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Examining the Usability of Gnome, Unity and KDE

Posted by timothy on from the such-wimps-all-of-'em dept.

gbjbaanb writes "TechRadar has gathered a few users and subjected the 3 main Linux desktops to some usability testing for both experienced users and some new to the whole concept." I'm glad to see such ongoing comparisons; they encourage cross-pollination of the best ideas. On the other hand, it's a little bit like trying to determine the "best" dessert; even the most elaborate attempts to find statistical consensus won't answer the question of what's best for any particular user.

7 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. General usability should be one of the choices by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's nothing wrong with ignoring the needs of individual users to tailor a generally good experience, _so long as power-users are still given the ability to pick the option best for them as individuals_. That last part is the important part that Apple has forgotten of late.

  2. Configurability by NoobixCube · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know what's best for everyone? Configurability. When the developers can't decide how something should work, when they have two what seem like equally good or equally bad ideas, why should they force one particular decision on the user? Why not just put an option on a big scary controll panel somewhere made just for that? Of course, for usabilitiy's sake, there'd be the normal slick and easy to read control panel, but Gnome used to have GConf (does Gnome 3 have it? I don't know). You could use GConf to configure ANY aspect of the interface, anything at all. It was a very powerful tool if you knew what you were doing with it. So set the defaults to the lowest common denominator, to the grandma standard, but at least leave the powertools where we can reach them! Put up a warning that it may break the interface, sour the milk or bring the rapture to scare off the grandma users, and only those who really know what they're doing need concern themselves with it.

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    Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
    1. Re:Configurability by TheLink · · Score: 5, Informative

      Configurability is nice, but defaults are very important. A good GUI has good defaults.

      You could use GConf to configure ANY aspect of the interface, anything at all.

      Not helpful to most users. And in theory you could use the source code to configure any aspect of the interface too.

      1) Most people instead of making 1000 decisions to get a GUI that's 99% suitable for them, will make one decision to get a GUI that has defaults that are 80% suitable for them.
      2) If you deviate too much from the defaults, you may have difficulty getting support. This may not be a problem for slashdotters but it is a problem for the rest of the world.

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    2. Re:Configurability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's kind of the route taken by KDE. It's *hugely* configurable. Want a stock ticker widget in your task bar? Fine, just unlock it and drag one in there. Want the task bar on the right side? Just drag it over. Want to make caps an additional control? It's just a checkbox in the preferences. By and large, you don't even have to use obscure registry-style editors either.

      KDE 4.7 FTW.

  3. What "usability testing"? by Animats · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Where's the "usability testing"? The linked article is just typical blogger blithering, spread over multiple pages for maximum ad insertion. They write "Since usability is a personal experience, we invited a bunch of people, from newbies to power users, to share their experiences with 3.2.". Which probably means "we asked for comments on a blog".

    Real usability testing is not market research. It's measuring how well people did on tasks, not what they said they liked.

    1. Re:What "usability testing"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And in the computer industry it's almost always done horribly. I've participated in such studies, and they mistake "ease of learning for a complete newbie" with "usability". They are not the same. You're only a newbie on some application for a few days or weeks, but you might be using it for the next 10 years. What makes a package *usable* is not something you can learn by watching me come up to speed on the damn thing for a few hours. Let me use it day in and day out and talk to me in 6 months. I'll have suggestions about whatever scriptability you have exposed, about keyboard shortcuts, about integration with this or that... none of which I will be able to tell you in your three hour usability focus session.

  4. Usability of the Article? by froggymana · · Score: 5, Funny

    Resizes automatically to fit my screen? No.
    Has everything on one neat page? No.
    Allows you to click on the small pictures to get a higher resolution picture? No.
    Is uncluttered by random links and pictures not relating to the article? No.
    Is completely free of annoying social networking buttons that track pages you view? No.

    Verdict
    The article is annoying and not very usable.

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