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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.'"
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
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.
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.
You may not want it but others do, including me. Linux (currently Debian stable on the desktop and Arch on the laptop) has been my sole desktop OS for years, and the same is true for millions of others. Who are you to say that Windows and Mac are fine?
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
But, I'm afraid that these "experts" will be handpicked, for one set of characteristics or another.
Hopefully it's for UI design ability.
Ironically, Linux is a far better desktop OS than a Workstation OS. Microsoft is just too far ahead on making it easy to manage thousands of workstations with minimal setup.
Perhaps, but I don't think botnets really count as an example of superiority over Linux.
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.
They've been predicting the death of the desktop and a return to centralized computing for 20 years.
"Frequently wrong, never in doubt."
Yup, Linux needs more hype.
:) is ask a new installer if they want to use a "Windows GUI compatibility mode" and then have the system laid out as close to a Windows system as possible, out of the box.
/dev/sda1 stuff. Streamline Aptitude and enable all repos by default - a Windows convert dosen't give a shit about licensing issues, they just want those graphics drivers. Etc. etc.
Gnome's U.I. is already easily navigable. What Ubuntu needs to do to attract more Windows users (non-gamers, of course
One "start" menu inline with a single taskbar, on the bottom. Combine the items in the "preferences" and "administration" menus into a single "control panel". Alias the filesystem items to things like C: and none of that
They need to embrace, extend, and extinguish. Beat Microsoft at their own game. Maybe even make all that a seperate "Windows compatibility distro" so the purists won't bitch and moan.
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?
Mr. RightSaidFred99, I think it's time for a big dose of, as Mr. Shuttleworth himself so elaborately expressed, shut the fuck up.
I am the lawn!
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.
"Jim! I'm on the Lynooks now, and I printed off 500 envelopes for the newsletter, but they're all rotated! I put the envelopes in this way, but they come out all wrong!"
You seriously overestimate the ability of a standard plebe to adjust to any change.
If you fucking switch out their pen from a twisty pen to a clicky pen, it's not a difference, it's not a preference, it's a problem, and the new way is wrong, and it's your job to get them the damned pen they like.
Humans are great at adapting, but only when forced. Then they'll never stop bitching about how good it was in the past.
Your fears are unfounded. If they were valid, we wouldn't have GNOME & KDE & the hundreds of other desktop environments and window managers.
In fact, this will make things even better. KDE will still be KDE, but it will be more usable. Same with GNOME. Some of the more esoteric systems will not change, because they aren't aimed at regular people.
There is no single Linux OS that can be bettered/ruined by a single person. There are literally *hundreds* of Linux OSs. And even if there were just one single Linux OS, how can you argue *against* usability testing? If there's just one OS, and it goes through testing, it will almost certainly be made better, but if you *don't* test, it will still be the single Linux OS that everyone has to use, it just won't be as good.
Well, I happen to like them. But my doctor told me to watch my cholesterol.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
Yeah... You don't know a lot about managing Windows, do you. Or Linux for that matter, you'd using something like Cfengine to achieve this, not god damned "gsh". What is this, 1986. Jesus Christ dude.
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.
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."
I don't give a sh*t about such metrics.
I am more worried about the usefulness and usability of available applications.
I am more worried about driver support and interesting driver features like Purevideo.
I can fully exploit a HD-PVR on my MythTV server and have it stream to an ION box with full hardware acceleration for h264.
Tell me again why I should care about your "world domination metrics"?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I've used Linux as my desktop since 1996. I still need to resort to using a windows machine periodically, but that's not the fault of Linux in my eyes, it's the fault of stupid management decisions that require me to use specific windows-only software (usually implemented as an ActiveX component) even though there are perfectly suitable Linux software solutions to the same problems.
That said, 5 years ago I probably resorted to using a Windows machine to do something at work once or twice a week. Now it's once or twice every 6 months.
This is an improvement :)
*sigh* back to work...
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 should software go through Ubuntu to get validated by UI Experts?
I'm guessing the *primary goal* is to get developers to have UI experts look at their software, PERIOD. I'm sure Shuttleworth would be happy if it were someone else's UI experts.
The sad but true fact is that today, the vast majority of open source software *never* has any usability testing done.
Read it like this: "Linux software needs usability testing done. The Ubuntu project can provide resources to help accomplish that."
If he wants to make Ubuntu financially self-sustaining, Linux desktops that play well with media conglomerates aren't going to get anywhere.
Huh? What the hell are you talking about?
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.
Not in the realm of developing usable applications and OSes, they weren't.
*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.
So, since a 100% consistent user interface doesn't currently exist, we should therefore give up and not even attempt to make one? If everybody thought like you, nothing would ever happen.
Comment of the year
"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
I do usability studies as part of my job.
We do a one-on-one facilitated session with a user in one room, have an observer session in another room watching in real-time.
