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

[Anthony Hess]

Im one person who thinks that the usability "problems" in Linux are
overrated, as long as people don't have prior experience with other
platforms and expect things to happen a certain way.

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On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Sam Hart wrote:

> 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.

<snip>

I'd love to hear in what ways Mac OS gets in her way - particular classic
Mac OS.  OS X is a bit flashy, and I could see how people might feel that
way.  Classic on the other hand was the perfect example of a get out of
your way OS.  Too bad it didn't stay in the way enough to keep an app from
crashing your system :)

> 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.

To be fair you could do this with Win2K or XP or even a Mac.  Although not
in 1999.

> 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.

Now thats nuts.  Aqua, while a step back from the consistency of the
classic Mac OS is still leagues ahead of any of the Linux UIs in terms of
consistency.  Sure, you can customize the heck out of your GUI of choice
on Linux, but the behaviors across applications just aren't as consistent.
That translates into additional learning time for something like Linux,
even versus Windows (which is making strides in terms of usability, but
certainly not in consistency).

Still, for basic uses - word processing, web browsing, etc. Linux is "good
enough" on the desktop for a lot of people.  The punditry of it needing "a
few more years" (Ive been hearing that for how long?) just isn't true.
You don't need a terrific amount of consistency if you are only learning 3
apps anyway.

> 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.

Yea, sometimes the engineering students whine when you make them use Unix.
Probably the biggest casualty of Microsoft's market dominance is the
difficulty in getting people to learn something new on a computer.

Tony