Christopher Blizzard
Wed, 21 Feb 2007 14:23:14 -0800
On Wed, 2007-02-21 at 08:10 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > On Wed, 21 Feb 2007, Calum Benson wrote: > > > > GNOME has plenty of settings you can lock down to stop people getting > > into a mess; if you maintain their machines, did you ever consider doing > > any of this for their accounts? If not, was it lack of an obvious way > > to do so (during installation or elsewhere) that prevented you from > > doing so, or some other reason? > > I had (and still have) _no_ idea. > > I think Gnome people have this very strange dichotomy: > - "We have tons of config options.." (it's true, sometimes, just not > where I cared) > - "..but we hide them, because only experts should use them"
Kathy Sierra does a good job of describing some of the problems around this: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/02/how_much_contro.html (Includes cute graphics! If nothing else everyone should see the "Canyon of Pain") I was in a meeting the other day where we were discussing this very issue in the context of OLPC. In that meeting it was called "the Ramp." The problem is described as "how do you keep something simple, but grow it to fit the level of experience of the user." In GNOME I think we've done a very good, and somewhat painful job, of creating something that's very simple and very usable for someone who sits down in front of the machine. I say painful because we've had to remove a lot of things that people were very used to in order to get a base experience that's pretty good. But the thing that I think Linus is stumbling over is that canyon. How does he figure out how to get what he needs, which does exist in GNOME, without having to learn everything there is to know about GNOME? I think it's safe to argue that gconf-editor is not the way to go, but at the same time just about every other option requires that everyone is exposed to the options that anyone could possibly ever use. And that's a huge amount of complexity. If we're ever going to grow beyond our small community, I think that what GNOME has done is important. You have to have a very simple base to start with. (Rule of thumb: once a feature is added it basically can never be removed. Ever.) Building a system that's simple and friendly and works well is where we start. But we do need to figure out how to grow with our users in an unobtrusive manner. I don't think that any of us have figured out how to do that, and you're paying the price for it. Sorry about that. --Chris _______________________________________________ Desktop_architects mailing list Desktop_architects@lists.osdl.org https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop_architects