direction or the other. If its incorrect you depress the clutch and pick another gear. Usually failure to locate reverse results in nothing happening or possibly engaging 4th from a stand still which is likely to stall the engine rather than move the car.
The problem used to be with automatic cars you could easily get in the situation of putting it in reverse instead of park, these days a standard pattern has been adapted making that error unlikely.
Making Linux like Windows but not windows is pretty much doomed to failure there is always going to be something different or impossible or absent e.g iTunes isn't on Linux and likely will never be. Selling linux as windows but free is always going to lead to disappointed users. Some things can be better when you adapt to the new interface, some worse I don't like linux file requester dialogues for example in kde or gnome maybe its because when i select to save i expect the dialogue to be ready to take the file name i want the file to have. I dislike Windows in general but the file requesters are better than most alternatives.
On the other hand that ribbon...
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
For the benefit of those not familiar with this... the old behaviour of displaying updates was to display an icon next to the clock. The new behaviour is:
Friends' Ubuntu installations were rarely updated due to the limited attention received by the little icon. With the new [minimised] update window, the machines updated weekly.
It all comes down to visibility.
Cheers.
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I'd also like to point out that the goals of BSD and GPL are very different. GPL has at its heart the idea of controlling code and making sure its only used in the way you want it to be used. BSD, on the other hand, is about letting people use your code, regardless of what they plan to do with it.
I've worked in a lot of software development projects over several decades, and I can say that this STFU protocol is nothing new. In almost most projects, the developers are never allowed contact with actual users. This is commonly used as an explanation for why software is usually so awful from a user's viewpoint. But managers consider user interaction a waste of expensive developer time, and do all they can to prevent it from happening.
Now, I can appreciate Shuttleworth's approach, since it seems to have the useful feature that the developer gets to observe the poor user's frustrations. But it probably does little to really solve the problem, since the developer (being a computer expert) probably develops little understanding of why the user is so frustrated. It's all too easy to dismiss the user's problem as mere ignorance. This does nothing to improve the usability of anything. To get any improvement, you need ongoing interaction between the developers and an assortment of users with varying knowledge of the subject area.
I have no idea how to change the software-development culture to encourage this. But it seems obvious that Shuttleworth's method won't do much to fix the problem. It may humble the developer somewhat, but unless it communicates more information than "ignorant user", it doesn't do anything to improve the painfully slow process of making new software usable by non-developers.
Of course new users are ignorant. They're new users, after all. They aren't the developers. There's no way they can have prior knowledge of how the software works. And if the developers have been kept apart from the users, there's no way the developers will produce something that makes much sense to most new users.
Actually, there was one project I worked on that provided access to ignorant users. The managers of the project were excellent ignorant users, at least at first. I found that they were very good test subjects for new versions of the software. They had a sense of humor about it, especially when I told them that they were losing their value to the group. They were becoming knowledgeable users of the software, and were losing their value as test subjects. They laughed, and found us some more ignorant users to test with. That product's introduction actually went fairly smoothly, and we got a lot of orders for the first release of the product.
But few managers are so understanding of the problems developers have in understanding how to make the software work well for novices.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
This was a new product, in a new (for Microsoft) market. We were starting from zero marketshare against firmly entrenched competitors. It took that product about five years to even start breaking even and now it brings in a healthy profit.
People at MSFT by and large try really hard to put out the best product they can. Unfortunately, in a company the size of Microsoft it's not as straightforward as it perhaps should be. If you work on a product that's already shipped a few versions, you end up having to convince too many people to get anything changed, so unless something is truly horribly broken people tend to pick their fights and argue for the cases where have a greater probability of success.
Fortunately, this is not an issue with new, v1 products, since you're building from the ground up. Hence, in our case, we've made fairly dramatic changes as we went along.
People are used to MS, and anything different is "wrong".
If people expect it, anything different is wrong. But there is nothing stopping us to make a compatible interface at least an option, if not the default.
In user interface design, programming language design, and ergonomics, the principle (or rule or law) of least astonishment (or surprise) states that, when two elements of an interface conflict, or are ambiguous, the behaviour should be that which will least surprise the human user or programmer at the time the conflict arises.
