8 ms·

The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment

95 points by nreece 19y ago

wanorris 19y ago
I hope the Ubuntu team sees this and learns from it. They've built a great system that I love using, and I'd really love to see it guide new users well enough that my wife would be happy to permanently switch.
projectileboy 19y ago
Sorry, open-sourcers, but I have to second the emotion on GIMP vs. Photoshop. To say that GIMP's usability isn't in the same ballpark as Photoshop's is putting it mildly...
- goofygrin 19y ago
  I hate that GIMP is so much different. I mean, I hate that ctrl-d duplicates the current work, rather than deselect... but this weekend, I used the ctrl-d multiple times with wild success, so maybe my process is broken :)
- wanorris 19y ago
  Is it that Gimp is so much worse, or is it simply that they're different? I used Corel Photo-Paint for years and years, and when I tried Photoshop after that, it seemed like it was designed by space aliens. I don't mean to say that Photo-Paint is easier to use -- I doubt it is. But when you get used to a particular interface for something like photo editing, maybe any given interface is ok, but switching interfaces is hard?
  - projectileboy 19y ago
    Good question; I'm not sure. What I can be sure of is this story: A couple months ago, I had to create some annotated screen shots to be used as cheat sheets by a number of people I'm working with. I knew that I could do something like this in Photoshop, having used Photoshop a bit 10 years ago. I first tried GIMP, because it was free and available. After trying for a while to figure out how to get layers happening, I finally gave up and downloaded a copy of Photoshop. Everything was immediately intuitive. Even though the Photoshop UI had changed (a lot) from when I had used it a decade ago, I was able to very quickly create my annotated screen shots. Now, you could say that I didn't bother to read any of the GIMP documentation, and you'd be right. But with Photoshop I didn't have to.
  - coffeeaddicted 19y ago
    It's certainly part of the story. But even after using (and mostly loving) Gimp now for years I still dislike the way it opens each image in an own window, especially when working with lots of open images. I can't just hide all gimp-windows in the background when switching tools - I have to hide each image one-by-one. Usually it's easier hiding all desktop windows and bringing up the other application I need afterwards. What irritates me even more is when I have to hunt for the tools-window of gimp behind some of my images. But I don't know if Photoshop would be nicer in that regard , I haven't used that in a long time.
  - atoulouse 19y ago
    At the risk of being flamed, I want to state that I think GIMP is worse. I have no objective evidence, though; it's all subjective and anecdotal. I started with Paint Shop Pro, and what it lacked in features it made up in ease-of-use. I especially liked the ability to mix raster and vector layers; Photoshop still hasn't captured the simplicity and power of PSP's vector layers, IMO (in terms of UI, at least). After I used PSP, I moved on to Photoshop. While it was initially a bit intimidating, my familiarity with PSP quickly helped me overcome this and I was up to speed pretty fast. Fast forward a long time and I try Corel Painter. Its interface is definitely different, but still easy to follow. I picked it up in a few minutes (for some definition of 'picked up'). Then I tried GIMP. I couldn't make heads or tails of it, and I never got used to it. I can't explain why GIMP doesn't work for me; just that I didn't -- couldn't -- pick it up like I did Photoshop or Painter (or openCanvas for that matter).
- mmmurf 19y ago
  Correct. I have no idea why the Gimp designers didn't go with a GUI that is more like photoshop. Someone had a fork called GimpShop but I don't think it's had much maintenance.
- cstejerean 19y ago
  Out of all the people complaining about why Gimp is not like Photoshop I wonder how many actually paid $650 dollars for Photoshop. Look at it this way, if you spend 3 hours reading the Gimp manual instead of buying Photoshop you're essentially "earning" $200+/hour. For $650 I'm willing to put up with Gimp the few times I need to touch up an image.
  - jdavid 19y ago
