I liked this article - I was expecting a "yay, see how usable Ubuntu is" fanboy-style writeup. Instead it found some very honest issues with its usability. I wonder if Canonical ever does any of the one-way-mirror style UI tests that (presumably) Microsoft uses? It seems like it would uncover some of these gotchas.
We installed Ubuntu on all the machines in the computer lab. Apart from the students who already used Linux, who just argued over which distribution, the CS students who'd only been exposed to Windows unanimously expressed they hated Linux. I asked them why, what was wrong, and it always came back to the fact that it was unfamiliar. I'm not sure how you fix that, because in effect their gripe was that it was not "exactly like Windows". It's yet another bad effect of the Microsoft monopoly - people believe that Computer == Windows, because they don't get exposed to anything else.
Frankly, when people move from Macs to Linux, or Mac to PC, or Linux to PC, they generally dislike it at first. All the shortcuts and techniques you've internalized are thrown out the window, so it feels awkward and slow. I read about this effect at one point, but I don't remember where...
From personal experience I had no problem learning Mac-OS, which I stumbled around in at first but didn't experience any major problems until much further down the road (when I was capable of dealing with them).
On the other hand I downloaded Ubuntu last month, and after taking several hours just to get onboard wifi working (xps m1330), I lost all desire to use it further.
For me, gradual hurdles vs. massive roadblock after roadblock is the difference between enjoying the learning process instead of dreading it.
I hope this comment doesn't sound trollish -- but it's a question that has been buggin' me.
So where are the geeks who are excited enough to update a piece of open-source software to help newbies out? I mean, if I were contributing to the greater good and all, seems like it would be with something that I personally had a need to do. While I'm sure that most contributors think of the noobs, where is the cohesive push for simplification of user experience?
It's always seemed like to me that FOSS was great for geeks who wanted to keep adding cool stuff and sharing it, but the motivator is -- excitement. It's still an economy going on, it's just about emotion. I just don't understand how people get excited about stuff that seems archaic or strange to them.
Ubuntu is actually really, really good. What sucked most about it was the Flash problem. I say the problem lies with Flash, which is closed source.
Those issues the girl-friend had are really not so severe. She would have had the same issues or worse the first time she used windows. Definitely worse the first time she would use OS X.
Mint is an attempt to improve Ubuntu with a somewhat-friendlier UI and software that people actually use, i.e. mplayer. I think Ubuntu's problem isn't geekiness so much as ideology (and maybe there are legal issues with including things like codecs that i'm not aware of). Anyway computer-literacy isn't exactly on the downswing, so the trend is in FOSS's favor.
Last week my brother in law's laptop refused to boot windows.
He brought it over on Saturday and I booted off the HH live cd and copied all his stuff onto my NAS.
There was a LOT of crap on his laptop (spyware and viruses it looked like).
I then installed HH, opera and the flashplayer on his laptop and said "here you go, your password is xxx". I showed him synaptic and made sure that hibernation and the wifi card worked and sent him home.
Sorry, open-sourcers, but I have to second the emotion on GIMP vs. Photoshop. To say that GIMP's usability isn't in the same ballpark as Photoshop's is putting it mildly...
Is it that Gimp is so much worse, or is it simply that they're different?
I used Corel Photo-Paint for years and years, and when I tried Photoshop after that, it seemed like it was designed by space aliens. I don't mean to say that Photo-Paint is easier to use -- I doubt it is. But when you get used to a particular interface for something like photo editing, maybe any given interface is ok, but switching interfaces is hard?
Good question; I'm not sure. What I can be sure of is this story:
A couple months ago, I had to create some annotated screen shots to be used as cheat sheets by a number of people I'm working with. I knew that I could do something like this in Photoshop, having used Photoshop a bit 10 years ago.
I first tried GIMP, because it was free and available. After trying for a while to figure out how to get layers happening, I finally gave up and downloaded a copy of Photoshop. Everything was immediately intuitive. Even though the Photoshop UI had changed (a lot) from when I had used it a decade ago, I was able to very quickly create my annotated screen shots.
Now, you could say that I didn't bother to read any of the GIMP documentation, and you'd be right. But with Photoshop I didn't have to.