I dunno, qwerty isn't particularly bad - it tends to alternate hands and allows for some fairly fast typing: my mother made money doing typing on the side and she did 180wpm with no errors at the time. I do about 45 with no training to speak of.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
When Microsoft could copy over the descriptive buttons from MacOS ("Overwrite:" [yes|no] and "Keep this setting [yes|no]" to File exists: [overwrite|don't overwrite] and "[Keep setting|abandon setting]" etc.), we're actually finished building a UI metaphor.
Yes/No questions are horrible. You can only answer it if you read and correctly interpreted the question, which can be tricky if the question is phrased wrong. A [Delete]/[Cancel] pair is much clearer and faster to interpret (See, you already know which dialog this is, and there isn't even a question).
And please don't confuse themes/skins with usability. It's not the color of the menu that counts, but how much you have to wait for the shiny animation to finish before you can click again.
which stick is used for indicators and which for wipers.
Are you kidding? That's one that never moves: it's the one on the left, that you can reach with your hand on the steering wheel.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
> kicked off the formal free software movement
.
Stallman himself says that the primary goal of the GNU Foundation, when it was created, was to develop a free version of Unix. Drivers were only part of it.
> What's more, the fact that the binary Nvidia
> drivers are treated as a sort of pariah helps
> Linux overall
I'm sorry, but this is a happy fantasy. The primary reason why you don't see more drivers for Linux is because manufacturers are frustrated by the need to recompile/rebuild each and every time the kernel is updated. THIS is the primary source of frustration amongst Linux users, too -- they'll install the NVidia driver kit (which, just for the record, generally works just fine and enables advanced features), only to have the whole thing break when the next Kernel security update comes out.
I think there is a place for FSF philosophy, but there's a reason why the more pragmatic OSI was founded.
Further and finally, while I love Linux -- absolutely and to death -- it is NOT, as of this writing, the most popular F/OSS. Packages such as Mozilla's Firefox and OpenOffice would get that nod, if you go by install figures.
And just for the record, I think your sig line gives a great insight into your mentality. :)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Plus, with Windows update you never know what you are going to get
So, what you're saying is, Windows Update is like... a box of chocolates? Mmmmmm...
That's a really good point. I always run in "Windows Classic" mode because I find the newer themes distracting.
The interesting thing is that whenever I have to work on someone else's machine, the first thing I ask is whether I can temporarily switch the UI to Classic. The response, without exception, has been, "You can do that? Sure. And please leave it that way when you're done."
A bit of, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
I think a lot of OSS software (I'm think about gnome in particular) is so focused on "grandma can use it" that they're ending up in a state of "grandma's the only on who will want to use it". It's nice to be simple to use, but in the end if I can't do the more complicated things I want, then what's the point. Again, a gnome example. To make everything "so much simpler" I now have to use gconf-editor to configure many of the apps/tools because the option I was isn't considered "mainstream" enough. Now, talk about user-friendliness.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
This has to win an award for the longest sentence ever posted on Slashdot, with a special mention for incoherence.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Has she figured out yet why her MS doc files format like shit in Open Office?
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
The repository is an important source of software, and by itself will satisfy many people's needs. Neither MS Windows nor MacOSX have anything really comparable.
Sure they do, in fact, several. I invite you to visit tucows.com or the PCMag download section.
Find an application you want and click "Download Now". Thanks to the Windows standard, selecting an application to download has the same effect wherever you find an application. Installing is as simple as double-clicking the setup file that's downloaded to your desktop.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
When I install Thunderbird on Ubuntu, why do I have to compile it first? When I conduct an update in Ubuntu, why do I download loads of files?
I think it's this kind of stuff that has to get sorted in Linux if my Mum is to use it.
I'm too cool for a sig.
The desktop switching and automatic different default wallpapers for CDE (the Common Desktop Environment) was one of my favourite features. There was basically nothing worth configuring, and it was so dead simple. The terminals like dtterm were wicked fast, the window manager was light and worked ok with 8bit colour....and it was on Solaris, AIX, HP-UX....an actual 'common desktop environment'. Most of the time, all I need are about four fast raster-font terminals anyhow.
