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Microsoft Plays Linux Games at Work
When I called him back, he thanked me for my quick response and said that he was new to Linux and wasn't sure if he'd installed the game right. He then said, "This machine is going to used for... well, I'm a Microsoft employee and my group is doing a usability study on Linux."
As it turned out, he had unpacked the tarball (I had to explain what a tarball was) on the CD by double-clicking its package icon in gmc and then double-clicking the install icon that came up. He had absolutely no idea where the game had been installed, and didn't know how to search for it.
At this point I pointed out to him that CivCTP came with a graphical install script, conveniently labeled "install" and placed in the same directory as the tarball. And in fact, in that same directory was a text file labeled "README" that explained how to run the install program.
I had him pull up a terminal window and run `sh install` (since he had a 4.5 GB drive containing only a fresh install of RH6, he wasn't too concerned with finding his previous installation just yet), and as the graphical install smoothly copied the files into their proper place, we chatted amiably.
Me: "So what kind of system are you using for this?"
Him: "It's a... [pause to read label on the case] HP Vectra."
Me: "Umm, what processor does it use?"
Him: "It's a Pentium III, uh... 450 MHz?"
Me: "Yes, PIIIs do come in 450 MHz."
Eventually, the installation finished. I encouraged him to grab the patch from our website, and he thanked me and hung up.
Ordinarily, I am very respectful to newbies. I don't even laugh at them behind their backs--especially if they have been looking through man pages and reference books trying to figure things out. This time I almost peed my pants.
Then the big question dawned on me:
What does it mean when Big Bill gives brand new P-III 450's running Linux to game-playing newbies who don't read reference books, manuals, How-To's or README's for a usability study?
Can you say "viable desktop environment?"
Note from RM: Yes, we verified the story. All parties are real.
I used work as a contractor on the microsoft campus in redmond. There are a lot of linux boxen there. The interesting thing is that almost all of them are on the desks of contractors. The deal is that those who are depending on MS stock for their retirement refuse to even think about linux, but a lot of the contractors out there are hedging their bets. There were (best guess) around 12 linux boxen in MS building 11 alone. Which is a lot considering the location.
--Shoeboy
As charming and witty as those first couple of posts are, this is a BIG deal. (Okay, everyone else will say this, too.)
:) (While "tarball" is a great term for geeks to use, it certainly isn't an intuitive word. For that matter, neither are many of the other things unixfolk take for granted. "grep" comes to mind real quick.)
While all the gnome, redhat, etc people involved can pat themselves on the back, this does point out some things that are really small that *NEED* to be done... off the top of my head I can think of:
1. Autorun.
2. a dummy-fied RPM/DEB/any other kind of package installer/viewer/uninstaller that can be used cross-distribution and cross-version with similar functionality to the dreaded "add/remove programs" control panel
3. less jargon.
We're getting there. While things may be in a state now where linux+gnome/kde+icewm/enlightenemnt/* may be "mom friendly". It's certainly not friendly to someone who's going to be installing hundreds of programs cluelessly every day -- like your average computer using teenager.
-Chris
In fact, who do you think MS would hire to study Linux?
Developers? No way! Once they got a hold of Linux they'd never go back to Windows.
Marketing types? Would you even try to sell Windows after using Linux?
Sales? See marketing.
FUD slingers? Nope. They couldn't even do their job anymore.
So who else do you hire other than someone expendable? Someone with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever? They'll probably poke his eyes out and sew his mouth shut after they're done with him.
Id say: Leave a clueless user (tm) who has no idea about this whole computing thingie and whos not even willing to read any sort of documentation alone with a blank harddisk and a W98 install CD and guess what he will achieve? Yeah nothing. Right.
Windows has nothing to do with intuition, its only got to do with being used to it since years. Anyone whos grown up on Linux, will consider this an "intuitive" install:
$ tar zxvf tarball.tar.gz ./configure
$ cd tarball
$
$ make
$ su -c "make install"
Get the point?
-martin
It seems to me that the guy from Microsoft could have just as well been testing various support departments to see how much support you could get.
He may have been clueless or he may have just been acting that way.
