Hi, I wanted to share with you this video I found on youtube:
Taking an early look at HelenOS (version 0.11.1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e4wF75qePw I liked this. It's very good to look at this kind of video and see what a person encountering the system for the very first time is likely to struggle with. I'll try to make some quick notes for future reference. Overall, to an average Joe looking at the OS from a speed train, the system feels very immature. This may come as a shock to us, but it should not, seeing the gaps in the UI (also evidenced by the version number ^_^). He hates Barber, because it's very distracting/annoying (sorry Martin). He starts by playing with the terminal, because that's what's presented prominently. He verifies the window can be moved around. He types 'help' because that what it told him to do. He notices the OS expects you to be command-line savvy (as it says Bdsh is the primary interface) He welcomes line editing/copy/paste, history and mouse-wheel history scrolling. He repeats many times "this is a lot of features for a zero-dot-eleven system that is very early in development." He tries 'help commands' He tries to use the virtual consoles, because the survival tips tell him so, but this does not work, because he's running in desktop mode, not in console mode(!) He is surprised that there are virtual consoles. He is glad there is a user guide online, but does go into it. 'help commands' He notices 'familiar' and 'unfamiliar' commands He tries 'kcon' and he does not know how to switch back (tries exit, quit) and has to reboot 'ls' 'ls app' He unsuccesfully tries to scroll back the listing, which does not fit the screen (!!) 'ping <address>' - failed 'tetris' (surprised it's text based) 'ls srv' 'devman' '/srv/devman' - he thinks he is supposed to run things in /srv (afterall the survival tips suggest this) and realizes it's probably not for the average user Starts Calculator from the launcher and is happy with it (controls with keyboard and mouse) Starts UI Demo from launcher (plus points for confusing him with Moire fractal) Starts GFX Demo from the launcher (note: not entirely obvious what it's doing) [The end] I would put some takeaway points: - don't underestimate known usability issues like scrollback in terminal (terminal resizing...) they can be a real problem - if you want Joe to try something, you need to put it right under their nose (e.g. not dead obvious that the system can play sounds) - wonder what emulation/virtualization was being used. He seemed to expect a network connection, but there wasn't one. Why? Regards, Jiri
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