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UNIX for Moms
An anonymous reader sent us a link to a nifty little article
about Linux,
but what is interesting is the extremely simple description of
free software- it talks about Mom friendly unix, but the
best part of this article is that its got a Mom friendly
definition of why free software is changing things.
Speaking as someone planning on setting up a GNU/Linux-based desktop for my mum, I have to worry about where KDE and GNOME are really going. It seems to be a forgone conclusion among all of us newcomers that "To make things easier, we need to make it have all that kewl graphical stuff Windows has." While a lot of computer geeks (The kind who read MS-oriented computer magazines, not free software hackers) think that's the only criteria, *real* newbies - like moms - have no idea how to use Windows. GNOME and other projects like it should be working on making things simple - they're too hairy for me at times, and I'm actually computer literate. I just worry that it will get to the point where you have to tell a clueless person "well right click here, then go to that, then pick this from the menu, and type in foobar" like you have to with Windows. Maybe we should try to look at how software can be simplified. The DOM in Mozilla is giving me a headache! How will parents and secretaries understand a web browser if only a few hackers out of every hundred can?
Analyzing the statement "It's not ready for your mom to use it yet" I think the flaw is not the state of readyness, it's the sterotype of what a mom is.
I can honestly say, an iMac isn't ready for my mom yet, she can't even handle point and click only very well. On the other hand, we see this artical where this "mom" is using NetBSD on a laptop. I think the error is not how ready *NIX is, it's the mistake of sterotyping older women (well, technically, a mom can be a 16 year old female, but let's not go there).
So, I think by using a "mom" criteria, the UNIX community is fooling itself. What really needs to be focused on is the real issues.
Where are we now? Well, IMHO, installation and GUI "friendlyness" are moving along just fine. Configuration still has a bit of a way to go (but, setting up IP and modem config on any OS isn't exactly perfect, but that's not an excuse to not make ti better). Software avaliablity is getting there, when Gnome and KDE finish a stable and polished office suite, it will be there. Software installation is still a bear, and one that I think needs a lot of attention, and IMHO I believe the LSB will address that.
So, throw out the "mom" thing, it's a sterotype, and if one were to judge an OS based on a sterotype, we have now read the artical by a "mom" and that would be the end of it. I think there is still a way to go... ;-) But I have no doubt progress has been made, and will continue.
When I moved cities my mother decided to "learn how to use the computer" so she could keep in touch with me by email.
Mum still doesn't have a clue about how to use windows. Mum wouldn't know a spreadsheet from a paint program. She certainly couldn't tell the difference between RAM and ROM. And forget hooking up a printer or grabbing an image with the scanner.
But Mum does email me at least twice a week. She also hangs out in the gardening forum in Yahoo chat which is one of many bookmarks she visits every day. She has customised IE so that the CNN weather for Dunedin is the default website. And last month my mother installed the shockwave activex control by herself - answering two yes/no questions was pretty tough but she got through it!
My point is that Mum-friendly software doesn't depend on the OS it is running on. As long as the app that Mum uses is simple, easy and does what she expects then she will be happy.
In an ideal world, software could be radically customised depending on the type of user. Net based software could implement this with relative ease. Perhaps that's why Mum likes the net so much?
my blog: good times, man, good times
>I would imagine that 99% of mothers don't know what an OS is, nor do they want to know.
/etc/inittab to launch this script automatically.
I completely agree. My mom is presently running RedHat 5.2 and KDE, but she doesn't know it.
All she knows is that when she turns on the power and waits a few minutes, a desktop appears. She knows which icon to click when she wants to send E-mail or look up an article on the PBS website. One of her hobbies is photography, and she knows which icon brings up a WordPerfect document containing a sorted subject index of her photo albums (and how to add new entries). She knows that when she's finished using the computer, she selects "Logout" and waits for it to say 'system halted' before turning off the power. [1]
My mom is intelligent but non-technical. I don't think she had used a computer since GUIs came around (she used to use my Commodore 128 for word processing and stuff). She wanted to get onto the Internet but didn't want to spend the money for a new computer, so I put together a system (P75 / 48M RAM / 1.2G HD) from parts I had left over after upgrading my computer. I considered buying Microsoft Windows 98, but it was over CDN$250 (www.megadepot.com lists it as MSRP $296.18, their price $261.46) [2]. That's about as much as the rest of the hardware was worth, and it wouldn't have made the computer any easier for the things she does with it (and would have made it harder for me to install / maintain). Sure she may miss out on a few web sites that require specialized plug-ins, but on the other hand she won't have to deal with a deluge of BSOD's and macro viruses either. It's my job to make the computer do what she wants it to, just like it's my job to fix any electronic devices which have broken since my last visit (which I consider a fair trade for a few days of food and lodging).
[1] This auto-login, auto-shutdown required two minor customizations: a script to 'su' to her userid, run 'startx', wait for it to exit, then run 'shutdown -h now'; and a change to
[2] Sure I could have obtained an illegal copy for less, but I wouldn't feel right giving my mother stolen goods.