Many people would just put the cd in the drive and *expect* an auto-install to start. If nothing happens, then they'll double click on some likely looking filenames in gmc/whatever.
Game installation now is a complete no-brainer compared to the bad old days when you had to run install programs from dos, make custom boot disks, maybe find a working video driver, yadda, yadda.
Win9[58] as a gaming environment is pretty good - most of the time you don't have to worry about stuff.
As for the 'newbie' not knowing what his pc is: chances are he was given a blank pc and a stack of CDs and told to install them and see how easy it is and if the platform is sensible for a *real* newbie, i.e. the 'foot pedal, cup-holder and monitor-stand' brigade.
dave
I know the instinct is to jump on the anti-FUD ramparts as soon as reports like this come out.
But take a deep breath. Microsoft is in the operating system business. I'm sure they've got legions of people doing "usablity studies" on MacOS 9, BeOS, OS/2 5, Solaris 7 and so on. Eventually reports get written, MS finds a few new features to steal, some contractors get easy money and everyone is happy.
Also, don't forget these guys are paranoid as hell. Why should they believe either Linus or the trade press when they say "Linux is not ready for the desktop", when they can afford their own usablity lab to make that determination for them.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Wait a minute. Have you ever noticed how elegant the packet managers are in Linux distributions? You can update a lot of software by just giving one simple command. And if you don't like typing, do it with your mouse. There's no need to answer a lot of questions, shut down other programs or reboot.
I use NT at work and Linux at home. If I update Netscape on both, my RedHat-box does it in notime with a simple command:"rpm -Uvh nets*.rpm". On NT I have to shut down other software, dblclick on the icon, answer a few sets of questions, wait a longer time, reboot the computer and pray that it boots and doesn't give me a BSOD.
I used to pretty much trust NT until a simple installation of a sound card and it's driver resulted in constant boot-time-BSODs that required a reinstall from scratch.
FUD? Rigging results? Please. Microsoft may make common practice of that, but that is NOT what's going on here.
./configure, make, make install)? Or are things as easy as clicking a single icon? Do you have to run applications within a terminal, calling them up by exact capitalization, or do you get a big friendly icon automatically? When something goes wrong, how easy is it to fix? How easy is it to get help? This is useable to people who don't already know all the proper commands, aka. born-and-bred Windows users who might want to stop using Windows for some reason. Microsoft wants to know "how easy is it to switch"? Do they have to worry?
...] or tr" when you type "help" is immediately useable?) Is the "/usr/bin" directory the first, most obvious place to look for a new game you just installed?
According to the fellow in question, they were performing a "useability" study. That means just that: useability. How easy is Linux for people who are not already accustomed to it to use?
So, why are they having people do studies on Linux? It's competition, and anyone who wants to compete will take a gander at the competition.
Why are they using "newbies"? Think about this. What good would it be to do a "useability" study on WordPerfect 3.1 using people who have already memorized all the fkey combos, or who know to look for fkey combos? NONE! Why? These people have already adjusted to the environment, and so any reports they have on how "useable" that environment are are SKEWED. People who don't know to read the manual, and don't know much about linux (or even computers, for that matter) are PERFECT for a true "usability" study. They allow a clearer look at how obvious and easy it is to do what you want to do. The question of useability attempts to answer the question: what do I have to learn in order to use this? Do you have to learn to install software in at least 5-6 steps (gunzip, untar, cd,
In this case, the answer is a resounding NO. Linux is complicated. Many if not most applications are distributed primarily in source-code format, which requires compiling, which requires installation of all the development libraries and toolkits, which requires keeping up with the most recent versions of these same libraries, which involves visiting ftp sites, which involves knowing about ftp-commands....and if not that, it requires discovery of rpm and it's man page, which requires discovery of man pages (not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when presented with a command prompt for most people), or it requires the discovery of gnorpm (not advertized as much as it is), which requires knowing why you need to be root for some things, but don't want to be for most things. Even just typing "help" provides you with a bewildering list of commands and a fairly cryptic set of symbols describing their use - BUT NOT WHAT THEY DO! (please, is anyone so deluded as to argue that any os that provides "trap [arg] [signal_spec
Suffice to say, to use Linux pretty much at all, you need to know A LOT about how it works, how computers work, how unixes work - some mixture thereof - to get ANYWHERE.