    I use CS3, because that is what my client community uses. GIMP is not a replacement for CS3. Gimp is a photo tool like photoshop is a photo tool, but it is not Photoshop! How many clients do I look access too, when I can not just use CS3? How much is that worth? $2,300 I spent on CS3 seems cheap in comparison. If you want converts, GET WINE WORKING! Heck, I will buy windows to have the really DLLs, I just want it to work in Linux. MACs just work because Mac users that want to run windows, BUY WINDOWS and run it in OS X. There is some software that people ARE willing to pay for it to JUST WORK.
    - cstejerean 19y ago
      photoshop is fine if you do serious graphics work and get paid for it. I just hate when people that are not willing to pay for photoshop bitch about why gimp is not photoshop. Mac users that want to run Windows buy windows and install it inside of a VM (or dual boot). What's preventing you from doing the same under Linux?
      - wanorris 19y ago
        > Mac users that want to run Windows buy windows and install it inside of a VM (or dual boot). What's preventing you from doing the same under Linux? Seconded. Lots of apps run really well in XP with VirtualBox in seamless mode. That's how I test sites against Safari and IE, and I run Visual Studio that way when I need it. VirtualBox is the reason why I never got around to setting up a Windows partition like I was planning on. Instead, I just reclaimed the space for more files under Linux.
      - jdavid 19y ago
- Tichy 19y ago
  I remember learning Photoshop, and it was hard, too. I am not convinced that Photoshop is simpler than Gimp, they are just different. Gimp is a bit old fashioned with it's dozens of little windows, though. I think there is a "make it look like Photoshop" mod of Gimp, actually.
- pkaler 19y ago
  The Ubuntu team should ditch GIMP and port Paint.NET to Linux. http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2006/May-19.html http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2006/May-19.html
  - goofygrin 19y ago
    The problem is that Paint.NET isn't as powerful as GIMP in some areas. I've used Paint.NET pretty heavily over the last 6 months (I use it when I don't want to wait for Photoshop to load) and while it's good for casual use, it is no photoshop/gimp/paintshop pro replacement.
brlewis 19y ago
"make the experience a lot more friendly for non-computer-literate people" should be "make the experience a lot more friendly for people who use Microsoft Windows extensively"
- bct 19y ago
  Yup - particularly "search for website and download app" versus "open package manager and search for app".
- jrockway 19y ago
  Well, learning is too hard for most people, so apparently Linux should be exactly the same as Windows. If you want to avoid the $300 Vista upgrade, along with the DRM and general suckage of Windows, you might have to learn to use the Free alternative. Why is that such a terrible thing?
  - sgibat 19y ago
    But Ubuntu and Linux want these users. Why is helping casual computers out with a few simple, easy to implement tips such a terrible thing?
    - 0x44 19y ago
      Every hour spent developing these features is an hour not-spent developing real features that differentiate your application from its competitors. Besides, if the features are so easy to implement, surely you have a patch ready for submission.
      - krschultz 19y ago
        Wrong, every hour that helps fix a show stopper bug for 90% of people is better than implementing a new feature for 10% or less of the people. If something you did every day didn't work under Ubuntu you wouldn't switch. If something that Windows didn't have, didn't exist in Ubuntu either, you wouldn't notice. A lot of these are not simple fixes either, you are not going to change the DVD codec legality with an hour of hacking. Most of the remaining sticky issues seem to be either polishing some things off or legal/commercial reasons. You'd think with Dell getting behind Ubuntu more would have changed, but so far not so much.
goofygrin 19y ago
Last week my brother in law's laptop refused to boot windows. He brought it over on Saturday and I booted off the HH live cd and copied all his stuff onto my NAS. There was a LOT of crap on his laptop (spyware and viruses it looked like). I then installed HH, opera and the flashplayer on his laptop and said "here you go, your password is xxx". I showed him synaptic and made sure that hibernation and the wifi card worked and sent him home. So far, I've not heard any complaints yet :)
mosburger 19y ago
I liked this article - I was expecting a "yay, see how usable Ubuntu is" fanboy-style writeup. Instead it found some very honest issues with its usability. I wonder if Canonical ever does any of the one-way-mirror style UI tests that (presumably) Microsoft uses? It seems like it would uncover some of these gotchas.