But the automatic different backgrounds (albeit ugly) were great.
man tunefs | grep fish
I don't know how all the lefts/rights translate, what with how here in Britain we drive on the opposite side of the road (and accordingly have the driver's seat on the opposite side of the car) but the norm here is to have the indicators on the left, wipers on the right. I assumed the rationale was that the right hand would do most of the steering, left hand was for changing gear and indicating - the things that require you take a hand off the wheel. Wipers, used less often, can go the other side.
My car is reversed from the norm; indicators on the right, wipers on the left. Took a while to get used to, but now that I am used to it I'm just as messed up by a normal car as anyone else is by mine.
Taking a guess at which stick you meant was "the one on the left", I'd say my layout is a complete mirror of yours - driver on the opposite side, sticks reversed too, whereas a normal car here is more a translation than a reflection; sticks the same way around, but on the other side of the car. So the minor feat of flipping the indicators up/down with an outstretched finger while steering and changing gear at the same time would be possible in both of our cars, but not a normal British one.
So wait... this all means you mainly use your left hand to steer? Damn... that would mess with me. I seem to have developed right-handedness for steering, I guess because it's the stronger hand and gets used for steering all of the time (unlike my left which spends some time changing gear, some time just holding the wheel as a counterweight to my right) My left hand is only really good for holding the wheel steady, not steering like a competent driver.
I have spent far too much time thinking about this...
I really doubt that could even come close to being the longest sentence ever posted on Slashdot, although it might possibly be the longest sentence put together without including any punctuation or obvious structure - the trick really to building an excessively, almost absurdly, long sentence is to first ensure that it contains plenty of subclauses to pad out the length, adding extra detail without becoming complete sentences in their own right, which allows you to keep adding words without bringing the sentence to an end, followed by the addition of plenty of un-necessary, redundant and absolutely preposterously worthless adjectives and further extra description, and then the final stage is to replace natural sentence breaks with connective words, commas and semi-colons to paper over the gaps between what would otherwise be separate sentences and keep the run-on flowing so that the sentence can just keep on growing and growing without any real limit or inhibition to further growth, save for the limiting factor of the author's patience with the endeavour.
kids . . .
I learned programming cheating at star trek, loaded from tape . . .
Far more interesting than the atari . . .
what's a "nintendo"? Something you didn't mean to do, as in, "I nintended to shoot that klingon"?
hawk
Except the end user should not have to configure and install their operating systems. That is the job of the hardware manufacturers and the "friendly" "Geek Squad" types at the local computer / electronics stores. Linux (Unix) was designed for professional admins to fix the computer while the end user doesn't have to worry about it.
For a stupid car analogy, you wouldn't expect someone to have to install the engine (or brakes, or transmission) or tweak the settings on those components just to use a car. They send it to a mechanic if they need one of those things done.
In fact, I have seen people do exactly that with their MS Windows systems, so I don't see why Linux should be different. Only people who work in IT (or are hobbyists or do-it-yourselfers) work on their own computer, just as mechanics and such are the only people who work on their own cars. The real problem is the company who turned choice into "all must use the one true OS!"
Okay, he's said what he has to say, and it makes some sense. However, given Ubuntu's beating they've taken on how little actual development they do, why don't they take the lead and actually make the necessary changes? It is open source... But, they don't. He makes a lot of noise, then uses mostly others' work, and markets it so that everyone can say "Ubuntu is awesome!". If he doesn't like the state of things, pony up and do something about it! Otherwise, "Shut the f*ck up!"
Well, in my last three (european) cars, those two switched places every time. FYI, I liked it better when the indicator switch was on the right (now it's on the left again). You could drive the car with just the right hand, operating gears, indicators and wheel at the same time.
Tell that to Hyundai on the Tucson then.
Thank you! It's not "Linux" that needs UI changes, it's "a bunch of Linux Software". The only reason one can even mention "Windows" to mean "a bunch of Windows software" is because it's mostly produced by the same company.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Apple and Nintendo both have alot of female fans, so why is Linux still Sausage Fest? It's because Ubuntu/Linux is still not user friendly enough to appeal to women. You know you have a user friendly product if there are significant number of women using it. Anyway I'm pretty sure Linuxcon was a sausage fest.
.
I would expect one of the most important features for a good desktop, the ability to use all functions of the PDA from the desktop, before all, effortless syncing of calendar, contacts and memos.