And why would they want to find out how "useable" Linux is from someone who already knows all about how to use and configure it? They don't. Because that information would be WRONG. At least, it would be in all areas that they care about.
Yes, it's funny. No, I don't know why. But it's newbies because that's the only kind of "useable" that counts for the mass market. "Useable" means "really fricking obvious" in the mass market. What's obvious to you and me is quite often nowhere near obvious to anyone else. Microsoft may be all about FUD, but that's not what it's doing here...at least, not yet.
It is a very, very easy to install piece of OS. I had no trouble installing it on my dual PPro200 (OC) but do you know how long it took?
Three whole bloody hours.
I don't care what you say, even with all the dicking around it does not take that long to install any other OS, Linux included. The fact that W2k asks about one question and then goes "Please wait" is good, but jeez, I reckon they could warn you that you may as well go and watch "The Matrix" while you wait.
Easy installation is one thing, but trying to detect over a thousand devices over a two hour period is another.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
Seems to me that this person at MS called the Loki tech support line, and who was on the other end? Someone who (as best as I can tell) courteously and helpfully told the person how to install the software, and had a friendly chat with them while the install was going. If someone calls MS for support, all they'll be talking to is an automated voice prompt, at least until they hand over their charge card number. And I'm pretty sure you can bet that there probably won't be a friendly tech support person on the other end of the line, should you choose to pay for support. Seems like MS should be studying the usability of their own stuff first....
As an ex-Microsoftie, this quote hit me differently.
Then the big question dawned on me: What does it mean when Big Bill gives brand new P-III 450's running Linux to game-playing newbies who don't read reference books, manuals, How-To's or README's for a usability study? Can you say "viable desktop environment?"
So, Microsoft's been touted for years for hiring smart cookies. Even with the degradation of its standards and practices, and the complacency of being the largest corporation with an enviable bottom line, it's not easy to walk in and get a Microsoft job.
I still expect that the guy who called up wasn't an idiot. Sure, hadn't yet looked at the machine that Bill bought him, sure, hadn't used Linux before very much. Isn't that the perfect useability test case ? And given that... how did Linux perform? The out-of-box experience seems to have failed.
I was on the team when Windows 95 was still called Windows 93, before it even grew the codename Chicago. At that time, the general manager of the desktop Windows Business Unit, Brad Silverberg, coined a mantra of the ideal in useability. He said that his [nontechnical] mother should be able to use Windows. Personally, I think we failed at reaching that ideal, but we made the right evolutionary step from Windows 3.1.
Now, how well can your mom use Linux?
[
It's exactly what I would do if I were them and it has nothing to do with FUD. Indeed: "a clueless newbie is the typical Microsoft customer". From MICROS~1's point of view that's just a fact. Their $$ spends just as well as that of a "guru" customer. What do you think they are going to do?
In this one example they seem to be looking at
games. A game that can't be installed easily by a 10 year old with 6 months experience pointing and clicking on things is not a market threat to them. That's all they care about. The fact that it's "obvious" to you or me or anyone else how to install it does not matter. That's not the target market.
Put it this way: Have you ever been asked to do QA on or write docs for code that you've written? For real end users I mean here, not man pages or READMEs or comments in the Makefile. I have and I've seen the results of these attempts many times. IT DOES NOT WORK. you are too close to it. You don't know to explain the parts that the end user will find confusing because it's not confusing to you. You don't know to test a part of the program in a way you didn't think of because... well you didn't think of it.
Same goes for usability. You bring in the intelligent but ignorant. If they can't make it work it doesn't work - because they are the customers. After your ignorant pawn has done this
for a while they lose their usefullness because they also know it too well and are too close to it. And LO! a tech support rep is created! Been there, done that. Eventually the smart ones understand it too well and become terrible tech support reps because they can't explain it to the end user in tiny words that they understand.
