Shuttleworth Suggests 1-Way Valve For User Experience Testing 757
darthcamaro writes "No surprise but Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth has come out swinging in favor of the Linux desktop. Speaking at Linuxcon yesterday he detailed the things that he thinks Linux requires in order to win the desktop wars. Those include: co-ordinated software releases, better quality and design, some user experience testing and oh yeah, a dose of 'shut the f*** up' too. During his keynote, he extended an invitation to any open source application to submit their software for testing by user-experience experts. The sessions would be recorded for posterity, and the developer would not be able to interact with the user. "'If the developer is in the room, they have to say nothing. It's the shut the f*** up protocol,' Shuttleworth said. 'You sit and watch someone struggle with the software that you've so lovingly produced.'"
We are our own problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Users always ruin the best software.
Re:We are our own problem. (Score:5, Funny)
What did he just tell you? STFU!
Re:We are our own problem. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:We are our own problem. (Score:4, Interesting)
STFUnix
Re:We are our own problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
User satisfaction with software is inversely proportional to how much work they must do - how many separate actions they must take - to accomplish something.
Yes.
I.e., competently designed software obsoletes the user, making user acceptance testing extraneous.
No.
Competently designed software allows users to do the tasks they have to do without unnecessarily complicated actions and time wasting steps. That's why we don't code in MS Word and do excel spreadsheets in machine language within emacs. We could use those methods but the software has been written that allows us to do them better. The software does not do it for us and it cannot create as varied an output as is capable from humans yet. So the software should not get in the way of the user and should help perform tasks. The STFU method tells us that if a group of users strugled to find a simple or easy feature to perform a task, the software may need to be adjusted. Perhaps just the GUI color or menu label, but if the people out there cannot find something or have trouble doing a task that the software can perform if they just new how. There is a problem. More training is easy to prescribe but it can be avoided for good promotion of user experiences. How many times have people fixed a linux distro to make it easier to do a task. Cat, Grep, etc. Rather than programming in perl all the time to get basic features, these tools have been added to make it easier. Same thing in the GUI world. Make it easier and it is more useful.
Re:We are our own problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not that you ignore those comments completely, but if you are to control the development process (your only hope of getting a final product with any sanity) you absolutely must separate requirements gathering and user/usability testing.
So when the user says "You know what would make this better, you should add feature Y", you make a note of it and switch the focus back to the features the product does have.
If it turns out later 4 out 5 users ask about feature Y, then maybe it goes in to the next version. But testing is not requirements gathering.
Kudos to him! (Score:5, Insightful)
He knows what he's talking about. We don't need more RMS but more people like Shuttleworth. Pragmatically minded, not focused only on ideals. If somebody wants follow only ideas I suggest Green Peace or monastery.
Re:Kudos to him! (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't need more RMS but more people like Shuttleworth. Pragmatically minded, not focused only on ideals.
Right. There are definitely not enough people to go around.
Damn those idealists, sucking up all the available people, keeping them from getting anything done.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the state of the binary ATI driver is a far bigger problem.
They can oppose it all they want, but last I checked both are available and the NVIDEA one actually even works.
Re:Kudos to him! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Kudos to him! (Score:5, Insightful)
It was opposition to binary-only drivers that kicked off the formal free software movement in the first place, and it has helped. Greatly.
In the short-term, binary drivers are often a better choice. Some driver is better than no driver, right? But in the long run, free/open source drivers are usually better. Just look at how crashy and difficult to work with the Nvidia drivers have been. Or how severely limited the ATI drivers were.
What's more, the fact that the binary Nvidia drivers are treated as a sort of pariah helps Linux overall in that there are probably numerous other drivers that might have been released as binary-only drivers, but for fear of being rejected by the Linux community. Nvidia can get away with it because they are so large, they can say "my way, or the high way". Up to a point. But if binary-only drivers were treated as completely legitimate, every other hardware maker would be motivated to release binary drivers instead of open source drivers.
They may make life difficult sometimes, but you should thank those "rabid" idealists, because they also make life better for you. Without them, there wouldn't have even been a Linux in the first place.
Re:Kudos to him! (Score:5, Insightful)
The binary drivers are an excellent example as Parent noted-- the manufacturers aren't yet comfortable enough to release free and open drivers-- but at least we get something that works. If the idealists don't give up, someday we'll see a change of heart from the manufacturers.
Re:Kudos to him! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah! Ideals are for losers!
FFS.
Did it ever occur to you that without RMS there would be no Shuttleworth?