aflag 19y ago
That experiment is a little biased. It wasn't an example of a person who doesn't know how to use computers trying out ubuntu. It was an example of a person who's very confortable with Windows trying to use a different Operating System. The test about using youtube is particularly bad. It's good that Ubuntu doesn't come with flash, it would be even better if it didn't even tell you about it. Maybe in the future it might come with gnash already installed (you may want to install it, I'm sure it's on the repositories, even my debian etch has it). For youtube specifically, as I understand the latest totem comes with a plugin that allows you to watch youtube videos directly from totem, another alternative for using youtube without flash. And yes, I'm a free software extremist, who simply doesn't get it, who will forever be wrong. And I'm too radical, things can't be taken so seriously, I'll never find a girlfriend. I know all that. Still, the purpose of Ubuntu is to spread the use of free software, not to be another system offering propertary software. If the free software already available is not enough for some people, I guess we'll just have to wait (not change our systems so it includes propertary stuff).
- mmmurf 19y ago
  Uh, so you're saying that the reason Ubuntu doesn't ship with Flash installed is to inconvenience users so that they will better appreciate free software -- because it <i>did</i> come installed unlike the evil proprietary Flash player? Just as Ubuntu now has "restricted drivers" it should also have "popular non-free apps", and a screen should appear on the first boot that lets the user install flash, skype, etc. It seems silly that a hard line on a few small apps is making it so nearly any windows or mac user will get scared off by Ubuntu in the first 10 minutes.
  - Prrometheus 19y ago
    Also, getting DVD support to work was "challenging" to put it mildly.
    - coffeeaddicted 19y ago
      Yeah, but due to the unfortunate DRM restrictions I don't see how that could be solved currently. Well, except by offering more comfortable torrent clients to avoid DVD's completely ... which is done already ;-)
phaedrus 19y ago
We installed Ubuntu on all the machines in the computer lab. Apart from the students who already used Linux, who just argued over which distribution, the CS students who'd only been exposed to Windows unanimously expressed they hated Linux. I asked them why, what was wrong, and it always came back to the fact that it was unfamiliar. I'm not sure how you fix that, because in effect their gripe was that it was not "exactly like Windows". It's yet another bad effect of the Microsoft monopoly - people believe that Computer == Windows, because they don't get exposed to anything else.
- dgabriel 19y ago
  Frankly, when people move from Macs to Linux, or Mac to PC, or Linux to PC, they generally dislike it at first. All the shortcuts and techniques you've internalized are thrown out the window, so it feels awkward and slow. I read about this effect at one point, but I don't remember where...
  - kirse 19y ago
    From personal experience I had no problem learning Mac-OS, which I stumbled around in at first but didn't experience any major problems until much further down the road (when I was capable of dealing with them). On the other hand I downloaded Ubuntu last month, and after taking several hours just to get onboard wifi working (xps m1330), I lost all desire to use it further. For me, gradual hurdles vs. massive roadblock after roadblock is the difference between enjoying the learning process instead of dreading it.
    - goofygrin 19y ago
      >> after taking several hours just to get onboard wifi working (xps m1330) I've got an xps m1330 and it's run Gutsy and now Hardy without any issues with the Wifi. I've got the Intel 3945ABG card in there. I had the N card in for a while and couldn't ever get it to work well with Gutsy.
  - aoeuid 19y ago
    About those pesky shortcuts: My suggestion would be to make windows shortcuts available by default: Win+D = minimize/unminimize all windows Win+R = Terminal I also added Win+G = Gedit and Win+F = Search (which really needs some improvement) Finally, standardize some behavior! Gedit and your ctrl+alt+pgup to change tabs, I'm looking at you.
dean 19y ago
I'm surprised a usability test is such big news. It's almost as though no one ever thought to do one for Linux before.
DanielBMarkham 19y ago