MICROS~1, and any other company that actually delivers products to "normal people", understands this early on or they go out of business. This is often a blind spot for OSS advocates but ICROS~1 has always understood it quite well. Technology, Quality, Stability - these may be their blind spot but this isn't.
garyr
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
I think that one of the real important features of linux is that it is easy to use. Typing ntsysv is _so_ much easier than going start...setting...control panel...services. The problem is that many confuse "easy to use" with "easy to learn". In my experience, they are generally (but not always) inversely correlated -- the harder something is to learn, the easier it is to do something once you've learned it. Conversely, the easier something is to learn, the longer it takes to accomplish something once you've learned it.
:\ I can't wait for someone to jump out and give the "everybody can drive a car" example.
This is actually an idea that I've stolen from Jurassic Park, but I think that there is a real (and bad!) movement in the US to make everything brain-dead. We try to minimize the amount of knowledge that you need to start doing something, at expense of how well or fast it can be done.
Oh well, I'm probably the only one who thinks this.
If there was one thing I could tell MS for their feasibility studies:
/sbin/lilo -U before you replace one linux distribution with another. It helps get rid of the LI... freeze in your MBR.
... or even at 4.0.
Use tcp_wrappers. The security benefits of tcp_wrappers have been proven by Wietse Venema; the rest comes only from my own meandering experience.
Run
If you're going to be paranoid and deny telnet and ftp in favor of SSH, don't send your mail passwords plaintext with POP3.
Maybe Linux will take over the desktop, maybe it won't. Maybe InstallShield for tarballs will be created; maybe it won't. Either way, your Mindcraft scores are half chance -- and so are everyone else's.
Be kind to your root partition. You'll miss it when it's gone.
If you don't know which direction your favorite window manager will go, don't worry. A lot of the greatest programmers I know had no idea what they were doing at version 2.2
Each day, activate a compiler flag that warns you.
Do not read Slate Magazine -- It will only make you feel ugly.
Accept certain truths as inevitable: USB support is dodgy, "stable" kernels will crash, and you too will lose your CHANGELOG -- at which point you will fantasize that when you were at version 2.2.x, USB suited your purposes, kernels never crashed, and people read their source code.
Read your source code. Source code is a form of nostalgia... it lets you pick it up, parse through the comments, and audit it to make better code in the future.
But trust me on the tcp_wrappers.
/* thanks to Baz Luhrmann */
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
I have Civ:CTP. I like it, I liked it's install. However, it wasn't perfect (from my ever-ongoing useablility test mindset :-)* ).
/opt, Mandrake installs it in, well, everywhere, etc).
./configure && make && make install is nice and quick, and works quite well on different distribs, but get a new user to install GNOME or KDE from sources and watch them cry.
The newbie doesn't understand mounting. That's step one. You can't even *read* the README on the CD until you do that. When you explain mounting, they usually say something like, "that's pretty stupid."
But that's not so much of a problem. The biggest problem, as I see it is the variable filesystem structure among distributions. There's tons of work being done on useability, etc, but it is pretty much in the context of one distribution at a time (SuSE installs KDE in
What is needed is an agreement on a filesystem structure, first and foremost. There was work being done on that, but where is it now??
How come I haven't heard a thing about it in *months*? I've heard so much news about new releases of XX distrib, XX desktop, etc. LSB? nothing.
I think that the importance of GUI install work should be downgraded to make room for this. When a developer can release a package and not have to supply different binaries for different distributions, we'll all be happier.
Ok, for small packages,
The worst thing is that this is an aspect of open-source that "low-ranking" people like me and many others cannot really make an impact in. This has to be done by Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, Debian, Corel, among others.
I worked as a dev on Visual Studio...
;)
This is a little bit off topic, but here goes...
For just everyday use (and not this usability study) - Microsoft doesn't really care what OS their employees use as long as they can perform their job functions. You can get quite a bit of functionality on their network with a Linux machine, especially with Samba.
The only thorn in its side that I heard of was that Linux didn't have an equivalent to the MS Proxy Client. I'm not sure if that has changed these days (someone chime in here?). So you couldn't really access the internet, except when web browsing.
