On Tuesday 02 November 2010, Natalie Hooper wrote: > @Sean - I've been using Linux since 2005, though I didn't use it at all in > 2008/early 2009. As stated before, these things don't stop ME from using > Linux/Ubuntu/whatever app I use, but from my experience, they stop new > users from using Linux/Ubuntu. > > I'm not sure where you understand that I wanted to impose my views on how > to make it user-friendly - the reason I posted this is to get a whole > range of views, not to push my views. Also, it was inspired by an existing > article - in fact, about half of the things on my list are in the original > article too. > > As a community, Linux is both exciting and horribly frustrating - technical > people don't always make for good communicators, devs quite often get > offended if somebody suggests a different solution to a problem, many geeks > are prone to patronising those they think of as ignorant, and in my > opinion, Linux is suffering from this. For me, Linux users should also > teach other computer users about the benefits of open source development > and how a PC doesn't need Windows to run, but quite often, the feedback is > "if you don't know how to do this in Linux, then you understand nothing > about it and you should go back to Windows". Not helpful at all in the > context of the open source vs closed source dev public debate. > > Yes, Linux complexity is great and I don't suggest to dumb it down. Most of > the changes I would like to see are to do with presentation, not how Linux > works deep down. Some changes also require devs/foundations to work > together. None of this should be imposed by an outside force, it has got to > come from the parties involved obviously. > > As stated before, I don't have a problem with using Linux, I have overcome > whatever issues I have with it but this list was written with the > mainstream user in mind. The list is based on my own experience, watching > those around me trying to use Ubuntu on my desktops and netbook. > Sometimes, when a new user points something out, you just have to admit > the way Linux presents itself isn't the best way (for example, the names > of apps in Ubuntu software centre, which in itself is a great idea by the > way). Other times, you can explain why it works like this but when a user > says "I don't really need to know all that" and you know that the distro > you are using is meant to be user-friendly (it's not like I'm using > Gentoo!), then again you have to admit that even though there is a reason > why something is done a certain way, it might be useful to show fewer > options, and allow for a way to show more options (for example, the > bootloader). > -- > Next meeting: Crown Hotel, Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2010-11-02 20:00 > Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ > How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
There is also one *teeny* little problem along the required route to Linux utopia. Linux is supposed to be an (albeit pretty sophisticated) dialect of UNIX. And although there aren't alas many of the original unices left now - e.g. HP- UX, Solaris, AIX & MacOSX, it is a fairly important issue to many who use Linux in the commercial and scientific world that portability between all these variants is maintained - as far as possible - so I'm afraid a few of your complaints refer to the "UNIX way" and they are rather difficult to fix and still maintain compatibility. i.e. a lot of the things we take for granted on LInux started life developed for commercial unices. rpm for instance (by my understanding) came about because the (then) standard unix packaging system pkgadd/pkgmk had copyright ownership - so redhat came up with something based on it but better. and (not sure about deb) most of the package managers such as synaptic are built on top of rpm. The original idea for KDE came from CDE (which was again copyright) - the list goes on and on - but most of the things we see are ported straight across from the BSD/SVR4 unices when lack of copyright permits (or gnu provided an almost perfect clone). Just my 10c -- Andy Paterson -- Next meeting: Crown Hotel, Blandford Forum, Tuesday 2010-11-02 20:00 Meets, Mailing list, IRC, LinkedIn, ... http://dorset.lug.org.uk/ How to Report Bugs Effectively: http://goo.gl/4Xue
