I'm not sure Linux will ever be ready for the average user. That's part of its appeal I reckon... An OS by developers for developers.. why add frills and ease-of-use things that would 'get in the way' for half your target audience? Like herding cats.. think up one way to make things easier and you'll have 4 others with another way to do the same thing.
Ease of use and good design aren't things that "get in the way". Not all developers want to have to dick around with an OS in order to actually *do something*.
I think the appeal has a lot more to do with stockholm syndrome than the the actual benefits of the system.
On the contrary, I just hate the way Windows does lots of things, and I can get Linux to work the way I want. Note that I don't tend to recommend it to many other folks though because you absolutely need to be prepared to get your hands dirty.
A lot of people do actually seem to think that ease-of-use does involve "hiding" stuff (i.e. 99% of the options I want to tweak) from the user, and that isn't just limited to Windows. See the difference between Gnome and KDE on *nix platforms for a clear example of these different approaches.
The other thing that make me use Linux is the fact that I can get a lot of high-quality applications I couldn't hope to afford were I to purchase the Windows (or, presumably Mac) equivalents. Cheap? Maybe, but I have to be practical.
Ah, but if you're a victim of stockholm syndrome, you would say that.
:)
Hating the way windows does things doesn't make it wrong. As regards hiding things completely, the UI design issue isn't exactly a solved problem, but in general what exists is a great improvement for 90% of users.
Ideally there would be a configurable sub-system for power users and a slick UI for everyone else with a set of functional interface guidelines for application developers - something like OSX, probably.
Oh, I would say that any operating system can only ever be "wrong" with respect to a specific user. Windows is wrong for me, I can make various flavours Linux desktop work, OSX may be OK, I haven't tried it.
I totally agree about the "advanced" UI thing, except that I also see the potential problem with bloat if you provide a GUI to tweak every single setting.
imo, GUI's make the process of discovery enormously simpler. The psychology of HCI is massively important, and too few developers have any kind of grounding in it.
A GUI doesn't have to cover everything at once, but a *good* UI will at least indicate what it is possible to configure - cf "Advanced" configuration boxes. I'm not really sure what you mean by bloat other than interface clutter though, and that's solvable by making good design choices - surely in this day and age a few extra MB to accommodate a usable interface isn't going to be a problem. Windows does have the problem that many applications don't decouple the interface from the actual workhorse engine, so you could consider an overly fancy interface (Vista, anyone?) a bloat issue on that platform, but I'm not arguing that Windows has better architecture.
Well, the bloat isn't just the extra dialogs themselves, it's the development, change management and QA effort in keeping the whole edifice up to date. Fine if you are charging for your software and can keep a bunch of spare developers on staff but not so great for a volunteer effort with limited resources who still want to get software released.
As a general note, you could probably build some kind of self-configuring thingy with a bit of thought - a presentation layer which allows the options to declare their parent category, data type, dependencies, help information and the like. A more sophisticated version of the xconfig option for the Linux kernel source.
A few extra MB? I run at least one machine from a 16Mb USB key...
Making easily usable software means extra work? who would have thought it?
And you're suggesting replacing the wealth of experience a HCI specialist can bring to a project with some kind of framework? Typical programmer thinking IMO, which is precisely what's wrong with Linux.
A 16MB system these days isn't exactly general purpose, it's a specialist tool, and if your interfaces are modular, you can have as bare a system as you like. I'm not arguing that all systems should be easily usable, but that there should be an understandable entry-level system.
Ease of use involves things working in a consistent way. One of Linux biggest problems is not that you need to edit config files but that each config file has its own format and other conventions. A lot of the commercial Unixen have invested a fair amount of effort in making things consistent. The market it seems isn't willing to pay for quality (but weirdly is willing to pay for the stinking pile of crap that is Red Hat).
OSX is proof that you can make a Unix for the masses.
Linux's problem is not that it's by developers for developers but that its culture only allows for a) people who code and b) people who can't so should be grateful for whatever they get. The typical Linux user's hobby is fooling around with their operating system, not using the computer to actually do stuff.
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I think the appeal has a lot more to do with stockholm syndrome than the the actual benefits of the system.
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A lot of people do actually seem to think that ease-of-use does involve "hiding" stuff (i.e. 99% of the options I want to tweak) from the user, and that isn't just limited to Windows. See the difference between Gnome and KDE on *nix platforms for a clear example of these different approaches.
The other thing that make me use Linux is the fact that I can get a lot of high-quality applications I couldn't hope to afford were I to purchase the Windows (or, presumably Mac) equivalents. Cheap? Maybe, but I have to be practical.
Reply
:)
Hating the way windows does things doesn't make it wrong. As regards hiding things completely, the UI design issue isn't exactly a solved problem, but in general what exists is a great improvement for 90% of users.
Ideally there would be a configurable sub-system for power users and a slick UI for everyone else with a set of functional interface guidelines for application developers - something like OSX, probably.
Reply
I totally agree about the "advanced" UI thing, except that I also see the potential problem with bloat if you provide a GUI to tweak every single setting.
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A GUI doesn't have to cover everything at once, but a *good* UI will at least indicate what it is possible to configure - cf "Advanced" configuration boxes. I'm not really sure what you mean by bloat other than interface clutter though, and that's solvable by making good design choices - surely in this day and age a few extra MB to accommodate a usable interface isn't going to be a problem. Windows does have the problem that many applications don't decouple the interface from the actual workhorse engine, so you could consider an overly fancy interface (Vista, anyone?) a bloat issue on that platform, but I'm not arguing that Windows has better architecture.
Reply
As a general note, you could probably build some kind of self-configuring thingy with a bit of thought - a presentation layer which allows the options to declare their parent category, data type, dependencies, help information and the like. A more sophisticated version of the xconfig option for the Linux kernel source.
A few extra MB? I run at least one machine from a 16Mb USB key...
Reply
And you're suggesting replacing the wealth of experience a HCI specialist can bring to a project with some kind of framework? Typical programmer thinking IMO, which is precisely what's wrong with Linux.
A 16MB system these days isn't exactly general purpose, it's a specialist tool, and if your interfaces are modular, you can have as bare a system as you like. I'm not arguing that all systems should be easily usable, but that there should be an understandable entry-level system.
Reply
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Linux's problem is not that it's by developers for developers but that its culture only allows for a) people who code and b) people who can't so should be grateful for whatever they get. The typical Linux user's hobby is fooling around with their operating system, not using the computer to actually do stuff.
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