But you could still use Netscape of course, and anything else provided it was not illegal software. Microsoft certainly endorses their own products, but if an employee feels more comfortable using Linux, and is still productive, then Microsoft doesn't care.
Just don't try calling their support desk for help
Or I tried to.
Easy to install? Not really. RC1 took two hour-long installs to actually get to the point where it would boot. When it did boot, the high-end video card in the machine (An Elsa GLoria) didn't work in anything other than 640x480 in 16 vibrant colors. There were no drivers for the card on Elsa's site, but I managed to convince the NT 4 drivers to work, after a fashion.
Easy to use? I guess, if you don't mind waiting. The default install came with all the needless crap turned on -- menus that fade into existance, all the ugly extras in Explorer that seemed to chew up CPU time rather than offer any useful features, even a cute little shadow under the mouse pointer that probably took up its fair share of processor cycles. Even after turning all the cruft off, the machine still ran like a three-legged horse. It felt _much_ slower than NT 4, which really is saying something. The video was unbearably slow, though using NT 4 drivers might have been the cause of that. Programs loaded slower. The machine took longer to boot and longer to shut down (which needed to be done often, even moreso than NT 4). Although it had a later version of DirectX than NT 4 SP3 did, none of the games I tried to use worked with it. (A few of them did in NT 4.) Internet Explorer kept forgetting that I'd told it to use a proxy server. Eventually I got sick of it and reinstalled NT 4.
The SP2 CDs just arrived yesterday. I'm very afraid.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
_I_ hope it's dry humor because it's exactly wrong.
For a first-time experience, for the 'usability tests' that we're talking about, if you're looking to change something in the way your computer behaves, Windows gives you some clues from the get-go that the command line simply doesn't: try the big friendly button with the bouncing arrow saying "Start Here."
Inside there, a clearly-marked "Settings" menu, and inside there, Control Panels, Printers, so forth. Clearly-labeled hierarchical menus that lead you to figuring out where you're going, even if you're not sure. Once you get "Control Panels" open, there's a mess of nicely labeled icons to poke at and try to figure things out. From context, you know that everything in there is going to change some setting on the computer, and can poke around inside that context for a while until you get what you want.
The original poster's 'easier' alternative, the command prompt, offers no such context. Finding out that 'ntsysv' can change around certain settings is nice to know, but offers no context in finding out how to change _other_ settings -- commands starting with 'nt'? command ending in 'sysv'? Nope. No rhyme or reason. Or clues. Or hints. Or help. You just scratch around until you stumble across what you're looking for, and slowly accumulate knowledge. Maybe you find 'man,' maybe you figure out how the GNU info viewer works, maybe you have Gnome or KDE installed and can use THEIR visual context.
But if you plunk down newbies to a Win32 desktop and to a command-line Unix environment and just say 'go' with no further instructions, I think you know where my money'd be.
Now, me, I'm a command-line junkie. I _love_ it. I live at the bash or tcsh prompt all day, even on Windows boxes I administer (Cygwin's getting pretty cool these days). But to say that command line is '_so_ much easier' is simply wrong, and so I, too, hope the original poster was being tongue-in-cheek.
--
Can you say "viable desktop environment?"
Personally, I don't really think this is a good thing to point out at the end of a tech support call that outlines several of Linux's and it's various desktop systems weaknesses. Also, this should have never been made public. It gives Linux (and Loki) a bad image.
Employee: I can't get Oracle for Linux installed.
Boss: Call tech support.
Employee: But what if I ask something dumb and my call shows up on Slashdot and I have to quit my job and become a hermit?
Boss: Hmm.. good point. Let's use Solaris.
...but perhaps also an irritating one; much nicer might be:
where install_source is a script to do all of the above.
Yeah, I do that stuff by hand, but that's at least in part because I read the README and/or INSTALL first - which raises the point that it's not necessarily as simple as you describe.
Then again, a fair number of Windows programs installed with those Wonderful User-Friendly GUI Auto-Install Tools pester me with a bunch of questions about what directory I want to install the program in, blah blah blah, although at least there it offers me a default that's usually what I end up picking anyway.