I hope this comment doesn't sound trollish -- but it's a question that has been buggin' me. So where are the geeks who are excited enough to update a piece of open-source software to help newbies out? I mean, if I were contributing to the greater good and all, seems like it would be with something that I personally had a need to do. While I'm sure that most contributors think of the noobs, where is the cohesive push for simplification of user experience? It's always seemed like to me that FOSS was great for geeks who wanted to keep adding cool stuff and sharing it, but the motivator is -- excitement. It's still an economy going on, it's just about emotion. I just don't understand how people get excited about stuff that seems archaic or strange to them.
- lg 19y ago
  Mint is an attempt to improve Ubuntu with a somewhat-friendlier UI and software that people actually use, i.e. mplayer. I think Ubuntu's problem isn't geekiness so much as ideology (and maybe there are legal issues with including things like codecs that i'm not aware of). Anyway computer-literacy isn't exactly on the downswing, so the trend is in FOSS's favor.
  - Jesin 19y ago
    Yes, I've heard good things about Mint. The only reason I've never used it is that there is no 64-bit version.
- Tichy 19y ago
  Ubuntu is actually really, really good. What sucked most about it was the Flash problem. I say the problem lies with Flash, which is closed source. Those issues the girl-friend had are really not so severe. She would have had the same issues or worse the first time she used windows. Definitely worse the first time she would use OS X.
jdavid 19y ago
I still can not figure out how to get my nvidia drivers working in ubuntu, after upgrading from 7.10-8.04 LTS. Windows is still more productive for me, I do want to be fully on ubuntu by the end of june though. So I have a few more months. Right now my plan is to format my ubuntu partitions and to start over with 8.04.
- Prrometheus 19y ago
  The installation is definitely a hard slog for owners of certain pieces of hardware. I had issues with my USB wireless adapter, my recent-ish nVidia graphics card, DVD playback, and flash. However, after I got it all up and running, the experience was worth it. It looks like the nVidia support got better between 7.1 and 8.04. I was able to get my card running on 7,1 using a little script called "Envy", which can be installed and ran through apt-get. When I upgraded to 8.04, I did not need to make any further changes to get the graphics to work, though I did need to jump through the same hoops for my wireless adapter again. Coders are now making scripts like Envy to help users install those last few tricky pieces of hardware. It would be nice if the auto-detect, download, and install process were part of Ubuntu itself, but these are available now as a good halfway point.
- wanorris 19y ago
  Upgrading to Hardy borked my nvidia, as well. I ended up replacing /etc/X11/xorg.conf with xorg.conf.1, which used the generic vesa driver instead of the nvidia driver. (If you don't know command line, this is 'sudo /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.new-backup' followed by 'sudo /etc/X11/xorg.conf.1 /etc/X11/xorg.conf'.) After I rebooted under the vesa driver, I was able to use the Hardware Drivers tool under System/Administration to turn on the normal Hardy nvidia driver. I also recommend grabbing nvidia-settings from the repository to tweak things like multiple monitors more easily. (Once it's there, you just call 'sudo nvidia-settings'.)
  - smhinsey 19y ago
    very helpful. excellent comment.
  - 19y ago
JesseAldridge 19y ago
I think the problem is not so much that Linux is designed by geeks ignorant to the plight of the common person, but just that software is hard to create and maintain, especially software as big and complex as an operating system. The biggest system I've ever worked with was a game I worked on with a friend for a year. By the end of the year the codebase was so massive and tangled that the thought of adding a new feature or even modifying a current one made me want to curl up in the corner and mumble incoherently. I think the big problem to solve right now is simply making software development easier.
ambition 19y ago
User testing is one area where free software has a fundamental disadvantage vs. paid-for programs. Programmers can turn their time into code with no need of money. Unfortunately, proper user testing costs real money. Paid-for programs have revenue with which they can pay for user testing but only the largest FOSS projects have that kind of cash. In my opinion, this is one important reason why open source programs have a bad reputation for usability.