As far as I know, there is only a single line of PDAs that more or less can sync with Linux: the PALM based ones. Even then, there are all kinds of problems. Kpilot did work after a fashion with KDE3, but it is hopelessly broken with KDE4 because of the Akonadi disaster. Evolution does sync, even with bluetooth, but there still are some bugs. Jpilot works fine, but only over a serial link, and it is a stand-alone application.
If you don't have a Palm (and they are really old fashioned nowadays), the situation is worse. I know of no modern PDA, that is guaranteed to sync with the Linux desktop. Sometimes, partial succes is reported, but even then we are not talking out-of-the-box solutions. There is always a fair amount fiddling with libraries, (re)compiling, much burning of incense and never 100% functionality.
Somebody tell that to marc shuttleworth...
Hans Paijmans
You sit and watch someone struggle with the software that you've so lovingly produced
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
You sit while the user beats you with a cluebat after giving up the struggle with the software that you've so lovingly produced.
There, fixed that for you.
"Then your system admin is an idiot. Plain and simple. There is absolutely no other reason for that being possible."
Its called security hole...
any system can have then, but windows always had more, its usually easier to break by design (but its getting better designed in each release) and the lusers are usually alot simpler to trick doing the wrong thing
"WTF? There's a clickable link right there for "Add Programs", where your admin can advertise available programs through Active Directory."
yep, everyone knows how to work with AD, its plain simple in usability!! NOT!!
you are trying to compare windows and linux, yet you use both sides for windows ( home user and enterprise ) yet only home user for linux for comparing
if you are a home user, you have a set of problems for both OS, in enterprise you have others...
example: text files and installing programs in linux on a enterprise is almost totally blocked for users in a enterprise, a decent admin will do all that and the user just use the machine... just like windows
Linux admin for a home user might look harder than windows, but in a enterprise its the oposite
Finally, there are the false issues, linux for home user arent really that different from windows to admin... linux have a lot more choice/flexibility, that might confuse some users, it have advanced apps that are always hard to config and manage, but windows also have its own problems! to start, most of then arent administrated at all, the most common administration action in windows is to reinstall. then a user have to install many apps in windows to make it useful... then update then manually to fix security problems. If you use apps that are build for that system, everything is fine... if you try to use things not designed for that system, you are screwed! ... this for BOTH OS
in any case, users/admin must know what they are doing, not knowing, searching, reading, learning will only lead to complains that it "doesnt work"
Higuita
To be honest, not much. But they have made such a religion about it, taking away configuration even in cases where it is required to actually use the system properly!
Especially screensavers. I just cannot understand why they prevent you from configuring screensavers - even ones that require user input, like where your pictures are stored. You can't even control which screensavers run - you can have all of them randomly, or a particular one.
And being able to configure static ip addresses.
I do use gnome rather than KDE (too much configuration everywhere you look!), but I replace the screensaver component and network manager. So it's not a total disaster, but it is irritating when ideology overrides common sense.
The problem with fulfilling the expectation that everything should work just like Windows, is that then we could just as well go back to Windows.
You might get the idea from reading Slashdot, that Linux users use Linux because of some kind of hate towards rich people, but let me assure you that this is not the case for most of us. We use Linux because we consider it better than Windows, in one way or another. Making it just like Windows would remove our reasons to use Linux in the first place.
This is not about taking Bill Gates money away. It is about gaining enough users to get the attention of hardware and software companies, so that we can use the system we like for all of our needs. It may be something like Autocad, or even just the newest version of Command & Conquer, doesn't matter.
Turning the system we like into a clone of the system we don't like doesn't help reach that goal. It just leaves the position of "system we like" open for FreeBSD to move in.
In Windows, you know to run setup (the word makes sense) to install.
Huh? What would make sense would be if you run install to install. Running setup to install makes no sense at all.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
You're not going to completely cover all the minute details, of course. But there's a ton of established de-facto standardization that you can emulate or reproduce without doing damage to your user interface.
To stay in the analogy domain: make sure the left hand control is for lights, indicators, horn etc. (= signalling) and the right hand side for wipers, air conditioning, defrost etc. (= climate adaption), no matter whatever side your steering wheel is on. If you need to turn, twist, click or move a paddle, switch or knob is less important, because at least the user is going to look in the right place and will probably figure it out quickly.