Some of them also offer me different types of installs - Basic, Full, or Custom, and stuff such as that.
So not all Windows software is trivial to install, either, even with autoplay, etc.. (That stuff might, to some extent, be the equivalent of the details in a README or INSTALL file.)
So:
A better installation process than either the traditional UNIX one or the one I've seen with some Windows applications might be interesting. Is there any OS out there that's done it "right" or, at least, closer to "right"? Have some Windows applications managed to avoid an installation process that asks you lots of questions to which the answers might not be obvious? (Applications, that is, that aren't so simple as not to have to ask you questions. Or is that, perhaps, the way to simplify the installation process - Keep It [i.e, the product] Simple, Stupid?)
I'm disgusted with the hordes of slashdot readers that are ranting against Microsoft and overlooking the fact that Loki, hungry for publicity, has revealed the details of a private tech support call made by one of their users.
./ editors for posting this crap. It saddens me to see that Slashdot, who supposedly is a defender of citzens' privacy, has shown complete disregard for this person's private matters. Are you guys really this desperate for ad banner impressions that you have to stoop to these levels? If Microsoft or some other "evil" had posted this tech support call, I'm sure it would get an article on /. and at least 300 flaming comments. Instead, a linux company does the same thing and suddenly it's "Microsoft is hiring idiots and trying to spread FUD, blah blah blah".
I'm even more disgusted with the
Please join me in boycotting Loki. I'm not about to trust these clowns with a tech support call, much less my credit card number.
chris
From my own personal experience, if they're trying out Civ first, they won't get onto trying out anything else.
insignificant sig
My father has spent some 20 years working with computers, most of them in a DOS environment. Recently he had to adapt to win95 and I was trying to teach him the basics. Now my father can issue 'arcane' commands like copy and mkdir and fdisk, and he has even mastered wildcards and such. He can program, and he can compile his own programs. Yet, it took him some thirty minutes to grasp the idea that "when I drag a file on another directory, the file is not moved, not copied, instead just a shortcut is created" After some frustration, he realized it'd be quicker to do it through the prompt, and he never used windows eplorer again since. Then I had to explain about shortcuts on the menus and desktop.. which eventually led to the question "can't I just add the damn directory to the $PATH??" Great fun!
Intuitive interface is an interface that provides you with an easy-to-grasp expectation as to what will happen when you do some action, and that fullfils that expectation. Well, I never really understood how that applies to Microsoft's interface. It harldy ever manages to do what I expect to happen.
It is natural with users of an interface to get comfortable with it over time. But intuitiveness does not refer to that. It refers to making users comfortable with the interface without prior experience and habitual familiarity with it.
Nick Moraitakis
-- say with me: i'm a monkey child
You're scaring me a little here guys. This is going to be a cold shower for some of you.
This is NOT a competition against Microsoft. Don't use Linux as your private banner for campaign against Microsoft - or any other competitor. Those of you who do are working directly against Linux. I refer you to the crusades, the spanish inquisition. Both done in the name of Christianity. Both waged against an enemy that any convert could see was evil.
Microsoft is big enough that if the Linux following tries to make sure Microsoft can never out do Linux *by observing* Microsoft at the microscopic level, then Linux will turn into a Windows parasite.
I would suggest that Netscape's biggest undoing came not from Microsoft, but from Netscape. They got too obsessed with 'beating down Microsoft', and less and less focused on 'making a better Netscape'.
By Netscape 4.5, Microsoft didn't really have much to compete with.
I realise people are going to jump up here and tell me how the court case helped thus and something else did that.
But do we have a great web-browser? No.
Microsoft play a game, a competition. Linux has no need to enter the bullring. Remember what makes Linux what it is is people developing Linux for users, developing Linux for sys admins, developing Linux for deployment. Don't turn this into Linux development for comparison charts.
Oliver
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
Wait. Sorry. Whoa. No.