Re:Kudos to him! (Score:4, Insightful)
Without RMS, we might not have anything like modern Linux. With due respect to Linus' ability to run a very large project, I think the GPL was vital in getting so many people working on Linux. Further, there's an awful lot of Gnu software in every Linux distro, which is due to RMS' work in creating a Free OS based on Unix.
Re:Kudos to him! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Kudos to him! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, just like BSD. Er....
Re:Kudos to him! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Kudos to him! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kudos to him! (Score:4, Interesting)
For me, "successful" in regards to my own code means it has benefited me in some way, and that is:
A. Getting paid for it
B. Getting code contributions
Since I see it that way, I GPL my code. I consider it successful when somebody comes to me to pay for an improvement, or when somebody takes my code and improves it (since they have to release the changes).
Getting my code used by millions but not getting anything back is of no value to me.
Re:Kudos to him! (Score:4, Insightful)
"I see no freely licensed BSD systems before 1993."
That's because of the legal issues with AT&T. Linus has been quoted as saying that if BSD UNIX had been available at the time, he probably wouldn't have written Linux.
So one could argue that the existence of Linux owes more to AT&T than just the creation of UNIX.
Re:Kudos to him! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is Linux, we can have, and need to have, both.
There will be free Linuxes, like Debian. There will be "pragmatic" Linuxes, like Ubuntu. There will be all sorts of Linuxes in between.
Linux requires both the RMS types and the Shuttleworth types in order to both survive (RMS) and grow out of its niche (Shuttleworth).
Re:Kudos to him! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not saying Mark Shuttleworth is doing a bad job, but when you start saying things like, "It's either Richard or Mark! One or the other!" you've kind of gotten off base. They both have good things to say and actually for the most part are in agreement.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Kudos to him! (Score:5, Funny)
RMS?
Basic personal hygiene, is my guess.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, you do realize that you are agreeing with Shuttleworth? He wants the developers to STFU and watch how the end-users use the software, so they can see that their UI sucks.
STFU needs to be heard. (Score:5, Funny)
Ok, sounds like a cool idea. I would LOVE the Amarok2.x devs to sit in on that session.
Re:STFU needs to be heard. (Score:4, Insightful)
I would love for the Gnome developers to sit in on that session.
And then be beaten with sledgehammers until they understand that the goal should not be 'unconfigurable' but 'no configuration needed 90% of the time, and configurable the remaining 10% of the time'.
Re:STFU needs to be heard. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a coder, gamer, and all-around power-user. I've been using Linux for years, including 2-3 years of using Gentoo exclusively, back before it had any sort of gui installer.
In all that time, I've only had Gnome not let me do something (or make it overly difficult) twice: once was when they went to "spacial" (I think they called it) handling of folder-opening in Nautilus, which was only a slight pain to fix and which, AFAIK, has been switched back to a not-retarded default anyway, and setting each virtual desktop to a different background, which I'd still like to be able to do but which really isn't that big a damn deal.
What exactly do all these "Gnome won't let you configure anything! KDE 4Evar!" people want to be able to do with Gnome that they can't?
Re:STFU needs to be heard. (Score:5, Interesting)
I wanted to tell NetworkManager to do something specific (IIRC, use a specific DNS server rather than the one handed out by the DHCP server on my DSL gateway, but it's been a year or so) and couldn't. When I opened a ticket about it, it was closed WONTFIX with the notation that the idea behind it was zero-configuration and adding the ability to configure it to do this was therefore unacceptable.
I want gnome-terminal not to eat my right-clicks. People have been asking for that for *years* and are constantly told that the Gnome developers know better than they do about what they need.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ok, that's true. NM's better than the awful GUI network config programs that came before it, and the alternative
Re:STFU needs to be heard. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:STFU needs to be heard. (Score:4, Informative)
For cut/paste? That would be incredibly stupid because ctrl-c means send SIGINT to the program running on the terminal. It has been this way long before someone decided to use ctrl-c for copy.
OT: Amarok 1.4 debs for Ubuntu (Score:3, Informative)
Amen to that. Fortunately, there is a godsend for Ubuntu users: Amarok 1.4 series PPA [launchpad.net]. You just add it to your package sources and install "amarok14". Thank you Bogdan Butnaru.
Re:STFU needs to be heard. (Score:5, Insightful)
I always get asked, "How did you get good with computers?" To which I reply, "I was just able to read."
Well, the computer industry is slowly learning how to deal with people like you. More and more, they are implementing the "no documentation at all" standard. In the near future, it won't matter that you know how to read, because there will be no document anywhere for anything.
Actually, for Microsoft and Apple stuff, they're pretty much there now. Most of their new stuff has no written documentation at all. Their one remaining problem is that there are online forums where people actually write about such things, and google can quickly find them for you. But MS and Apple are working on ways of confounding that approach.