It's certainly part of the story. But even after using (and mostly loving) Gimp now for years I still dislike the way it opens each image in an own window, especially when working with lots of open images. I can't just hide all gimp-windows in the background when switching tools - I have to hide each image one-by-one. Usually it's easier hiding all desktop windows and bringing up the other application I need afterwards. What irritates me even more is when I have to hunt for the tools-window of gimp
behind some of my images.
But I don't know if Photoshop would be nicer in that regard , I haven't used that in a long time.
At the risk of being flamed, I want to state that I think GIMP is worse. I have no objective evidence, though; it's all subjective and anecdotal.
I started with Paint Shop Pro, and what it lacked in features it made up in ease-of-use. I especially liked the ability to mix raster and vector layers; Photoshop still hasn't captured the simplicity and power of PSP's vector layers, IMO (in terms of UI, at least). After I used PSP, I moved on to Photoshop. While it was initially a bit intimidating, my familiarity with PSP quickly helped me overcome this and I was up to speed pretty fast. Fast forward a long time and I try Corel Painter. Its interface is definitely different, but still easy to follow. I picked it up in a few minutes (for some definition of 'picked up').
Then I tried GIMP. I couldn't make heads or tails of it, and I never got used to it. I can't explain why GIMP doesn't work for me; just that I didn't -- couldn't -- pick it up like I did Photoshop or Painter (or openCanvas for that matter).
Out of all the people complaining about why Gimp is not like Photoshop I wonder how many actually paid $650 dollars for Photoshop. Look at it this way, if you spend 3 hours reading the Gimp manual instead of buying Photoshop you're essentially "earning" $200+/hour. For $650 I'm willing to put up with Gimp the few times I need to touch up an image.
I use CS3, because that is what my client community uses. GIMP is not a replacement for CS3. Gimp is a photo tool like photoshop is a photo tool, but it is not Photoshop!
How many clients do I look access too, when I can not just use CS3? How much is that worth? $2,300 I spent on CS3 seems cheap in comparison.
If you want converts, GET WINE WORKING! Heck, I will buy windows to have the really DLLs, I just want it to work in Linux.
MACs just work because Mac users that want to run windows, BUY WINDOWS and run it in OS X. There is some software that people ARE willing to pay for it to JUST WORK.
photoshop is fine if you do serious graphics work and get paid for it. I just hate when people that are not willing to pay for photoshop bitch about why gimp is not photoshop.
Mac users that want to run Windows buy windows and install it inside of a VM (or dual boot). What's preventing you from doing the same under Linux?
> Mac users that want to run Windows buy windows and install it inside of a VM (or dual boot). What's preventing you from doing the same under Linux?
Seconded. Lots of apps run really well in XP with VirtualBox in seamless mode. That's how I test sites against Safari and IE, and I run Visual Studio that way when I need it.
VirtualBox is the reason why I never got around to setting up a Windows partition like I was planning on. Instead, I just reclaimed the space for more files under Linux.
the VMs for Mac are better, and support hardware rendering. You can play games in the VMs on a Mac, but you can not do the same in virtual box. Also the 2-4 times that I tried to use Virtual Box, it failed on me, where VM Workstation worked. VM workstation, however does not support hardware layers yet in Linux. Right now, CS3, and Supreme Commander are what are holding me up the most with linux.
I mean, I hate that ctrl-d duplicates the current work, rather than deselect... but this weekend, I used the ctrl-d multiple times with wild success, so maybe my process is broken :)
Correct. I have no idea why the Gimp designers didn't go with a GUI that is more like photoshop. Someone had a fork called GimpShop but I don't think it's had much maintenance.
The problem is that Paint.NET isn't as powerful as GIMP in some areas.
I've used Paint.NET pretty heavily over the last 6 months (I use it when I don't want to wait for Photoshop to load) and while it's good for casual use, it is no photoshop/gimp/paintshop pro replacement.
I hope the Ubuntu team sees this and learns from it. They've built a great system that I love using, and I'd really love to see it guide new users well enough that my wife would be happy to permanently switch.
I think the problem is not so much that Linux is designed by geeks ignorant to the plight of the common person, but just that software is hard to create and maintain, especially software as big and complex as an operating system.
The biggest system I've ever worked with was a game I worked on with a friend for a year. By the end of the year the codebase was so massive and tangled that the thought of adding a new feature or even modifying a current one made me want to curl up in the corner and mumble incoherently.
I think the big problem to solve right now is simply making software development easier.
That experiment is a little biased. It wasn't an example of a person who doesn't know how to use computers trying out ubuntu. It was an example of a person who's very confortable with Windows trying to use a different Operating System.