You want to have developers in the observer session, and part of the point of this is to change developer minds, and give them unfiltered feedback on what users are doing with their work. I've watched this in action many times, and it has a profound effect on developers.
Most developers write UI and processes for other developers to use. One example: 'you have to create a row or data entry object for a database table before you fill it out with data values' - developers and DBAs think like this, but most other humans think that the filling-out of data creates the row or object. for them it mimics the real-world concept of writing a note on paper; they don't think about creating the paper first. If developers want people in the real world to use their programs, they need to make them work in the way that regular humans expect, and the best way to convince them of that is to show them humans behaving normally...that is, not like developers.
It was odd to see Shuttleworth quoted as wanting "User Experience Testing". This is almost certainly a misnomer or misunderstanding of "Usability Testing" - which is part of (some would say tangent to) User Experience practice.
One important thing to know about usability testing: It's reactive. It's not generative. It can tell you what's wrong with your project, but it can't create new ideas about what project to create.
The latter goal is the domain of User Experience practice. User research, surveys, ethnography, rapid prototyping, shadowing studies at customer sites, JAD, search, site and other analytics (and yes, Usability Studies) all go into the User Experience (UX) practice. It's bigger than usability testing.
Windows has no touch screen support out of the box either.
Vista does. You're either full of shit, or talking about an ancient Windows version. Given, Vista doesn't have *multi-touch* screen support, but neither does Linux or OS X. And Windows 7 will. So... yah.
Please do the world a favor and stop spouting bullshit. If you don't know for sure, don't write the fucking post.
Comment of the year
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."
Except that desktops are generally poor target systems for hackers, they have slow connections (especially slow upstream bandwidth on most consumer level connections), and are frequently rebooted or turned off when not in use...
Linux has a significant portion of the server market, especially when it comes to internet connected servers, and servers typically have a lot more bandwidth and are running 24/7, a lot of companies specialize in hosting dedicated or virtualized linux servers that are operated by clueless users through a web based gui and they never touch the shell and is thus extremely unlikely to notice what you're doing.
There are plenty of people out there trying to target linux machines, people were owning unix machines on the internet long before windows even had a tcp stack, and hackers often prefer unix machines because of the more powerful cli based tools (imagine a gui tunneled through multiple machines in different countries because your trying to hide your tracks).
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
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.
Well Linux has "support" as well. In both cases additional drivers may or may not be needed. Since the parent was not in any way specific as to the type of touchscreen I was being as general as possible. Most Linux distributions provide support for a variety of touchscreens and drawing tablets out of the box. I know for a fact that Vista on one of the tablets I use needs a driver installed manually for the Wacom tablet. Ubuntu does not. It really depends on the hardware.
My comment was aimed at the people who rip on Linux because they have to install drivers (it really doesn't matter what type.) I was pointing out that you need to do that in other OS's as well.
"Frequently wrong, never in doubt."
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.
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?
You are correct in that there are people out there who think this way. It's funny though, I don't see these people complaining about Windows at all.
If you are thinking of Macs here, it's important to note that anyone using an OS installed from the factory will only have to install drivers for hardware he or she added. Reinstalling OSX on a Mac is about like reinstalling Windows or Linux using a manufacturer's recovery disc. The end result is that the drivers are not installed by the user. On Linux and Mac systems many user-installed peripherals work out of the box, but sometimes you still need drivers. It is not practical to expect an OS to support every piece of hardware ever made out of the box--especially if the hardware was released after the OS.
"Frequently wrong, never in doubt."
"Sorry, the simple fact is there is no need for another desktop OS.."
"Instead, how about focusing on being a workstation OS and a server OS?"
The subtlety between being a desktop OS and s workstation OS is lost on me. So is the need to differentiate.
If this is the thinking going on behind Linux desktop development, then I understand why it is still almost there, but never quite. No surprise.
ps- the SFTU protocol is truly needed in the Linux community. I still get the predictable responses to requests for help with Linux software issues:
1. "RTFM!"
2. "Did you install it correctly?"
3. "Doesn't Winblows suck?"
4. "Did you test your RAM?" (I like this one a lot)
5. "If you don't understand the documnentation, perhaps you shouldn't be using this"
6. "You should be using {insert another application name here, it need not be for the same purpose} instead"
7. "You should try {insert another distro name here} instead" (I get this a lot less nowadays)
8. "Go back to Windoe$"
More helpful advice from the Linux community is not what I wanted. I just wanted help. Of course, I expect a lot from the nonprofessionals that respond the most, I know. I hardly ever snap back anymore. I'm hopeful that one day Linux will indeed command a significant portion of the desktop market. I may even be alive then.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The point of Linux is not to compete with Microsoft and Apple. The point of Linux is to give the user power and choice. That's the entire reason it uses the GPL. If we lose that, we have nothing.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
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.