Some things cannot be standardized, especially the gear shift position, because hardware limits prevent you from mounting the gear selector on the right side of a right hand drive or left side of a left hand drive - but the position is obvious enough in the first place.
Problem are the myriads of possible reverse selector positions, because
- people usually need it in a hurry
- it obviously cannot be worked around
- inappropriate settings are highly dangerous
- it's possible to not notice a wrong setting at all (hence the sound most modern cars make when reverse is selected)
- it's possible to be underway for a while before noticing that this setting is ambiguous
You mentioned two goals:
- having a system you like to use
- having access to decent programs
If A hinders mass adoption, it also hinders goal B, which is the reason for this discussion.
As I understood and experienced Linux, A is not a valid reason to style the GUI, because there are literally thousands of window managers and desktops to choose from, leaving capable Linux users with more than enough alternatives to "have a system you like to use".
Therefore, goal B is of higher importance, and that usually requires an implicit step of "luring people away from Bill Gates", if you like to put it that way. There's a bit of networking effect involved like in "companies don't produce printer drivers for a platform that people don't use because there's no printer driver for it", but that's not an argument for or against mimicking established GUI and OS metaphors, just an effect that severely punishes ongoing balkanization in the OS world.
This carries over to GUI apps and desktops. Desktop Linux apps are crammed with features, no less than apps for Windows and OSX. The problem is that the designers don't consider what tasks users actually do, and it what order. That's where extensive (and expensive) UI testing pays off for Apple and Microsoft.
Consider Blender. Its UI is much maligned for being a nightmare of contextual button panels, but the UI's density is not the underlying problem. What's wrong is that the designers don't take into account the workflow of actual users. The software's jam-packed with functionality, but much of it is mired in multi-step processes that make the workflow painful. It's almost literally impossible to use the app without tutorials.
Go read the docs and try to figure out how to apply a decal to a model in Blender. It's reasonably straightforward once you know how to do it, but it's weirdly complex. It's a perfect example of the mindset of a designer who's trying to implement a feature--"We can do it with an empty object!"--without considering the task the user wants to perform with it.
You're not going to win over any users by saying, "The function's in there! It's on a par with professional apps that cost thousands of dollars!" If a user runs into teeth-grinding frustration, the app's functionality doesn't matter. It's not what the app can do; it's what the user can do with the app.
Bravo. Well done.
> When it achieves the same level or better of intuitiveness as Windows, then it can compete.
Press START to QUIT...
Right! o_O
> The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned.
I'd like to verify that through some usability studies... :-)
Unless you happen to own the right hardware, getting wireless to work on linux will involve jumping through hoops that the average computer does not have the desire to do. If telling the truth make me a troll, then a troll I am.
Dude, I don't think computers were around back in your day, I don't recall any dinosaurs using a computer.
An OS should support any version of an app. That Linux distros come with some apps preinstalled is just sugar. Actually, "coordinating" releases is bad because it breaks the "release early and often" paradigm. Ubuntu's control freak attitude is fundamentally wrong here. They should stop seeing apps as part of their OS and accept that they are separate entities, with their own bugtrackers and their own extension systems (Firefox!) where the Linux distro has simply no business meddling with.
'Luring people away from Bill Gates' is not the issue: it's 'away from the photo software that came with my digital which I can put antlers on my kids heads', or 'away from the software dedicated to my work and standard in my industry' that's the problem; Gates is just assumed: many I meet don't even understand what an OS is: a computer is just this appliance thing, much like Apple intends its stuff, but Microsoft-loaded computers are just assumed to be. Get the software available, and you'll start getting the moves; not that the UI and many (MANY) other (horrendous and often easily fixed) problems in Linux aren't themselves issues. Note how so many people get a Mac and, they say, 'I/we love it'; this only works when the software they need is available for their platform (i.e. if it's for work, etc.), but Mac by virtue of being known, commercial, supported, gives clear documentation to devs, is reliable enough a company (one can never rely on the distro makers for Liux much), etc., is supported widely enough (and just enough) that it's somewhat viable; not to mention they don't flinch at the idea of advertising dual-boot (they've become aggressive because on hardware--see commercials, but in reality they're pretty much OS agnostic in a way: and not worried that someone must boot into the other for some tasks, whereas with Linux it's always 'we're trying to replace...'). Anyway, just some thoughts: typing this from Xubuntu, and loving it. : )
Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.