The test about using youtube is particularly bad. It's good that Ubuntu doesn't come with flash, it would be even better if it didn't even tell you about it. Maybe in the future it might come with gnash already installed (you may want to install it, I'm sure it's on the repositories, even my debian etch has it). For youtube specifically, as I understand the latest totem comes with a plugin that allows you to watch youtube videos directly from totem, another alternative for using youtube without flash.
And yes, I'm a free software extremist, who simply doesn't get it, who will forever be wrong. And I'm too radical, things can't be taken so seriously, I'll never find a girlfriend. I know all that. Still, the purpose of Ubuntu is to spread the use of free software, not to be another system offering propertary software. If the free software already available is not enough for some people, I guess we'll just have to wait (not change our systems so it includes propertary stuff).
Maybe I'm missing something, but I've never viewed computer usage as a militant adherence to a single software pricing model. I view it as using the best combination of OS and apps that suit my needs, in combination with offering the best cost to usability ratio.
Who cares if the software is free or paid? OSS or proprietary? Find what works best for YOU, and go with it. Note that the best answer is likely to be very different person to person.
Fanboys of any denomination are all equally annoying and blind.
As a programmer I can't imagine not having a preference for OSS. Open source allows me to learn from the authors, to locate and fix bugs (if it's a low priority bug that the authors won't get to for a while), to compile the software on the platforms I choose and to better understand the way an application works (beats reading the documentation sometimes).
Even if the software is paid I would still prefer to get the source code in addition the binary when I purchase it. Because of this bias I'm willing to put up with the slight inconveniences of using free alternatives.
Preference, yes. Adamant "OSS-only" stance is harder to justify, IMO. And example, I do a lot of technical drawings as part of my work. There is Visio for Windows (don't use Windows, so that is not an option), or OmniGraffle for Mac (which I use almost daily and gladly paid for). What is "the" OSS technical drawing package that runs on linux or OSX, is moderately robust (I don't need "power user" app, but something stable and logical), and has a decent set of icons available? I haven't found the equivalent app, but if you know of something I'd love to give it a try.
Another one is that I do a fair bit of photography and have been known to sell a picture or two from time to time. I use Aperature and Photoshop a lot. I have not found an OSS app with the same capabilities as either of these apps to support .RAW formats, elegant workflows, manage extremely large image caches (thousands of 13MP images and derivatives, etc.). The Gimp is powerful, but it is cumbersome (and I've spent many hours attempting to learn it), and seems (to me) to lag Photoshop by quite a bit. Also it is much harder to build on the work of others (part of the OSS spirit) with The Gimp because while many custom brushes, plugins and tutorials exist for Photoshop, they are fewer and farther between for The Gimp.
Yeah, free or otherwise, software should be a pleasure to use, and I think the linux guys are missing a big part of the market share because of issues like the ones covered in the link. If a average(non programmer/linux literate) person can install ubuntu/linux and start using it full swing without having to jump through hoops and pull out some hair, thats when will linux get its fair share of the market.
I don't know what you call a "linux guy". Nonetheless, I consider myself a "free software guy", GNU/Linux is just one of the possibilities when you are looking for free software.
We are not looking for as many people using GNU/Linux as possible (althought that's sure much better than people using nothing but proprietary software). We are looking for many people supporting free software. So, having tons of users who don't contribute or care about free software doesn't make me happy. I'm not saying we should drop usability, it's important, it's nice, but we shouldn't confuse lack of proprietary application with usability, that's all.
> Why should anyone involved in free software development care about people who doesn't care about free software?
Sometimes the end justifies the means. I'm sure that many of the Firefox converts didn't switch because of their love of free software. But it forces web developers to think about standards and not limit their web pages to Internet Explorer. So more users benefit you directly.
Your view is different then mine. You see, I take care about the consequences of my actions. Sure, it's much more convinient to use adobe acroread, using MS Office is probably a lot easier than OpenOffice. But by using such software I'm contributing with ideas that are not so good for society.
I think finding what work best for me is just too selfish, I rather find what I think is best for everyone. Also, I realise that, althought proprietary software may be the best thing for me in the short-term, in the long run, free software will be much better for me. It will give me more freedom.
Now, I was hoping to have a serious discussion, but you call me a fanboy (althought for some reason people are downmodding me like crazy). Are you want to troll me?
