[Tfug] Waste-Not Warehouse - was(Computer Recycling)

[Sam Hart]

* On 03-11-05, Ammon Lauritzen wrote:

> Tyler said:
> > Let's face it, even a modern X-based GUI is cumbersome for most neophytes.
> 
> If my wife can use, and is completely comfortable with Gnome, I'd say that
> it actually -is- ready for the masses.

I would honestly agree. My wife also uses Linux (she's a KDE girl), and 
she's no computer expert (she's a school teacher, never even had a 
computer in her home even while in college, she was still using the type 
writer for her reports ;-)

My wife actually now has a hard time using other OSes like Windows and Mac 
because (in her words) "they dont work". What she means by this is that 
there is an awful lot of coaxing the end user has to do to make these 
beasts behave. Her biggest gripe is MS Office, which causes her no end of 
frustration. It always doesn't trust her, correcting everything she writes 
and making suggestions every step of the way. Sure, she can go in and find 
some obscure hidden option somewhere to turn this off, but what with the 
"personalized" menus that Office offers her, it's practically impossible 
for her to do. Abiword, OTOH, does none of these things and doesn't insult 
her by making inappropriate suggestions.

So for her, her preference for Linux is a usability one... no, no, I'm 
serious. Sure, she agrees with me on the whole "evil empire" thing now, 
but that's not what made her start using this software in the first 
place.

"But she's got a tech-head husband around to help her out" I hear you say. 
Well, yes, but I have other examples as well. Take for instance my 
parents. My mother is in her 70s* and my father is 81. They live in rural 
of rural Green River WYO, very far away from me. Neither of them are 
technical people, my father works for the forest service and my mother 
taught paino for years and years. They are also people I visit /at most/ 
once a year (and definately not people you can "talk through" a technical 
problem with them on the phone ;-)

They have an older machine (just like the computers this thread has been 
talking about). When it used to have Windows 95 on it, they would never 
use it for fear of "breaking it". (In fact, they did "break it" by making 
several applications unusable and didn't know how to fix it). In 1999, my 
non-tech brother tried to upgrade them to Win98 and hosed the system 
royal. That summer I came by for a visit with Red Hat 6.2 and decided to 
try an experiment.

I installed them with Red Hat 6.2, set them up each with an account (yes, 
I was cruel and made my own parents learn passwords), and configured the 
system to use their ISP and do this and that and the other. I set them up 
to use KDE 1.x and Kmail for email. It was a liberating experience for 
them, because they could do the things they /really/ wanted with their 
computer (simple word processing, put images of grandkids up for their 
backgrounds, browse the web, send email) without worrying about breaking 
anything.

Two years later I upgraded them and installed Abiword which solved the 
last of their complaints with the setup (previously, they couldn't open 
Word attachements). They've been happily using the system ever since, and 
all I've had to give them is 60 minutes of tech support in 4 years. That 
alone speaks volumes.

So to the original poster, the thing you don't realize is that, as a 
technical person yourself (which is why you're on this list ;-) you have a 
very hard time *thinking* like a neophyte. It's not that *nix GUIs aren't 
ready for neophytes- to a neophyte KDE is no more of a learning curve than 
XP or Aqua- it's that the *nix GUIs are different enough that someone 
intimately familier with another interface will have a hard time 
relearning things.

For example, while my parents easily learned KDE, for my students at 
Intel several years back (all with PhDs in comp sci and years worth of 
Windows experience), KDE was like learning a different language.

For a neophyte, having an OS that doesn't fight them every step of the 
way is (in my experience) a boon.

Anyway, sorry for the rant (I do try to keep these rants to a 5 time a 
year minimum, even tho I fail at that ;-) and I don't mean to be 
beligerant (sp?) or hostile to anyone. So let me apologize in advance in 
case I was.

It just chaps my hide to hear people say that *nix GUIs aren't ready for 
the masses... Because whenever someone says that, they obviously haven't 
tried these GUIs out on the masses and they're just speaking from some 
gut reaction.

* NOTE: I actually don't know my mother's age. She's always been rather 
guarded with it, as silly as it sounds. I guess you'd have to know my 
mother to get it.

-- 
Sam Hart
University/Work addr. <hart at physics.arizona.edu>
Personal addr. <criswell at geekcomix.com>
Alternative <criswell at tux4kids.net>
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