Within Add/Remove Programs you and Add/Remove Windows features as well as if using group policy in a domain environment this is also where you can set programs to be picked up for install. As well as (not that anyone would use this method) you can install software from Add/Remove by navigating to the installer through the Add/Remove GUI. Your comparrison of Ubuntu to Kubuntu (GNOME to KDE) and Windows XP to Windows 7 is a huge leap. There are loads of difference between XP and 7 far beyond the GUI. Not to mention that you can make XP look just like 7 with some modes and extra software. I am a fan of Linux but a MS Administrator by trade. I'd love to see more people use Linux and see what they are missing. What I would really like is to see the battle between the major three Windows, OSX, GNU/Linux end and a new OS born that combines the best of breed from all three. Having used Windows for many years and GNU/Linux for only a few I now find myself nearly weekly saying, damn, I wish I could do this in Windows like in Linux, or Damn, why is this so hard to find/change in Linux, in Windows it's right there. None of them is perfect and each does certain things better than the other. I completely agree with other posters though, and even in my own experience, that often when using a new OS you do compare it to what you are used to. That is human nature. And most end users aren't admins or programmers, they can't look beyond their biases and think, what would make a better OS, not why is this not like what I am used to.
"I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me." --Hunter S. Thompson
at this point, and the Linux purists will condemn me for saying so, is to be able to go to a given web site choose between the Linux, Mac or Windows version of a given program and download a self-installing package that goes Next, Next, Okay. I don't want to have to deal with repositories and dependencies and having to choose which version of Firefox 3.5 I want from a list of 50 entries.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
I think the entire development team should have to watch! There are often developers who don't care about the end-user experience, and then wonder why their bills don't be paid when the software flops.
Wow, you should consider writing some Winnie The Pooh books. You've got the A. A. Milne British run-on sentence down to a science!
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
The more people who use Linux, the more commercial software developers will write their programs for it.
I am a PC gamer. Do you know how much I would love to get rid of Windows entirely from my computing life? When I realised that Linux was better in a lot of ways than Windows, the only thing stopping me was the huge base of supported apps on Winblows.
Just like the huge base of apps is allowing Apple to keep on 69ing with AT&T.
/begin rant.
/begin/ to make any kind of significant inroads into windowsland, THEN FIX THE BASIC SHIT for your target users.
:D
/end rant.
Noble goals, etc, but for crying out load, get the basics right first. Hear me Mark, my cousin?
This is probably all Gnome shortcomings, but still:
Universal copy/paste between applications, like windows, for fuuuuck sakes (don't tell me to right-click select copy).
Consistent window behaviour:
- tabbing behaves differently in various windows.
- hitting enter doesn't always select the default button.
- ESC doesn't always cancel the window.
Yes, yes, there are workarounds and the argument that one simply needs to adapt, etc, etc, to which I reply: fuck off. This is basic shit and there is well-established and expected GUI behaviour which windows folks take for granted. If the Linux "desk top" is ever going to
Then there's the bloody twitching abortion which is Linux printing: default printers mysteriously stop printing. Only workaround is to clone them (then it mysteriously works again). Another fuckup is print authentication: I've already entered the goddamn password - yet my print job is defered because it's decided to forget my password despite my having clicked "Remember my fucking password."
What's up with this friggin crackling when streaming audio? huh? Change the stupid "driver" and it works for a day, then it crackles again. This is simple fucking shit which works flawlessly elsewhere.
Now, don't get me wrong, girls, I love Linux. Have used it since 0.9.x - on servers. However, when it comes to recommending a desktop OS for friends/family, I insist they use windows since I don't have the energy to help them adjust to something which is unnecessarily obtuse and difficult to use.
And please, spare me the knee-jerk fanb0i responses, or I'll bliksem you
"anyone else wonder why Add/Remove programs is called that even though you really can't add in any programs from there"
Actually I'm wondering why you haven't noticed that you can.
And under a Windows Terminal Server environment, using the "Add Program" feature is a requirement for any application that doesn't use a Windows Installer or InstallShield shell to trip the server into Installation Mode.
At least with Windows, I almost never have to use the term "compile," and if it does, it doesn't bother me about it.