95 points by nreece 19y ago

I hope the Ubuntu team sees this and learns from it. They've built a great system that I love using, and I'd really love to see it guide new users well enough that my wife would be happy to permanently switch.

projectileboy 19y ago

Sorry, open-sourcers, but I have to second the emotion on GIMP vs. Photoshop. To say that GIMP's usability isn't in the same ballpark as Photoshop's is putting it mildly...

goofygrin 19y ago
I hate that GIMP is so much different. I mean, I hate that ctrl-d duplicates the current work, rather than deselect... but this weekend, I used the ctrl-d multiple times with wild success, so maybe my process is broken :)
wanorris 19y ago
Is it that Gimp is so much worse, or is it simply that they're different? I used Corel Photo-Paint for years and years, and when I tried Photoshop after that, it seemed like it was designed by space aliens. I don't mean to say that Photo-Paint is easier to use -- I doubt it is. But when you get used to a particular interface for something like photo editing, maybe any given interface is ok, but switching interfaces is hard?
- projectileboy 19y ago
  Good question; I'm not sure. What I can be sure of is this story: A couple months ago, I had to create some annotated screen shots to be used as cheat sheets by a number of people I'm working with. I knew that I could do something like this in Photoshop, having used Photoshop a bit 10 years ago. I first tried GIMP, because it was free and available. After trying for a while to figure out how to get layers happening, I finally gave up and downloaded a copy of Photoshop. Everything was immediately intuitive. Even though the Photoshop UI had changed (a lot) from when I had used it a decade ago, I was able to very quickly create my annotated screen shots. Now, you could say that I didn't bother to read any of the GIMP documentation, and you'd be right. But with Photoshop I didn't have to.
- coffeeaddicted 19y ago
  It's certainly part of the story. But even after using (and mostly loving) Gimp now for years I still dislike the way it opens each image in an own window, especially when working with lots of open images. I can't just hide all gimp-windows in the background when switching tools - I have to hide each image one-by-one. Usually it's easier hiding all desktop windows and bringing up the other application I need afterwards. What irritates me even more is when I have to hunt for the tools-window of gimp behind some of my images. But I don't know if Photoshop would be nicer in that regard , I haven't used that in a long time.
- atoulouse 19y ago
  At the risk of being flamed, I want to state that I think GIMP is worse. I have no objective evidence, though; it's all subjective and anecdotal. I started with Paint Shop Pro, and what it lacked in features it made up in ease-of-use. I especially liked the ability to mix raster and vector layers; Photoshop still hasn't captured the simplicity and power of PSP's vector layers, IMO (in terms of UI, at least). After I used PSP, I moved on to Photoshop. While it was initially a bit intimidating, my familiarity with PSP quickly helped me overcome this and I was up to speed pretty fast. Fast forward a long time and I try Corel Painter. Its interface is definitely different, but still easy to follow. I picked it up in a few minutes (for some definition of 'picked up'). Then I tried GIMP. I couldn't make heads or tails of it, and I never got used to it. I can't explain why GIMP doesn't work for me; just that I didn't -- couldn't -- pick it up like I did Photoshop or Painter (or openCanvas for that matter).
mmmurf 19y ago
Correct. I have no idea why the Gimp designers didn't go with a GUI that is more like photoshop. Someone had a fork called GimpShop but I don't think it's had much maintenance.
cstejerean 19y ago
Out of all the people complaining about why Gimp is not like Photoshop I wonder how many actually paid $650 dollars for Photoshop. Look at it this way, if you spend 3 hours reading the Gimp manual instead of buying Photoshop you're essentially "earning" $200+/hour. For $650 I'm willing to put up with Gimp the few times I need to touch up an image.
- jdavid 19y ago
  I use CS3, because that is what my client community uses. GIMP is not a replacement for CS3. Gimp is a photo tool like photoshop is a photo tool, but it is not Photoshop! How many clients do I look access too, when I can not just use CS3? How much is that worth? $2,300 I spent on CS3 seems cheap in comparison. If you want converts, GET WINE WORKING! Heck, I will buy windows to have the really DLLs, I just want it to work in Linux. MACs just work because Mac users that want to run windows, BUY WINDOWS and run it in OS X. There is some software that people ARE willing to pay for it to JUST WORK.
  - cstejerean 19y ago
    photoshop is fine if you do serious graphics work and get paid for it. I just hate when people that are not willing to pay for photoshop bitch about why gimp is not photoshop. Mac users that want to run Windows buy windows and install it inside of a VM (or dual boot). What's preventing you from doing the same under Linux?
    - wanorris 19y ago
      > Mac users that want to run Windows buy windows and install it inside of a VM (or dual boot). What's preventing you from doing the same under Linux? Seconded. Lots of apps run really well in XP with VirtualBox in seamless mode. That's how I test sites against Safari and IE, and I run Visual Studio that way when I need it. VirtualBox is the reason why I never got around to setting up a Windows partition like I was planning on. Instead, I just reclaimed the space for more files under Linux.
    - jdavid 19y ago
Tichy 19y ago
I remember learning Photoshop, and it was hard, too. I am not convinced that Photoshop is simpler than Gimp, they are just different. Gimp is a bit old fashioned with it's dozens of little windows, though. I think there is a "make it look like Photoshop" mod of Gimp, actually.
pkaler 19y ago
The Ubuntu team should ditch GIMP and port Paint.NET to Linux. http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2006/May-19.html http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2006/May-19.html
- goofygrin 19y ago
  The problem is that Paint.NET isn't as powerful as GIMP in some areas. I've used Paint.NET pretty heavily over the last 6 months (I use it when I don't want to wait for Photoshop to load) and while it's good for casual use, it is no photoshop/gimp/paintshop pro replacement.

