KDE Usability person

[Rajiv Gunja]

I have to say that CNET has a point, even though core Linux Gurus might
disagree about it. Yes there is lack of leadership or lack of view as to how
a normal person is going to use it. I asked this same question many years
ago (2000 or 2001) to IBM Linux President or VP on a talk show with John
Dvorak, he was mostly concerned about Linux Server rather than Linux
Desktop.
Question:
When will Linux be ready for my Mother or my uncle who are not Computer
Savvy or my grand-mother who wants to view News, video and email without
having to know what OS is running?

Well to be frank, I have not yet used a Linux which does everything MS
Windows does. The key thing to remember is that with Windows, all you get is
the GUI there is no such thing directly available to you as a normal user.
If something happens to my Windows PC, I have no clue what to do with it,
but if it is Linux or Unix, there are a million ways I can debug it. This
does not mean that Windows does not have internal debugging stuff, but it is
rather not obvious from the front end. With Linux each forum will talk about
editing some file or the other or talk about super-user mode or sudo or
something like that which non-IT person will have no idea about and will
give up on it and buy Windows.

The only Linux I have used which is almost like Windows when it comes to
usage is Xandros. Yes it is not perfect, but is sure way better than Fedora
or Mandrake or Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS when it comes down to "USABILITY" or user
friendliness. Their OS is so much closer to Windows than any other
distribution can come close to.

Yes they are not a true Open Source Linux and they are commercial, but their
OS works, that is why you see it being the default OS on Asus EEE than
Fedora or Mandriva.

I have been using Linux as a user (I am not a developer) since 1995/6. I
have seen it grow from Slackware 1.0 to now Vixta or PCLinuxOS or Ubuntu
8.xx or Mandriva 2008 beta. It has improved a great amount, but at the same
time, MS has grown from DOS to Vista, which might be good or bad, depending
on what you are using it for.

As per to the Leadership he is talking about, I think he should have said
that there is nobody pulling the reigns to the horse that is Linux which is
going ahead, but might not be in the direction a user wants, but what a
developer or engineer wants.

-GGR
Rajiv G Gunja


On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 9:26 AM, Celeste Lyn Paul <celeste at kde.org> wrote:

> On Wednesday 26 March 2008 08:37:14 Matt Burkhardt wrote:
> > Sorry - I'm really bad with names and couldn't find the KDE usability
> > person on the members page
>
> THat would be me.
>
> > CNet has an interesting article about usability and the lack of research
> > of it in open source -
> >
> > http://www.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9903080-16.html
>
> Hmm.. interesting.  Too bad he's wrong, or at least not exactly right.
> Leadership isn't the core problem, vision and understanding of users is.
> Leadership supports these things.  (Infact, a colleague from OpenUsability
> and I are writing a conference paper on this exact topic).
>
> > --
> > Matt Burkhardt, MSTM
> > President
> > Impari Systems, Inc.
> > Phone:  (301) 644-3911
> > mlb at imparisystems.com
> > http://www.imparisystems.com
>
>
>
> --
> Celeste Lyn Paul
> KDE Usability Project & HCI Working Group
> usability.kde.org
>
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