This is not an either or thing. If you get people to use 99% free software and 1% not, that is a lot better than 100% not. As more people jump into the ecosystem it makes the manufacturers take it more seriously and you will see more and more stuff get opened up. If you want 100% free software there are many distros for you other than Ubuntu, Ubuntu aims as being easy not being perfectly free. Just because it uses GPL software doesn't mean the project has to agree with Richard Stallman. I would say Ubuntu falls a lot more in the Linus Torvalds idea of practicality and if you want the Richard Stallman approach Debian is probably a better alternative.
I was not meaning to call you a fanboy directly, although I guess by your own admission you do fit the description.
I care about the consequences of my actions as well (or at least some actions, I am not to be held responsible when beer is involved), but free software != the absolute answer for everything. Do you not believe that everyone deserves to be paid for their work? Paying for software creates a cash flow for the company, which can be used to fund development, maintenance and enhancements. Some companies use that cash flow (IMO) in better ways than others, and that factors in to how I make my choices.
Of course free software is not the answer for everything. It's just a good effort towards freedom when it comes to software development and use. I appreciate that freedom very much, that's why I like free software.
Free software doesn't mean you can't charge for them, it only means that the user of the software trully owns it, as opposed to simple having the right to use it.
Where I live it's very common to see companies that will write management software for other companies and sell it to them. I don't see any reason why they couldn't be selling free software, it would be very benefitial for the client because he would be able to even maintain the software if they want to. Or they can even contract a different company for maintaining the software. You give your client a lot of freedom this way.
In the enterprise software business (and typically, the desktop software business as well), the most straightforward business model is to offer a product and charge people for it. That way, you get paid whenever people use your software (excepting for piracy).
If you release your software under a free software license, users are not only free to look at the source and modify it, they are free to redistribute it to others who have not paid for it.
If you can find a way to make free software work for you in a way that still allows you to earn a good living developing your software (such as by providing services), then more power to you. But for-profit software companies are not producing non-free software simply through myopia and ignorance.
I haven't really taken the time to analyse that. Most of my work is academic and I fear I may not have enough economics background. I do have an early idea that it sounds more like a myth than a fact.
Let's say a company wants to outsource the development of some software they need. They go ahead and contract your company. You develop it and sell it to them for a certain price. Even if the license is free it's not very likely that they will redistribute it for other companies, and even if they do, it probably won't fit their needs just right. OTOH, they will be able to call other companies (other than yours) to maintain your software. So they have that extra freedom. And it doesn't really hurt business because, if you do a better job maintaining your software than other people, chances are your client won't switch.
There's also the case of the end desktop user. That's probably harder territory for earning money with free software. But I've never seen some company selling their software but giving the user a package with the GPL-licensed code. Sure, after a while there would be lots of other non-official sites to download the program from, but doesn't that already happen with all the proprietary softwares nowadays? And it's not like anti-piracy laws are doing any good against it. This way people may do their own derivative work, for which they might even charge just like you. Now you'll have competition, so things get more interesting and you have to make better stuff. Why can't that work?
You can still charge for constant patches you deliver (though they are all GPL'd). If it's an online game, you might charge for your server, and so on. A big part of software nowadays seem to be services, anyway.
Say google opens the source for their search engine. Why would you turn to a different site other than google.com? It would make great research environment, nonetheless. Even google could gain from it.
So, what I'm saying is that I don't see a reason why people can't earn money while keeping their software free. Even though things might get a little different from what they are today. That's good, though, because today is far from perfect. And I think free software is a move in the right direction.
Red Hat charges for their Enterprise Linux, but releases it as open source. I forget the names, but there are now 3rd-party Linux distros that basically just redistribute RHEL freely to whoever wants them.
If someone openly pirates your proprietary software, you have legal recourse. If someone openly redistributes your open source software, they are acting within their rights to do so.
In fact, a third party repackager of RHEL even has the option of charging to provide service, at a discount from Red Hat's price, and they can do this perfectly legally.
Short version of the economics: if you can charge for services, you can make money on open source, but only client by client -- you don't become more efficient the more services you sell, unlike with products (especially low-marginal-cost products like software). You have to add employees for each new hour of services you provide. So if you have a potentially popular product, all other things being equal, you have a higher potential for growth if you sell the product rather than the service.