brlewis 19y ago

"make the experience a lot more friendly for non-computer-literate people" should be "make the experience a lot more friendly for people who use Microsoft Windows extensively"

bct 19y ago
Yup - particularly "search for website and download app" versus "open package manager and search for app".
jrockway 19y ago
Well, learning is too hard for most people, so apparently Linux should be exactly the same as Windows. If you want to avoid the $300 Vista upgrade, along with the DRM and general suckage of Windows, you might have to learn to use the Free alternative. Why is that such a terrible thing?
- sgibat 19y ago
  But Ubuntu and Linux want these users. Why is helping casual computers out with a few simple, easy to implement tips such a terrible thing?
  - 0x44 19y ago
    Every hour spent developing these features is an hour not-spent developing real features that differentiate your application from its competitors. Besides, if the features are so easy to implement, surely you have a patch ready for submission.
    - krschultz 19y ago
      Wrong, every hour that helps fix a show stopper bug for 90% of people is better than implementing a new feature for 10% or less of the people. If something you did every day didn't work under Ubuntu you wouldn't switch. If something that Windows didn't have, didn't exist in Ubuntu either, you wouldn't notice. A lot of these are not simple fixes either, you are not going to change the DVD codec legality with an hour of hacking. Most of the remaining sticky issues seem to be either polishing some things off or legal/commercial reasons. You'd think with Dell getting behind Ubuntu more would have changed, but so far not so much.

goofygrin 19y ago

Last week my brother in law's laptop refused to boot windows. He brought it over on Saturday and I booted off the HH live cd and copied all his stuff onto my NAS. There was a LOT of crap on his laptop (spyware and viruses it looked like). I then installed HH, opera and the flashplayer on his laptop and said "here you go, your password is xxx". I showed him synaptic and made sure that hibernation and the wifi card worked and sent him home. So far, I've not heard any complaints yet :)

mosburger 19y ago

I liked this article - I was expecting a "yay, see how usable Ubuntu is" fanboy-style writeup. Instead it found some very honest issues with its usability. I wonder if Canonical ever does any of the one-way-mirror style UI tests that (presumably) Microsoft uses? It seems like it would uncover some of these gotchas.