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"?
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
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.
I understand your point but it sort of misses the point of the article. There is a difference between "Can do" and "Can do without wanting to slam my head through the monitor." This is the difference that is being pushed here.
After all, there are legitimate usability complaints and complaints about how bug fixes are handled. Keep in mind that these are complaints heard by current users of Linux, a group that is likely well above average in terms of technical savvy as a whole. I don't know if you do/have done desktop support (not trying to be condescending...there are all different sorts of geeks on Slashdot) but average users get totally bent out of shape about really mundane things. If they delete one of their displayed columns in their EMAIL program they flip out and run around yelling "MY EMAIL IS BROKEN!" Things have to work quickly and easily or you'll lose them in a second. This means no "Just recompile your Kernel" or even "Just use Wine". Definitely don't tell them to "Debug the code yourself", as they won't even know what code is, much less know how to fix it.
Also something to consider, if you started a huge Linux Marketing campaign and it managed to secure a pretty big market share developers would find themselves with 10 times more bug reports/feature requests than they have now. As another complaint is the slow/non existent response time on some projects this problem would be compounded. A few more developers might come with the rest of the huge crowd but I'm guessing that for the most part, anyone who wants to develop FOSS software is already doing so. You might see a flood of for-profit companies jump into the mix with a bunch of closed source software to fill in the gaps, but then you are actually losing a lot of what makes Linux special in the first place.
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.
"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.
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."
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$.
"Jim! I'm on the Lynooks now, and I printed off 500 envelopes for the newsletter, but they're all rotated! I put the envelopes in this way, but they come out all wrong!"
You seriously overestimate the ability of a standard plebe to adjust to any change.
I have a bunch of clients that I've switched to Linux that would undoubtedly take great umbrage at this characterization. People aren't stupid by nature. But when you pound it into their heads that they are stupid, they'll internalize it. Most people have heard nothing but "computers are too complicated for you to understand," so that's what they believe. But it's bullshit. And it's usually being fed to them by bad people who are trying to pick their pockets. Which I guess is capitalism in action and probably won't change. But what I'm fucking sick of is this attitude coming from the geek community that "the proletariat just will never be as smart as us." It's obnoxious, it's offensive, and most of all it's fucking wrong. I bet you can't skydive. But if someone taught you you could.
Humans are great at adapting, but only when forced.
You might be on to something with this. Damn good thing for my business that Microsoft is great at forcing people's hands.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
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
Install powershell, or openssh, why am I not allowed to use cygwin? I don't need cygwin anyways as powershell is quite capable on all Windows from XP on up which covers that last 8 years pretty much.
The only remote administration that does impact a user is RDP, all other things from remote registry to installing applications in the background can be down without the users knowledge.
Also, scripts can run with elevated permissions without exposing passwords. That is the single biggest reason to use GPOs to deploy scripts, because they give you that exact ability!
Well, last time I did it, it went like this.
One of the grad students in the lab decided he needed to use Linux, but he only had experience with Windows. No problem, a good first step is to install Linux at home so he gets lots of exposure to it.
Okay, install Ubuntu. Not bad (the install process has come a LONG way - proof that UI improvements can be made). Okay, everything is going fine, but how come the second monitor doesn't work? Now there's a good question: Windows and OS X both would have autodetected the monitor and just made it work. Strike 1.
But sure, let's just open up the System->Preference->Display. Oops. Second monitor isn't there. Hm. Strike 2.
All right, Google it. Here's a utility that's supposed to do the job. Install, run. Wants to install a driver. No problem, do it. Which one? The latest one. Fine. Uh oh, X won't even start. Strike 3.
Okay, fine, it's been a while since I've edited an Xorg.conf file, but let's dive into it.... That's the point where the guy decided to wipe Linux and reinstall Windows, and I can't really blame him. It turns out later that after two strikes we almost had it, except you had to pick the next to latest driver because the most recent one dies a horrible death when used with more than one monitor.
By the way, I'm not at all sure you know what you're talking about. If you type "multiple monitors" into the Ubuntu help webpage you don't get "just go to System>Preference->Display. You get this:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/XineramaHowTo
So either you're wrong, or the Ubuntu help web site is crap. Either way, strike 4.
I hope Shuttleworth's emphasis on usability pays off. There's no reason why Linux CAN'T deal with the myriad little problems like this one, and Ubuntu has not only fixed a bunch of them in the distro but also spurred other distros into fixing long standing, stupid issues.
Windows has not intuitiveness.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned.
- Unknown
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.
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.
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.
But why spend time and money teaching when continuing on with what you have works?
It doesn't work. There's an entire industry built on the fact that it doesn't work. There are entire job classifications based upon the premise that it doesn't work. And we (The People) are no longer in a position where we have the luxury of continuing to throw money at this woefully broken piece of shit.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
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.
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
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.
/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