"Blissfully ignorant since Windows 3.1, March 1992."
P.S. Yes, I used DOS... When I was 8 and my brain was still play-doh, and I'm happy I'll never have to write another config.sys file again!
You're not paranoid if they really ARE out to get you...
And their entire office was upgraded to Office 2007 in a couple of months after it came out. They were ecstatic about it, too, since features that were previously hidden in the menus were now right there, intuitively laid out and ready to be used.
Me? I couldn't care less about 2007, but I think whoever came up with the idea and pushed it through has an enormous pair of balls. This is the best innovation that's come out of Microsoft in a LONG while.
She has been using Ubuntu for a couple of years now.
And why geeks are not users?
Any other idiotic anecdotal evidence or inane comment you have?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
People like Stallman complement people like Shuttleworth.
The ground ploded by Stallman created the conditions for Shuttleworth's work.
To say we need more from one or another is a monumental disregard for the history and achievements of the people that have made possible computing infrastructure accessible to all.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Assuming you have the Google bar, assuming you don't type : "Firefox" in one of the spyware bars, assuming your IE isin't highjacked .... then yes Firefox might have been a bad example, I agree, but that's not true for every software out there, sometimes the download page will offer let's say : Apple or Windows Version, and the user won't know what to do.
P.S. : Just went to the Firefox download page, along with the green big download Firefox 3.5 button, there is a shit load of links. Believe me, users can stall at nothing, even seeing a shit load of options to click on a web page. Some will try to read them for no reason at all or some reason like, well the thing came up, I read from left to right and up to down, by the time he reaches the middle of the page(Where the button is), he is long gone man.
How do you know how many Linux desktop users are there? Most people don't buy Linux, they don't show up in any statistics.
I have a method to know who is who in desktop computing: magazines.
Here in the UK we have a pletora of Windows oriented magazines (as could be expected), but now we have at least 3 regular Linux ones (Linux Magazine, Linux Format, Linux User) as well as the venerable Linux Journal in some places.
How many OSX magazines do we have? One I think.
The important tidbit is this: publishers have an ear in the ground regarding readers' needs. to me it seems like they have identified Linux a more mainstream than OSX, this can mean only one thing: more people using Linux in a regular fashion...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Administration is certainly not a breeze for Linux. Sure as a server you set it up once and walk away with the exception of patching but it has its issues.
For example Firefox's history and back and forward functionality accidently got disabled in my Ubuntu installation. Why? I wanted to upgrade to Firefox 3.5 just like everyone else and it was a pain in the butt. Ubuntu doesn't support 3.5. I had to use the multiverse to install firefox (try explaining this to Grandma) and it turns out synaptics installed both side by side instead of an upgrade, which in return screwed each other's sql-lite databases. I can start Firefox 3.1 or 3.5 but their profiles are disabled. Uninstallation doesn't work and I have to re-install or delete and recreate my user account.
With Windows you see a message box "Gee want to upgrade to 3.5 click here!". Simple as that
Add other apps that require a different sound server or package to work and you have a nightmare. Read the reviews on KDE 4.x here on slashdot? THey are terrible because most Linux users use Ubuntu and Kubuntu does not even have a wifi connection manager. Grandma does not need to install this herself through the unsupported multiverse. She just wants to turn it on and click.
Windows just works as a desktop. Point and click. Its not the pile of garbage err half the pile of garbage it once was. If your machine gets infected just re-image it. Linux/Unix rootkits and infections are on the rise too as hackers like phishing with real servers.
Windows is very intuitive you just point and click and it comes already setup. WIth Vista and Windows7 you just type in the name of the program or document without even using the mouse. Unix could use this.
Also MS Office is the reason most people wont leave.
My laptop I use dual boots between the two operating systems but for the reasons described above I use Vista regularly.
Linux used to be ahead on the desktop during the Windows 9.x days of unpredictability but its behind.
Linux is better as a server to administer but it surely is not as a desktop.
http://saveie6.com/
When the slaves produced the cotton which we were able to buy in Europe very cheaply, the users who complained about the rights and wrongs of using such a process to produce the goods should have shut the f*k up. Definitely.
Shuttleworth is a businessman. He made a bundle off the back of the free Apache Server and now he intends making another bundle off the back of the Linux desktop. He don't need your stinking GPL, and he also don't care if it takes a Windows clone to bring in the readies.