Of course, all other things aren't equal, which is why the desktop software market has been in decline since its heyday in the 90s. Because the marginal cost of each unit you ship is so low, when there's plenty of competition, you tend to see a race to the bottom on price (unless you can convince people to buy your product because it is the standard, as Microsoft has done).
Many enterprise markets are small enough niches that (1) there are a limited number of competitors, and (2) if you give away your product, you may not easily be able to make up the revenue in any other way. On the other hand, if you have technically savvy clients, you may find it worth your while to offer them your source under a non-redistributable license. They still have to buy your product from you, but they can debug against the source, integration test, etc. This isn't free software (obviously), but it may be a happy medium for both you and your clients.
And yes, when the option of selling (or monetizing in some other way) access to your server presents itself, that can be far more profitable than selling a client-side product. That's why World of Warcraft is ridiculously profitable, and it's why Google makes so much money. But it seems clear that this works better for some markets than others.
I say all of this as someone who believes in free software wherever it is practical, but also as someone who makes a living writing software and wants to continue to do so.
And, as Eric Raymond argued over a decade ago, for something like an operating system that is used by large numbers of people, there will be no shortage of free labor to produce an open source product. But people will probably only work on software for managing a multinational mineral extraction business if you pay them. So open source is a great idea for many, many things, but probably not for everything.
Uh, so you're saying that the reason Ubuntu doesn't ship with Flash installed is to inconvenience users so that they will better appreciate free software -- because it <i>did</i> come installed unlike the evil proprietary Flash player?
Just as Ubuntu now has "restricted drivers" it should also have "popular non-free apps", and a screen should appear on the first boot that lets the user install flash, skype, etc.
It seems silly that a hard line on a few small apps is making it so nearly any windows or mac user will get scared off by Ubuntu in the first 10 minutes.
Proprietary software is not evil, is just bad for society. Or at least not as good as free software.
I don't like that kind of behaviour from ubuntu, such as offering restricted drivers and suggesting for the user the installation of proprietary codecs -- I've been told it does that, I might be wrong. That's supporting the use of proprietary software, which I don't think shouldn't be the goal of any GNU/Linux distribution. In that sense I only wish ubuntu has less support for proprietary software, not more.
The thing that should attract people into GNU/Linux is the free software philosophy. If they're going to use GNU/Linux without even worrying about what free software is, then I don't care at all if they are using it or not. Why should anyone involved in free software development care about people who doesn't care about free software? Why should I care about someone who doesn't even make an effort in trying to stay away from non-free software, unless they have absolutely no choice?
Ubuntu doesn't ship with Flash to the convenience of the users who want to use free software -- so they don't have to uninstall it (or worse, use it without realising it's non-free).
There are a lot of things that attract people to GNU/Linux, philosophy is not the one that got it this far. Philosophy got you Hurd, practicality got you Linux. I jumped into GNU/Linux because I use it for robotics and I could develop and deploy on the same platform, free software came later after I appreciated it, and now I contribute to several open source projects and work for an open source company. If I had been turned off by these difficulties early I wouldn't be doing what I am today, that is what Ubuntu is for, not the purists, it is for an introduction.
People get involved in free software for all kinds of reasons. I personally prefer the MIT license philosophy (pure freedom) over the GPL philsophy (restricted freedom)... the GPL has done better than the BSD license b/c it's more free, and over time the MIT license will likely triumph, at least to the extent that linux itself being GPL doesn't hinder progress too much.
It's a bit ironic that the whole point of the GPL is to control how others use the code!
My point is simply that Ubuntu is not an ideological undertaking, it's a business. Thus, it should have a simple screen that loads on the first boot that lets a new user avoid ending up with a crippled system, when perfectly good (free as in beer) software exists.
This will only help the Free Software world, since more people using Linux means more support for existing open source code and for new projects.
The real problem with closed source is that it fails to harness the willing contributors who would fix bugs, etc. Even OpenLaszlo uses the adobe runtime... so by shipping Ubuntu w/o a working swf runtime installed, Ubuntu's maintainers are harming at least one vibrant open source project.
> Just as Ubuntu now has "restricted drivers" it should also have "popular non-free apps", and a screen should appear on the first boot that lets the user install flash, skype, etc.
Actually, it does come with a package called "Ubuntu restricted extras" that installs flash, LAME, DVD playback, the JRE, etc. If you wander through Add/Remove Applications, it's there and easy to install. The problem is that they don't follow the rest of your suggestion and make people aware of it on first launch.
