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From: set@ucsee.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (Sam E. Trenholme)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix (was Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX)
Date: 13 Apr 1996 10:00:18 GMT
Organization: UC Berkeley Society of Electrical Engineers
Lines: 57
Message-ID: <4kntvi$hmm@agate.berkeley.edu>
References: <4ki055$60l@Radon.Stanford.EDU> <jdd.829261293@cdf.toronto.edu> <yfglok14n5r.fsf@time.cdrom.com> <316ECE94.61162F47@dark.mountain.stronghold>
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>You assume again that every-one wants the same thing, and that is definatly
>the wrong approach.
I do not think that Jordan is assuming that **everyone** wants a user
interface that is controlled by the operating system.
I am sure a technically competent power user, such as yourself, greatly
appreciates the extensibility of X. With a choice of window managers,
GUI libraries (will it be Motif, Open Look, or Interviews today?), and
so on, X lets you configure a workspace that best suits your needs.
However, I have done some informal usability studies with X windows and a
novice user (my roomate). Even after setting up an .xsession to run Xfm,
I found there were some usability issues. For example, the pull-down
menus in Xfm are 'spring loaded' menus, but the menus in the window
manager we were using (fvwm) were not spring loaded. Although a seasoned
X user is used to this minor inconsisty, my roomate was confused by this.
Seasoned X users are used to the power of the flexibility of X. Novice
users have a hard time with the inconsistancy of the user interface.
One common misconception among Linux advocates is that your average
computer user has the ability to administer a Unix system. Unfortunately,
in the real world, only a small percent of the people out there can do
this with Unix in it's present state. This is one of many reasons why
Windows dominates-- it is technologically inferior to Unix in almost every
aspect, but the tools for installing and administrating it are much easier
for the novice user to use.
This is not to say that Unix is as hard to learn as those ignorant to Unix
make it our to be. At work, we are able to successfully teach people to
use tools like 'tvtwm' and 'vi' within a couple of weeks-- and the power
of Unix, unparalelled in the Windows/Mac world, allows us to quickly and
easily create and modify tools to help us get the job done.
It is my hope that Caldera, with their desktop environment, and the porting
of applications to this environment (such as Word Perfect, Mathematica, and
WABI), will help increase the popularity of Linux. However, you can see
the resistance to this in the Linux newsgroups-- the gripes that Caldera
is not as flexible to set up as Slackware, the gripes about the fact that
Caldera is not supporting Word Perfect/WABI on non-Caldera Linux systems.
This resistance is a contradiction. People want Linux to catch on, but
do not want it to make the necessary changes needed to make Linux catch on.
I hope to have the oppertunity to see the usability of Unix with a
non-technical user again next week. This user only uses the application
Netscape to connect to their ISP, so they can surf the 'net. I would
like to configure Slackware and X (Sorry Jordan, FreeBSD is very good,
but I know Linux better) on her system, and compare her experience of
using Netscpae on an X system to using it on Windows.
ObBSD: How's the support for the ext2 filesystem coming along in FreeBSD?
I'm looking into trying out FreeBSD, but would like it to be able to
mount my Linux disks.
--
Sam Trenholme -- there are strictly my own opinions, not those of UCSEE
I use the free OS Linux at home -- see http://www.linux.org for details