Win vs. UNIX usability (Was: Re: gnome-terminal idea)

[David Jeske <jeske home chat net>]

This is spawning into yet another tangent. 

On Wed, Sep 23, 1998 at 03:04:45PM -0400, Tim Moore wrote:
> I know. The point is that people should be accepting of other ways to do
> things. However I want to go beyond accepting and try to *understand* why
> people want to do things in other ways. Partly because I might learn of
> better ways to do what I want to do. Partly because I might be able to
> find a need that wants to be served.

Cool.. someone with an open mind. :)

> For example, consider that there are a lot of people out there that use
> Microsoft Windows. Obviously, then, a lot of people prefer it to Linux. I
> personally think Linux is superior, but it is obviously not superior *in
> every way.* On the one hand I could say that people are different and if
> they like Windows then I shouldn't concern myself with it and its obvious
> shortcomings. On the other hand I *do* say that everyone should be using
> Linux and so I need to work to eliminate the reasons they have for
> preferring Windows. The eventual goal, IMO, *is* to eliminate Windows --
> not by restriction (i.e., not letting people have what they want) but by
> incorporating the advantages which it has as much as possible.

I spend alot of time thinking about this and debating it with my
roomate. I've come up with the following conclusions:

1) Some things about a system 'just make sense' and are consistant,
many things about a system are intuitive only after they are learned.
It's important to recognize that having an installed based of people
who have 'learned' something is a compelling target audience. For
example, people might not consider the windows control panel, app
installation, file manager, etc "intuitive", however, there is a huge
user base who understand them, and allowing tasks to be performed in
similar ways will leverage that installed base of windows trained
users.

2) There are channels for getting a user a Windows system
pre-configured and installed, namely companies like Dell, Gateway,
etc. Linux is making inroads here for Server functions. Once Gnome is
more ready for prime-time, it'll be time to start pushing OEMs in this
direction as well.

3) There is tons of software out there which runs on windows which
users can download from places on the internet, or buy from CompUSA,
and install on their system easily. We need this. UNIX does not have
it. Anyone who thinks that a company can just build an RPM and expect
it to actually install cleanly onto anyone's system is
mistaken. NeXTStep did a decent job with their app-wrappers and
Installer.app, we need to follow suit.

4) Users are very bad at open-ended questions. Unix is full of
them. Take these example tasks:
  - copy a file off a cdrom
  - install an application off a cdrom
  - download and open a file from the internet
  - install a program off the internet

I think these are the fundamental operations, because the are the
operations required to have a user install 3rd party software. RedHat
may have lots of engineers working on their distributions, but if
RedHat has to make every single program for Linux part of the standard
distribution, it will never keep up with windows.

*** Here are the "unix person's" answers to the above questions:

- copy a file off a cdrom: open up a terminal window, su to root,
"mount /dev/cdrom /cdrom", "cp /cdrom/<filename> <destination>".

- install an application off a cdrom: open up a terminal window, su to
root, "mount /dev/cdrom /cdrom", then use one of: (a) command line
rpm, (b) gui rpm, (c) tar, (d) tar, then ./configure, then make
install, (e) or worse...

- download and open a file from the internet: click on the file in
netscape, the save dialog comes up. However the netscape save panel is
pretty poor, they save it in their home directory somewhere. (non-unix
users often don't get the whole home directory thing and get confused
with a bunch of "/bin" and "/etc" directories) Then, the unix user
will usually goto a terminal window, and type the name of the
appropriate program and the path he just downloaded the file
to. Graphical file managers are looking to change this, but I don't
know any UNIX users who actually USE them yet.

- install a program off the internet: perform the steps above, then
perform one of the possible install steps from "install an application
off a cdrom" to deal with the program which was just downloaded.

*** Here are the "windows person's" answers to the above questions:

- copy a file off a cdrom: double click on "MyComputer", double click
on the cdrom, drag the file off to it's destination.

- install an application off a cdrom: usually inserting the cdrom will
automagically bring up the install program. However, if not, they
perform the above steps, and look for and double click on "setup.exe".

- download and open a file from the internet: click on the file in
netscape, click the "up arrow" until they get to the desktop, save the
file. Minimize netscape, look for the file they downloaded on the desktop, and double click it.

- install a program off the internet: perform the steps from
"download/open". The program is most often a self extracting archive
which runs and installs the program. If not, it's a zip which will
extract and wizip will automatically run setup.exe within the zip.

================

The key difference in the two different scenerios (IMO) is that in
UNIX, many things are open ended, like the terminal window. There is
no way that someone would 'guess' to type "mount /dev/cdrom /cdrom",
EVER. However, if given basic mouse skills, and an idea of how a
computer interface works, there are probably only about 8 icons on the
initial win95 desktop, so they will open them all. Sooner or later
they can find the cdrom icon.

Gnome and KDE are improving this situation grately for Linux. However,
I still look at apps for Gnome and KDE and see open ended text
fields. That is, a blank text field waiting for you to enter some
magic string which you should know ahead of time. 

Open ended fields in Linux which confuse beginning users:
  - LILO prompt 
       we should be using GRUB not LILO.
  - LOGIN prompt 
       win98 explains the login prompt to the user the first time it
       boots. Nextstep installs with an account called "me" with no
       password. It automatically bypasses the login prompt as long
       as the "me" account has no password. To get the login prompt
       one merely has to set a password for the "me" account.

Other things in Linux which have too steep a learning curve:
  - app installation
       You should not have to be root, and things should not have to
       install in some precompiled location.
  - app icon setup (i.e. icon settings in windowmaker)
       An app should be able to come with it's icon automatically.
       There should be no changes to window manager configuration files
       to get the app icon to correctly display. 
  - installs
       The Linux installs have WAY too many questions for a beginning user.
       Win98 asks you what language you speak, and NOTHING ELSE. I think
       this is just great, and I am a technical user. BeOS is the same
       way. Everything which can be setup and configured can be done once
       the system is up. That way the user only has to learn one install
       and configuration UI. None of these configurations (i.e. networking,
       modems, etc) should require a reboot.


-- 
David Jeske (N9LCA) + http://www.chat.net/~jeske/ + jeske@chat.net