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

[Steve Luzynski <sluzynsk sound net>]

David Jeske wrote:
[snip]
> 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.

Very little about moving a melted bar of soap around on a fuzzy piece of
rubber is intuitive if you ask me. I still long for a touchscreen on
every desk. :)

[snip]
> *** 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>".

Hmm. On my system I just click on the gnome drivemounter applet. My
system administrator (me) set the user option in /etc/fstab for the
cdrom.

> - 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...

I've only two Linux applications on cdrom. Both of them had an install
script right in the root that does pretty graphical pointy-clicky stuff
to load the software.

> - 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

Isn't this where you want Joe User to save crap they download off the
internet? I for one shudder to think of a system where you let users
download stuff directly into /bin.

> *** 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.

Same thing I do in Linux. gmc does the cute draggy-droppy stuff.

> - 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.

Wow. Obivously you've never seen what a horrible catastrophe teaching
people to save things on their desktop is when you get into a server
profile based environment. One user called me saying it took them 30
minutes to log in and out. I finally tracked it down to the fact that
they had moved C:\Program Files to their desktop because the crappy GUI
of Windows does not make it clear when you are moving, copying, and
making a shortcut unless you use the incredibly counterintuitive
right-drag.

> 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.

And in the meantime they've moved C:\Windows to the desktop so they can
find it more easily next time. Blah.

> Open ended fields in Linux which confuse beginning users:
>   - LILO prompt
>        we should be using GRUB not LILO.

Don't know what GRUB is, but if it's a more friendly LILO then I
probably agree.

>   - 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.

I don't necessarily think that logging in is a horribly confusing thing.
People use ATMs, you have to log in to those also. A more user friendly
login banner ("Type your username" rather than "login:") might be a
viable option.

> 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.

You most certainly should have to be root to install an application that
needs to make system wide settings changes or go into a /bin, /sbin,
etc. type directory to run. You will have a tough time finding a large
company that runs NT that allows the average user to load software - at
least not a company with an IT budget smaller than gross revenues.

>   - 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.

That is shabby application development.

>   - 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

Say what? Have you loaded Office 97? It takes 15 minutes to figure out
which checkboxes you need to get anything beyond the "I just want to run
Word" installation. Yes, there's a 'Typical' button. Many Linux apps can
just go for it as well. In both cases you usually end up with a less
than functional installation.

>        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.

The only thing I ever reboot Linux for is installing hardware. You must
be thinking of Windows.

I don't mean to sound like I'm blind to Linux's usability challenges. A
distribution designed for newbies should probably come up in runlevel 5
by default. Installing software from source is admittedly difficult to
get your hands around. X is a bitch to configure, and the auto
configuration tools like RedHat's Xconfigurator are only so-so.

But don't sell a well put together Linux system short. My wife can
handle firing up Netscape to read email and managed to find the games
before I even had a chance to show her where the 'start button' was.
She's not stupid, but she's no guru either.

We are on the right track with Linux + GNOME/KDE. You gotta remember
that Microsoft pays people big dollars to write this stuff. We have to
be happy with what gets done in the space between 'real job' and
'sleep'.:)