My own point of view, as one of the developers on Fedora, is that plenty of things need making a lot more user-friendly in Linux. I think it's hard to see that unless you've watched other people, who are unfamiliar with it, trying to use it.
I remember shortly after I'd joined Red Hat and we'd just put out a release (I think it was Red Hat Linux 6.0 or something), and we had a meeting about what things to focus on for the next release. I couldn't think of anything that could be made any better than it already was. Now, I barely have time to file the bugs. This isn't because things have gotten any worse -- quite the opposite. It's because we're "nearly there" that I can see how important the rest of the journey is. People using computers, in general, do just want to get something done, or to have fun. They don't want to learn about how operating systems work, and neither should they unless that's their inclination. I think the story about how having to delve into the insides of the operating system to change/fix/do things makes you a better person somehow is just an excuse. No-one should *have* to do that. Developers may like to, and that's great. Another thing I see talked about a lot is choice, and how obviously good it is. But there is an excuse hidden inside that too: yes, it's great to have a choice, but there ought to be a recommendation. If you don't have any prior knowledge about a thing, you can't make decisions about it. Just because there are different programs to choose between doesn't mean that the developers of a distribution are exempt from having to recommend one. It is a responsibility, yes, but the distribution maintainers are much better placed to take it on than new users. Not just new users either. Sometimes it's easy to focus on new users, without realising that existing users are getting left out. For example: menu items, icons, program names, ways of doing things -- they all change release-to-release, and it's a shame. The new user of last year had become used to how to do things, and things have all changed. Some responses to Natalie's ten things: 2. Wouldn't it be great if they all used gconf, which has a graphical interface? 4. I think there is a central control panel being worked on: http://www.hadess.net/2010/10/new-control-center-and-you.html 5. Fedora's default is not to show which kernels to boot, and I agree it is much nicer. 6. Yes, command lines are too cryptic for most people. I don't know why this isn't obvious to developers, when they think back to when they first encountered a command line. 7. Er... ABRT? ;-) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg02600.html https://fedorahosted.org/abrt/wiki 8. Not sure if you mean regular updates to a given release, or updating from one release to the next... in any case: Fedora is currently going through the (slightly painful) process of moving to tighter central control over when updates can be pushed. As for updating from one release to the next, perhaps I could be cheeky enough to suggest that it might depend on which distribution you use... ;-) 9. Yes, application names mean nothing to most people, especially now that the descriptive-name-space has been entirely used up. PackageKit displays descriptions of applications instead, e.g.: http://www.packagekit.org/img/gpk-application-groups.png 10. This is one aspect of the choice issue I mentioned above. Tim. */
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