aflag 19y ago

That experiment is a little biased. It wasn't an example of a person who doesn't know how to use computers trying out ubuntu. It was an example of a person who's very confortable with Windows trying to use a different Operating System. The test about using youtube is particularly bad. It's good that Ubuntu doesn't come with flash, it would be even better if it didn't even tell you about it. Maybe in the future it might come with gnash already installed (you may want to install it, I'm sure it's on the repositories, even my debian etch has it). For youtube specifically, as I understand the latest totem comes with a plugin that allows you to watch youtube videos directly from totem, another alternative for using youtube without flash. And yes, I'm a free software extremist, who simply doesn't get it, who will forever be wrong. And I'm too radical, things can't be taken so seriously, I'll never find a girlfriend. I know all that. Still, the purpose of Ubuntu is to spread the use of free software, not to be another system offering propertary software. If the free software already available is not enough for some people, I guess we'll just have to wait (not change our systems so it includes propertary stuff).

mmmurf 19y ago
Uh, so you're saying that the reason Ubuntu doesn't ship with Flash installed is to inconvenience users so that they will better appreciate free software -- because it <i>did</i> come installed unlike the evil proprietary Flash player? Just as Ubuntu now has "restricted drivers" it should also have "popular non-free apps", and a screen should appear on the first boot that lets the user install flash, skype, etc. It seems silly that a hard line on a few small apps is making it so nearly any windows or mac user will get scared off by Ubuntu in the first 10 minutes.
- Prrometheus 19y ago
  Also, getting DVD support to work was "challenging" to put it mildly.
  - coffeeaddicted 19y ago
    Yeah, but due to the unfortunate DRM restrictions I don't see how that could be solved currently. Well, except by offering more comfortable torrent clients to avoid DVD's completely ... which is done already ;-)

phaedrus 19y ago

We installed Ubuntu on all the machines in the computer lab. Apart from the students who already used Linux, who just argued over which distribution, the CS students who'd only been exposed to Windows unanimously expressed they hated Linux. I asked them why, what was wrong, and it always came back to the fact that it was unfamiliar. I'm not sure how you fix that, because in effect their gripe was that it was not "exactly like Windows". It's yet another bad effect of the Microsoft monopoly - people believe that Computer == Windows, because they don't get exposed to anything else.

dgabriel 19y ago
Frankly, when people move from Macs to Linux, or Mac to PC, or Linux to PC, they generally dislike it at first. All the shortcuts and techniques you've internalized are thrown out the window, so it feels awkward and slow. I read about this effect at one point, but I don't remember where...
- kirse 19y ago
  From personal experience I had no problem learning Mac-OS, which I stumbled around in at first but didn't experience any major problems until much further down the road (when I was capable of dealing with them). On the other hand I downloaded Ubuntu last month, and after taking several hours just to get onboard wifi working (xps m1330), I lost all desire to use it further. For me, gradual hurdles vs. massive roadblock after roadblock is the difference between enjoying the learning process instead of dreading it.
  - goofygrin 19y ago
    >> after taking several hours just to get onboard wifi working (xps m1330) I've got an xps m1330 and it's run Gutsy and now Hardy without any issues with the Wifi. I've got the Intel 3945ABG card in there. I had the N card in for a while and couldn't ever get it to work well with Gutsy.
- aoeuid 19y ago
  About those pesky shortcuts: My suggestion would be to make windows shortcuts available by default: Win+D = minimize/unminimize all windows Win+R = Terminal I also added Win+G = Gedit and Win+F = Search (which really needs some improvement) Finally, standardize some behavior! Gedit and your ctrl+alt+pgup to change tabs, I'm looking at you.

dean 19y ago

I'm surprised a usability test is such big news. It's almost as though no one ever thought to do one for Linux before.