I think Shuttleworth's basic premise is completely sound -- I know from experience that watching actual users, in the field, using my 'well-thought-out' and 'intuitive' software, found it much less intuitive and well-thought-out than I did. It was a valuable (and, yes, painful) learning experience. The problem I see is that he suggests putting the software in the hands of user interface experts, which are even worse than developers at predicting how real users work.
I've read lots of articles written by usability experts that talk about idioms, efficiency, doing what the user expects, etc. etc. And that's all great, except that it's wrong. If you follow the experts, then you get in a habit of saying "users are used to software X, so if we want to make our software easy to pick up, we'll make it use the same idioms and concepts as software X." Out in the real world (yes, I worked there for a while, and yes, it was painful), people are asking themselves, "why, for the love of god, does every piece of software do this same stupid thing?"
In every conversation I've had with a well-educated, progressive developer about usability, the argument they believe is that users expect the status quo. (I've been shot down from making a few small changes to our software's user interface on these grounds.) When I've asked everyday, non-technical people who actually use our software what they would think of the change, despite the fact that it behaves differently than all the other software they use, over 90% of them have said "oh yes! That would be a GREAT change! I'm so sick of programs always doing it the other way!"
Now, I'll be the first to admit that what users say they would enjoy and what they'll actually enjoy are often different. But I'm inclined to believe them, because I too have been in situations where I constantly have to fight with an interface choice even as I watch other software rush to copy it. I know that experience first-hand. And I know how nice it would be to find software that stopped listening to the so-called 'experts' and actually spent some damn time thinking about what the best design choices would be.
The Linux/OSS community, as a whole, has spent a long time and a great amount of effort trying to become as Windows-like or Mac-like as possible. And I'm not going to say they/we shouldn't have done that, because one thing that such similarity does is it lowers the learning curve for people who want to try Linux/OSS or switch completely. Both Apple and Microsoft have also figured out how to focus their development efforts on the user, instead of developing for their own use, and that's another lesson it's good for the Linux world to learn. But we shouldn't be afraid to ignore the way the commercial OS writers are trampling and take some time to consider what the BEST direction is. Too much regurgitation of the accepted "expert" design, and you get into a feedback loop where you can't make a better design decision because you've written too much stuff that behaves the "expert" way. And then you're Redmond.
So should we put our software in front of the users? Absolutely! There is no better, more accurate, more incisive, more disillusioning gauntlet for our software to go through. But screw the "experts." Seriously.
A cat is no trade for integrity!
and ease of administration
Compared to Windows, Linux administration is a breeze.
Hey? Please accomplish the following tasks:
- Lockout any desktop that has not received required security policies within the last 240 hours.
- Configure all 2,179 desktops to display the login notice required by the latest customer contract. Audit and report on deployment.
- Deny access to 'jsmithers' to all desktops within 240 hours (targeting 98% policy deployment within 20 minutes.)
Never moves ?
mostly never moves perhaps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed interesting page I think thats where I picked up on standardized shift patterns on automatic gear boxes.
Cars are developed for different markets and perhaps American car manufacturers did work together to standardize the controls. The rest of the world seems to have been less organised.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
That is not so bad, as I pointed out. The larger problem is when you think you are upshifting and end up in reverse. Or, to a lesser degree, think you are in second switching to first, and are in reality in first, switching to reverse.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
"Well, your methodology to test your intuition is probably flawed"
I think your definition of "probably" is flawed... what you mean is "I don't understand how something that is the case for me but not for you (or isn't for me but is for you) can possibly be true because I don't understand how different people can be, and rather than try to understand I'm just going to say you're wrong".
When using Windows, I found stuff easily and found understanding stuff easy because of how closely aspects matched to how I would've done it, so my guesses tended to be fruitful, and having to look up how to do stuff was minimal. If somebody designs something in a similar way to how you would've thought to do it, you'll find it more intuitive than if somebody did it in a completely different way (a bit like how you're struggling to understand this concept right now, because it's so different to your own preconceptions). That's just a fact. Struggle to believe it all you want.
"For my own case, I would say there is nothing intuitive about any of them"
Exactly, for your case. My case was different, because I am a different person.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia