Out of boredom, and in part, related to a discussion on Fedora forums, I
made a very casual usability test comparing Fedora 13, Ubuntu 10.04 and
Mint 9.
I used LiveCDs (which wasn't really a good test, as you'll see in a
minute.)
The test consisted of nothing more than playing a Quicktime video from
Apple's site and seeing how easy it would be to get my HP all in one
printer/scanner to work.
As expected, Mint was easiest. The Quicktime video played from the
LiveCD with no trouble--while I realize that folks like Roy don't like
this, firstly, I don't know what the law is in the Mint head developer's
country--I think he's a Frenchman living in Ireland. They also offer a
US version, e.g., crippled, without the various proprietary codecs
installed.
The printer was another matter. Though it finds and installs the
drivers with no problem, scanning didn't work. However, even on the
liveCD, one can install hplip, and installing that, then running
hp-setup enabled me to scan. The theoretical average user who just
wants things to work would have possibly given up. The error message
was a typical useless Linux error, see your system administrator or
something like that.
It's a quick fix, but of course, I have "Linux" in my job title.
Anyway, moving along...
Ubuntu's live CD just gave an Apple message, you need to install
QuickTime with a link. That, of course, would have taken the taken the
user to a website that has no Linux version, just another way in which
Apple gives back to the OSS community, though their userland is
basically taken from FreeBSD. However, by now, everyone who isn't an
Apple fanperson knows that their doody-heads, so that should suprise no
one. Their efforts to show how other smartphones have a problem are
fairly pathetic, especially since it's also moderately well known that
they fired people and hired (or are seeking) some developers to work on
the antennae. Hrrm, interesting thought if there was such
accountability in OSS, a lot of folks should be fired.
However, installing Ubuntu and uncommented the various extra repos in
sources.list handles it in a good way, IMHO. You go to play it and get
a message that you don't have all the codecs installed, would you like
to search--it then searches and downloads the codecs. It will then
eventually play the clip, but with no sound. Why? Because they insist
on using Totem as their default player, another OSS product that doesn't
work very well. Installing mplayer and gecko-mediaplayer (which,
sometime when I wasn't looking, replaced mplayer-plugin), fixed it.
Once again, however, the user who is looking for a Just Works(TM)
distribution would have been frustrated. Of course, looking at who
Ubuntu has in the QA, this isn't surprising. (Hi Jeff, how's Poland?)
:)
(Jeff has actually commented that he too doesn't like Totem--maybe he
can institute a change there. If it were run by Steve Jobs, the Totem
developer might be fired.)
The printer setup was the same as Mint's--it finds the printer and
installs the drivers that don't work for scanning. Once again, hplip
works without problem, but it's not something the user would know. As
all of these distributions are aimed more at the person fleeing Windows,
their expectation would be that when the printer driver is installed,
scanning would work. It doesn't.
Lastly Fedora. While it's still got the (deserved) reputation as an
often broken distribution, apparently, they're trying to change this,
according to a (very polite) exchange I had with one of their few
developers who actually listens to the users and tries to get surprising
tihngs either changed, or at least documented.
Firstly, they only install free as in Free Speech software. So, the
first thing most people do is add the rpmfusion repos, which cover some
of the codecs. Therefore, I installed it (vs. the live CD) as well,
since, like Ubuntu, the liveCD simply shows people that Linux isn't
ready for the desktop.
Unlike Ubuntu, there isn't a flash plugin available in the repos, one
has to download it from Adobe's site. Also, unlike Ubuntu, which
installs the flash plugin and everything else necessary, a 64 bit Fedora
needs some other things installed. It's actually well documented on
Fedora's site, but basically, a user would have perhaps searched for
flash and only found gnash, which is far from ready for primetime.
If they'd then installed flash on a 64 bit system, they would have found
that there was no sound. (Again, the solution is well-documented and
not hard to find--the problem with this is that if said Windows refugee
went to a forum and asked, they'd be told to search the forum, or google
a little. The chances of them finding someone to actually walk them
through it are slim).
Quicktime was fixed in the same way as it was in Ubuntu--however, there
is no helpful message and an offer to find codecs--you get the message
to install Quicktime from the site, and then have to know by yourself to
install mplayer or VLC and the proper associated plugin thing that will
use it as a player in a browser.
Printing was worse than the others. Although, like the others, it found
the printer and installed the driver, it wouldn't scan. I then
installed hplip, and it still wouldn't scan. As I already know that
Fedora (we're making Ubuntu a better choice) frequently has this issue,
I then installed it from source, using the documentation on the hplip
site, which works. (Unlike the docs for CentOS, which are outdated and
won't work--on the other hand, CentOS doesn't market itself as a Windows
replacement.)
So...
My summary is that the theoretical average user would say, Well, that
was a waste of time. I can't even scan.
Were they to use Ubuntu or Fedora, they would say, That was a complete
waste. I can't scan, I can't watch videos---why are people using this
garbage?
Point being, it's all easy to fix if you know how. However, coming from
Windows or Apple, where things either just work, or require one easily
found driver download, this theoretical average user is going to find it
more difficult to use than what they're used to, and requiring more
effort--often, if they *do* go to the trouble of joining a mailing list
or forum to ask, especially simple questions like this, they'll just be
told to google it themselves, leaving them with a poor impression of the
Linux community as well as of Linux.
So....I'll close with something I found rather amusing--a "digg.com in
20 years." The first article was, "Why 2029 Will Be The Year Of The
Linux Desktop."
If you've read this far, well, thanks for reading.
--
Scott Robbins
PGP keyID EB3467D6
( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6
Willow: Oz is a werewolf.
Buffy: It's a long story.
Oz: I got bit.
Buffy: Apparently not that long.
Faith: Hey, as long as you don't go scratchin' at me or humpin' my
leg, we're
five-by-five, ya' know?
Oz: Fair enough.
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