Yeah, but due to the unfortunate DRM restrictions I don't see how that could be solved currently. Well, except by offering more comfortable torrent clients to avoid DVD's completely ... which is done already ;-)
Well, it could be easier. I had to try three or four different approaches that I found on messageboards before I found one that worked. In the end, I had to enable a few new repositories, download a few new plug-ins, modules, and etc., and change the back-end software on my movie-player (Who knew that movie-players had back-ends? I didn't!).
From what I heard so far the problem seems to be that sites trying to make it more comfortable for users (like giving them actual guidelines) get often warning letters from lawyers. And not many projects want to risk legal battles. At least that's the way here in germany, but I suppose it's not much different in the US.
I CAN HACK the registry in WINDOWS, but i can't figure out WHERE to find information on fixing my nVidia Drivers on a released version of Ubuntu. Vista has the same problem. Which is why XP is the best OS right now. Things are most likely to just work.
don't forget that you will never be able to earn a living selling free software. instead, you will only be paid for your time fixing small bugs. you will be forced in to a life of non-innovation.
I still can not figure out how to get my nvidia drivers working in ubuntu, after upgrading from 7.10-8.04 LTS. Windows is still more productive for me, I do want to be fully on ubuntu by the end of june though. So I have a few more months.
Right now my plan is to format my ubuntu partitions and to start over with 8.04.
Upgrading to Hardy borked my nvidia, as well. I ended up replacing /etc/X11/xorg.conf with xorg.conf.1, which used the generic vesa driver instead of the nvidia driver. (If you don't know command line, this is 'sudo /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.new-backup' followed by 'sudo /etc/X11/xorg.conf.1 /etc/X11/xorg.conf'.)
After I rebooted under the vesa driver, I was able to use the Hardware Drivers tool under System/Administration to turn on the normal Hardy nvidia driver.
I also recommend grabbing nvidia-settings from the repository to tweak things like multiple monitors more easily. (Once it's there, you just call 'sudo nvidia-settings'.)
The installation is definitely a hard slog for owners of certain pieces of hardware. I had issues with my USB wireless adapter, my recent-ish nVidia graphics card, DVD playback, and flash. However, after I got it all up and running, the experience was worth it.
It looks like the nVidia support got better between 7.1 and 8.04. I was able to get my card running on 7,1 using a little script called "Envy", which can be installed and ran through apt-get. When I upgraded to 8.04, I did not need to make any further changes to get the graphics to work, though I did need to jump through the same hoops for my wireless adapter again.
Coders are now making scripts like Envy to help users install those last few tricky pieces of hardware. It would be nice if the auto-detect, download, and install process were part of Ubuntu itself, but these are available now as a good halfway point.
When i installed 7.10 on my laptop with a geforce go7700, the nvidia drivers worked right away. If I remember rightly, Ubuntu told me it had to use restricted nvidia drivers, I clicked ok, and then it all just worked (Except for dual monitors, which i had to play around with the xorg.conf file ... but hey, you can't have everything on a silver platter ;p
Since I installed ubuntu 2 months ago i've been into vista 3 times. Each just to get some settings I had to open the program to find. However, I do still use a networked computer to run photoshop. I use it through rdesktop ... which works surprising well.
User testing is one area where free software has a fundamental disadvantage vs. paid-for programs. Programmers can turn their time into code with no need of money. Unfortunately, proper user testing costs real money. Paid-for programs have revenue with which they can pay for user testing but only the largest FOSS projects have that kind of cash. In my opinion, this is one important reason why open source programs have a bad reputation for usability.
Realize that is who Ubuntu is aiming at, converts. I know Unix has many superior features and I'm for it, but the Ubuntu people want to make the transition easy and have already made a lot of changes from other distros. If they are going to go in that direction, they should go all the way. Then if those people get interested in trying slackware or something else more Unixy the difference is su vs sudo not oh my god what do you mean the command line?
I think it's worthwhile for Ubuntu to aim at converts from Windows. I also think this experiment was useful. I just thought the significance of the result should have been stated differently. Making Ubuntu friendly for computer-illiterate people is a separate, but also worthwhile goal, and would call for different experimental subjects.
Did you read the article? The subject of the experiment had, for example, "downloaded music using uTorrent before in Windows" and that affected the results of the experiment. She might be representative of a high percentage of friends of the news.yc community, but there's no way she's representative of 99% of the population.