What most people, including most moms, dads, little sisters and neighbors want in a computer is just a machine that does what they want it to do. They don't care how it actually works, they don't care about the many different ways to configure it, they just want it to do what they want it to do.
:-)
I've given up on trying to teach my parents (and my sister) to actually use a computer. my sister knows how to start her 486SX33, her printer, Word 2.0 and how to print stuff. she doesn't need more, she doesn't even play games. it's just a fancy typewriter to her, and that 486SX33 is sufficient to do that.
my father is a transport planner; he can figure out the best way to shove many tons of freight all across Europe and constantly have most trucks filled to the brim for maximum efficiency, and does that faster than a super computer. but when it comes to anything technical he's a complete moron, with the result that I fix everything around the house, from light switches to setting the time on the stereo and the vcr, to programming the TVs... all he does with the computer at home (my old P166) is play a few games, mainly sol.exe and mines.exe
my mother is a grade school teacher (4 and 5 year olds), so she is mostly interested in computers for their educational purposes. she actually knows how to install programs and how to switch themes, but most of what she does with the computer at home is word processing and the odd simple game.
I've given up on trying to teach them you can do much more with a computer. they're simply not interested. it does what they want and/or need it to do, and when it doesn't they ask me to have a look at it. on the old machine was Win3.11 with Calypso to create a task bar. on the new machine is Win98, and I don't think my father noticed the difference. my mother did, but mainly because she could now more easily switch themes and screen savers.
most "dummies" aren't dumb. they're just not interested.
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humor,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
While the blurb on Slashdot says the article is "about Linux," I'd like to point out that it's about free software in general, and Mom was running NetBSD in particular.
Well, it's true. Maybe this wil sound rude, but... some people are just plain stupid (with computers).
/etc/passwd. Ok this isn't fatal, but, without a boot disk it is. Especially when the guy reboots his machine because he realizes that he cannot log in as root anymore.
/etc/passwd and /etc/shadow and just changed the numbers... There are also some classics like:
/mnt/cdrom or /mnt/floppy and their stuff isn't on the device anymore, Linux must have erased it somehow....
I have a buisness of Linux installation/configuration in exchange of beer (lots of it). And, I've lived to regret installing it for some people. Just to give some examples, one morning the phone rings, and this guy tells me he couldn't log in. I've created him a user, but I said to myself, he must have forgotten his password or something, so I tell him to log in as root to change the password back.
So I tell him to type root at the login prompt (and I hear some pencil writing) and then to type qwerty (the root password, for people worring about security, he uses a slirp connection to get on the net, so no harm can be done).
And, he kept telling me this didn't work, so I go to his place to realize he didn't press enter after typing root. Now, I don't know about you guys, but I have a lot of trouble to explain such simple matters without it getting on my nerves.
And this is just an example, I have a friend who first started using Linux 5 years ago, and still can't keep it for 2 strait weeks without doing something to demolish it (once he blamed the partition beeing full, so Linux must have written over the master boopt record...).
I also recall a guy typing echo "loging::502:502::/home/login:/bin/bash" >
Once, this guy just felt like changing his root uid and gid (for whatever reason), so he just edited
rm -rf / home/login/somefile
(as root of course, since these begginers are always logged in as root). There is also a variant with chown|chmod -R that does a very nasty job also.
And don't even think of telling these people how to use mount. No, for some reason, it is too abstract for them to understand. So they call you all the time to tell you that they've cd to
Anyway, I feel a lot less pressure now.....
Papi
- Chernobyl used windows
This might be true, but keep in mind that it is the mother who wrote the article.
l a-and-be-able-to-pee-standing-blablabla stuff on me...
Also, I beleive that as a matter of fact, in general, women are not as intersted in computers than men.
Therefore, this means that they spend less time in front of a screen. This gives them less experience with computers. This brings us to the point, that, in general (with some exceptions, but very few), women are less comp... hmm, well.. goo... Hmm, no.. knowl... oh, you know what I'm trying to say...
This is not due to the fact that they are an inferior beeing, but to the fact that they don't care about computers (and other electonic devices). If there is one (good looking) woman out there that spends as much time as me in front of a computer (not chating and playing games) I WILL MARRY HER!!!!
This is not a stereotype. It is a fact that can be mesured by serveys.
Hope not to many feminists will read this. They might lay some we-are-not-blablabla-we-should-be-treated-blablab
Papi
- Chernobyl used windows
Regardless of whether the browser is part of the OS or not, I think Micorosoft's Neptune project looks promising. Dvorak has an article describing it "Microsoft's Secret OS Plan" and a screenshot. Most users are not tool-oriented, they are task-oriented. They think "I want to copy my resume to that floppy disk", not "I need to mount my /dev/fd0 and blah blah".
For more info (and strong opinions) about UI usability, check out Alan Cooper's company. His book About Face : The Essentials of User Interface Design focuses on Windows (including many jabs a Microsoft Word), but it's applicable to any UI.
cpeterso