/.ers would not be affected by such packages
One of the reasons I use Linux is that I'm relatively immune from the viri and other nasties which affect the Windows world. An important reason why I'm immune is that foreign software, if it is to do anything serious to the system, must be installed as root, and anything which I install as root I have the sourcecode to and have usually compiled myself. I usually haven't crawled through that code to check for hidden nastiness, but I could if I wanted to.
Recently I've had packages (mostly Java ones) which come with MS-Windows-like graphical point and click installers. To install these you've fundamentally two choices: to install them in the user space of some user, as that user, in which case you've immediately got problems with other users using the same software; or to install them as root, without being able to do 'make -n install' first to see what the hell they're up to.
This is what you're asking for if you ask for a point-and-click RPM installer. It would have (in the general case) to be su root, because otherwise it couldn't install into privileged parts of the filesystem; and before you know where you are you would have masses of hostile variants of well-known RPMs installing trojans and trap-doors and worms all over the shop.
Now, of course, we elite
but the newbies and journos and other less elite and refined Linux users would be, and they would not be impressed. And then the media would be full of stories about how insecure and risky Linux was and we'd lose all the ground we've gained over the past years.
There really is a significant engineering trade off to be made here. Microsoft (and Apple before them) know this perfectly well and have made a conscious choice to go for ease-of-(unskilled)-use over security and stability. And Microsoft are now moving from that extreme ease-of-use position towards a still easy to use but more secure position by using installers that look at digital signatures and so on before installing a package.
Remember, we (the Linux community) are not competing with a bunch of incompetent morons here. We're competing with an extremely slick and professional marketing organisation, who hire very capable software engineers. We've got where we are because we occupy an ecological niche that Microsoft hasn't yet occupied: something with better security, but a bit harder to learn. I don't believe we can compete with Microsoft in their core market, because they are already established there and they are very good at what they do.
If we erode the things which make our product distinct from theirs we risk losing our market share, with (in my opinion) little prospect of taking theirs.
What we need to do is not change our product (at least, not radically) but to educate the marketplace to see its benefits. Our message must be 'Yes, linux may be a bit harder to learn, but the improved stability and reliability are worth it'. Instead of going out to capture their market, we need to bring (some of) their market to us.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
The cars to computers analogy is a lousy one and I wish people would stop using it. Everyone uses their cars for pretty much the same thing. Not everyone uses their computers for the same thing. Frankly, a Linux without shell scripting, compilers, configuration files, etc. would be useless to me. That's why I don't use Windows; I can't do a damn thing on it!
If you must have an analogy, I suggest computers to vehicles. Maybe you need a car, and I need a dump truck, and someone else would need a jet.
If you must have an OS for the masses, then why don't you write one? Linux was written to be a powerful, Unix-like OS. That's why Linus started on it in the first place. I don't see why it has to meet the needs of every single person. If you want a free home-user OS, there's plenty of GPL'd code you could use to start building one.
I think in this case Linux actually passed extremely well. This guy has done a complete install of Linux, obviously got the desktop working to the extent of browsing the filesystem and CD in the GUI.
It's CIV:CTP that's failed if anything. I bet if their install had been called setup instead there would have been no problem.
I've seen plenty of software that's difficult to install under Win, and most that's impossible to uninstall. Quite often with NT some stuff can't be installed without administrator perms because obviously all DLL's have to go in the system directory.
What's worse, ignorance or apathy? Who knows, and who cares.
> He said that his [nontechnical] mother should be able to use Windows.
That's the drill: put a Turing Machine on your mother's desk, but hamstring it first, so it won't do anything that would make her need to ask a question or two.
That's fine for an appliance, but let's not call the result a computer.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This has been hinted at in a few postings here, but I want to emphasize that there's a BIG difference between how easy things are to learn vs how easy they are to use once you know them well.
Windows is much easier to learn than Linux. Sit pretty much anyone down who knows how to mouse, and (for example, an experienced Mac user) and they'll probably be able to get a lot of things done. The reason is that the GUI provides a lot of context for you- look at an empty screen, and there's a big start button that will lead you to almost everything that's useful on the computer with nice hierarchical labeling.
This does NOT mean that Windows is perfect in this regard- knowing to move a little box with a wire sticking out of it to make an arrow on the screen point at something is a new concept for a LOT of people. But it's possible for a reasonably computer literate person to use without reading any documentation.