DanielBMarkham 19y ago

I hope this comment doesn't sound trollish -- but it's a question that has been buggin' me. So where are the geeks who are excited enough to update a piece of open-source software to help newbies out? I mean, if I were contributing to the greater good and all, seems like it would be with something that I personally had a need to do. While I'm sure that most contributors think of the noobs, where is the cohesive push for simplification of user experience? It's always seemed like to me that FOSS was great for geeks who wanted to keep adding cool stuff and sharing it, but the motivator is -- excitement. It's still an economy going on, it's just about emotion. I just don't understand how people get excited about stuff that seems archaic or strange to them.

lg 19y ago
Mint is an attempt to improve Ubuntu with a somewhat-friendlier UI and software that people actually use, i.e. mplayer. I think Ubuntu's problem isn't geekiness so much as ideology (and maybe there are legal issues with including things like codecs that i'm not aware of). Anyway computer-literacy isn't exactly on the downswing, so the trend is in FOSS's favor.
- Jesin 19y ago
  Yes, I've heard good things about Mint. The only reason I've never used it is that there is no 64-bit version.
Tichy 19y ago
Ubuntu is actually really, really good. What sucked most about it was the Flash problem. I say the problem lies with Flash, which is closed source. Those issues the girl-friend had are really not so severe. She would have had the same issues or worse the first time she used windows. Definitely worse the first time she would use OS X.

jdavid 19y ago

I still can not figure out how to get my nvidia drivers working in ubuntu, after upgrading from 7.10-8.04 LTS. Windows is still more productive for me, I do want to be fully on ubuntu by the end of june though. So I have a few more months. Right now my plan is to format my ubuntu partitions and to start over with 8.04.

Prrometheus 19y ago
The installation is definitely a hard slog for owners of certain pieces of hardware. I had issues with my USB wireless adapter, my recent-ish nVidia graphics card, DVD playback, and flash. However, after I got it all up and running, the experience was worth it. It looks like the nVidia support got better between 7.1 and 8.04. I was able to get my card running on 7,1 using a little script called "Envy", which can be installed and ran through apt-get. When I upgraded to 8.04, I did not need to make any further changes to get the graphics to work, though I did need to jump through the same hoops for my wireless adapter again. Coders are now making scripts like Envy to help users install those last few tricky pieces of hardware. It would be nice if the auto-detect, download, and install process were part of Ubuntu itself, but these are available now as a good halfway point.
wanorris 19y ago
Upgrading to Hardy borked my nvidia, as well. I ended up replacing /etc/X11/xorg.conf with xorg.conf.1, which used the generic vesa driver instead of the nvidia driver. (If you don't know command line, this is 'sudo /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.new-backup' followed by 'sudo /etc/X11/xorg.conf.1 /etc/X11/xorg.conf'.) After I rebooted under the vesa driver, I was able to use the Hardware Drivers tool under System/Administration to turn on the normal Hardy nvidia driver. I also recommend grabbing nvidia-settings from the repository to tweak things like multiple monitors more easily. (Once it's there, you just call 'sudo nvidia-settings'.)
- smhinsey 19y ago
  very helpful. excellent comment.
- 19y ago

JesseAldridge 19y ago

I think the problem is not so much that Linux is designed by geeks ignorant to the plight of the common person, but just that software is hard to create and maintain, especially software as big and complex as an operating system. The biggest system I've ever worked with was a game I worked on with a friend for a year. By the end of the year the codebase was so massive and tangled that the thought of adding a new feature or even modifying a current one made me want to curl up in the corner and mumble incoherently. I think the big problem to solve right now is simply making software development easier.

ambition 19y ago

User testing is one area where free software has a fundamental disadvantage vs. paid-for programs. Programmers can turn their time into code with no need of money. Unfortunately, proper user testing costs real money. Paid-for programs have revenue with which they can pay for user testing but only the largest FOSS projects have that kind of cash. In my opinion, this is one important reason why open source programs have a bad reputation for usability.