You're right, she sounds somewhat more savvy than the average user, so her troubles should be even more worrisome. If she cannot do something, it is likely that >90% of other users also cannot.
I think the error would go both ways. Average users might fail where she succeeds, e.g. she recognized the Firefox icon immediately. They might succeed where she fails, e.g. they won't search the web for .exe files.
Just to be clear, I do think this experiment was worthwhile. It's important for Ubuntu to be usable by more savvy users. I just think a separate experiment would be needed to truly measure usability for computer-illiterate users.
Well, learning is too hard for most people, so apparently Linux should be exactly the same as Windows.
If you want to avoid the $300 Vista upgrade, along with the DRM and general suckage of Windows, you might have to learn to use the Free alternative. Why is that such a terrible thing?
Firefox started its ascension by systematically eliminating any reasons users had for using IE, until it was similar to IE, but with more power, less suckage, and a better interface.
It certainly doesn't mean Linux should jettison things that rock, like throwing out package management in favor of Windows-style installer chaos. But at the very least, we should expect to help users coming from different paradigms understand what package management means and how it's different. Any novices who are remotely sane will love the little Add/Remove Programs widget in Ubuntu.
Exactly, his complaints are mostly "Why didn't they make this little thing slightly clearer for the uninitiated" i.e. call it Brasero CD/DVD burner instead of just Brasero. That is hardly throwing out the baby with the bathwater and copying Windows.
Wrong, every hour that helps fix a show stopper bug for 90% of people is better than implementing a new feature for 10% or less of the people. If something you did every day didn't work under Ubuntu you wouldn't switch. If something that Windows didn't have, didn't exist in Ubuntu either, you wouldn't notice. A lot of these are not simple fixes either, you are not going to change the DVD codec legality with an hour of hacking. Most of the remaining sticky issues seem to be either polishing some things off or legal/commercial reasons. You'd think with Dell getting behind Ubuntu more would have changed, but so far not so much.
For you, it's not (I'm talking usability for novice to intermediate level users, not just specifically tool-tips). If you're looking for wide adoption of this technology by current Windows users, it's showstopper.
Lack of usability for novices and intermediate users should not be considered a bug unless ease of use for novices and intermediate users was a planned or expected function of the software. If an author writes software for experts, one shouldn't expect the software to cater to the needs of novices.
Usability tweaks to ease use for a class of user should be feature requests. So a hypothetical developer of open source software has to choose between spending her time developing software features that have no fundamental use to her, or spending it developing features that are exciting, interesting, or are otherwise fulfilling.
I don't think you should be voted down (unfair!), because I see where you're coming from. A developer wants to build neat stuff that he or she finds useful. Developers don't want to spend their time doing routine, boring, or trivial stuff, and some of the usability requirements for non-expert users can seem to be just that.
The rejoinder is that wide adoption requires that kind of usability. It must be an integral feature of your application, or your app will remain ghetto-zed and obscure. That may be ok for some developers, but for most, usability must be just as key as functionality.
You're right. Unfortunately, due to the distributed nature of open-source application development, making that sort of shallow usability integral to the whole system is very difficult. Until there exists an incentive for open-source developers to provide those sort of features, you either won't see them, or you'll get the patchwork quilt that the author was complaining about from Ubuntu.
the perfect measure of UI success, is based on the total efficiency of the system. If 10 million users have a problem with a driver that could be easily fixed with one command line call. you still have:
10 million * (30 min on google + 1 hr reading docs + 1 min typing the command line)
that is a 15.0166 Million person hour loss.
Making the process more efficient, does not involve making it easier to Fix the problem for the user, it involves making the problem not existent.
The number 1 rule of design is "if a user does not need to make a decision, then you should make it for them."
When I was in Japan, you could put your subway ticket in any direction, and "IT WOULD JUST WORK," the machine did not spit it back out at you and FORCE the USER TO DO IT THE RIGHT WAY, because it was a waste of time to do so. Instead the machines are incredibly more complicated to account for someone putting the ticket in wrong. It made the whole subway experience work much more smoothly. Now people who can not read, make a mistake, or are completely foreign to the system, can JUST USE IT. They do not have to read docs, to do one simple thing, pay for the subway ride that should be fast, simple and easy.
The whole software industry could use a little bit of time learning industrial design.