It is not possible to find most of the useful things on your average Linux box by pointing and clicking. Yes, it *can* be set up this way for "normal" end-user tasks if someone knows what they are doing comes along and puts all of the right things in (for example) the KDE menuing system. But putting anything new onto the machine (or doing serious reconfiguration work) requires a lot more knowledge than you're likely to get by pointing and clicking. Even finding the right docs can be a real challenge.
But this is all about the first time you use a system. What about the 100th time? If you're a patient user and have taken the time to learn what to do, the problem changes entirely from "how do I find things" to "how do I get to what I need efficiently". IF you know Linux, it's very efficient to get around in. The command namespace is flat- there is no hierarchical set of menus to click through to get to what you need, so every command is at your fingertips if it's in your brain. Most things can be automated with scripting if you know what you're doing, and if typing three keystrokes to get your favorite text editor open (vi) is too much, you can alias it down to two.
My point is that "usability" is not a simple scale with things that are "usable" and things that aren't. A lot of you who love Linux today (including me) would hate some of the changes that would be required to make it more friendly for newbies, because it would sacrifice one kind of usability for another. And no, you can't always have it both ways... some of the properties of Linux that make it so powerful (customization) also fundamentally decrease the newbie-friendliness.
Come on, why won't we fix the problem? The fundamental problem with computers in general (for beginners) is that they are hard to use. They aren't like coffee-machines or game-consoles.
Or VCR's. I still can't get mine to work;P
I'm a recovering Windows user, and for the most part using RH6 is at least as easy as the first time I tried to use Windows 95.
The fundemental problem with computers exists most often between the chair and keyboard. Hoew much easier is it supposed to be exactly when Microsoft even takes care to put a help entry two or three spots up the bottom from the start menu? The guy in this story saw the words README and didn't even think to check there first.
Don't get me wrong though...It gives me hope that Red Hat may be onto something basing their business off of supporting people. They'll always need it.
As much as I found this interesting, this simply isn't right. When I call a company, I really don't expect employees OF that company to go announce it all on slashdot.
I don't care if they changed the name or not.. It was tacky, and makes Loki look bad..
"Hey guys!! I work at a sex hotline, and I just got a call from ".
For all the complaining about privacy, apperently it doesn't apply to Microsoft and their employees..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
The car analogy works in other ways, too.
When I did tech support for an ISP, it amazed me how often people moaned "Oh, this is SO hard" over the phone. I would tell them "click here... click there... click 'ok'" and get "Ohhh... this is sooo hard. How do you learn all this?" But I'm a "computer person" and they're not - why should I be amazed?
When's the last time you heard a reporter on TV moan or joke about the complexities of cars? "Yes Corky... I know what you mean. Last night I went for a little drive and there was a light blinking on the dash. By the time I figured out I needed something called 'gas', I THEN had to figure out what 'octane' to buy! Those cars are sure difficult" (group chuckle).
I'm sure this kind of car conversation wouldn't be as out of place if it were 70 or 80 years earlier. But these days, its ludicrous. Furthermore, no respecting "intelligent" public figure would repeat such absurdity. Cars are old hat. EVERYONE knows how to operate them. If they break, most people shrug and hire someone to fix them. When we're "car newbies", we take Driver's Ed. classes to get the basics. Then we build on the basic knowledge with experience. Its all very simple.
Welcome to the "computer generation". Pundits used to love talking about how computers will be in everyone's life during the 80s. We're there now. And how does popular culture refer to computers? "Ohhh... they're so HARD!"
Hobbiests are going to enjoy the ins and outs of their chosen interest. They'll tweak and tinker. And they'll smirk at those who don't have their understanding. Even if that hobby involves what others see as simple tools. But that works well for the hobbiest - they can make their interest their profession. Provide the casual user with a simplified interface so they can use their tool. Then take over from them if their tool breaks. It works for cars; it'll work for computers.
What we don't need is the continued absurdity that, in this day and age, computers are "too hard" fostered on us by popular culture.