So soon you'll have no choice but to ask around to find out how to do something. If you do this via email or IM, your message will be hidden from others, so they won't be able to read the results.
I just wasted a number of hours trying to help a friend figure out how to deal with an incomprehensible Vista error message that makes logins totally fail. There are several thousand questions about the specific message online, and it appears that several hundred people have managed to fix it. But so far, none of the discussions we've found actually say what they did to fix it. So we've apparently hit a brick wall, despite all the bandwidth taken up by discussions of this particular problem. This illustrates how the MS community is learning to hobble those who can read, and ensure that there is nothing useful online on the topic.
Lessee; do I need a ;-) here?
grawlix fail (Score:5, Funny)
and oh yeah, a dose of 'shut the f*uck up' too.
Wow, it's a good thing that asterisk was there. Somebody might have seen something profane.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Somebody might have s*** something profane.
F***.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, it worked on me. I'm trying to figure out what word the summary writer was trying to imply. Firetruck maybe?
Re:grawlix fail (Score:4, Funny)
I like your idea though. Living close to a busy street, there are many evenings when I wish somebody would shut the firetruck up.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
>
1. Calls PETA ...
2. Sues SPCA for not preventing god from killing kittens
3.
4. PROFIT!!!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, I happen to like them. But my doctor told me to watch my cholesterol.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
To be so lucky... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've done a bit of software dev here and there, and I've never had the luxury of being near the users when they first prop it open.
For that reason, I've developed a habit of showing a beta to a nearby co-worker, or a friend, and ask them "Check this out."
And when they say "What is it?" - I haven't done my job right.
Re:To be so lucky... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To be so lucky... (Score:4, Interesting)
Well exactly. Someone up there in the comments mentioned how Open Source Developers like to "Scratch their own itch" - which in my opinion is really the wrong way to tackle a problem. What alot of developers don't realize is that the actual design process (which should be done first) can be done with very little input from the developer. Well, the blame isn't squarely on them, the users also need to be clear and concise about what they want and they need to be able to present it to a developer - in the same way the developer has to present their product:
A Developer can't be expected to know everything about how the user does their job - but they're expected to make a program to assist in that process. Likewise a user can't be expected to know everything about how a program works - but they're expected to know how it works when its done.
So there is this huge middle ground where either:
A) The user is so confused by what does what, because the Developer took it upon himself to make an amazing program that does it all
or
B) The user is not happy with what the functions are doing - or its missing functionality, or some logic is missing - which ends up being blamed on the Developers for not making it properly and they have to go through it all again.
It usually all boils down to people not telling the Developers enough, or the Developers are assuming that they know what to do and don't ask questions. The solution is just better communcation. If you can, get a Visio Diagram going, maybe some flow charts, anything and everything to help you lay down the design of the project. Designing is really a 2 way street, it needs to be done by the user just as much as it does have to be done by the developer, maybe even a little more so on the user. Once Design is down - Development becomes an EASY process that can be done in DAYS instead of weeks. It becomes like High school physics where you have the formula sheet and you just plug in the numbers to get the answer. (Assuming you were good at high school physics. I'm sorry, I'm an insensative Clod)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Designing is really a 2 way street, it needs to be done by the user just as much as it does have to be done by the developer, maybe even a little more so on the user."
But in most small OSS projects the developer *is* the user, at least at design stage. Most developers don't write code to help the community, they write it because they enjoy doing it and/or need it done. Then, they help the community by release the source, when it's too late to make design decisions.
Re:To be so lucky... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well exactly. Someone up there in the comments mentioned how Open Source Developers like to "Scratch their own itch" - which in my opinion is really the wrong way to tackle a problem.
What the hell? I have a problem. I choose to fix it. I then offer my solution to the world at large, completely for free. Now you come along and tell me that I've solved my own problem wrong and should have somehow done it so it benefits you more.
WTF?
If you want me to work for you, then you have to pay me a lot of money. If you don't like the free itch-scratching stuff I give away, then ignore it ang go about your life as if it was never there.
Talk about a sense of entitlement...
Re:To be so lucky... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know how many times I've torn my hair out because the 'Help' menu's only item was "About".
PS - I thought I was the only one. I banged my head on the desk one time and it left a bruise because of that. True story. (I wasn't having a very good day to begin with though)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For linux distro to increase adoption rates, I would suggest that the usability threshold should be set at the level of the average /windows/ user.
Because that's what the majority of the population is using, and they'll just switch right back to windows if they try Linux and can't accomplish what they already know how to accomplish in windows. If they're exploring Linux, the benefits will need to outweigh the drawback of researching how to get things done. Lowering the barriers to entry would help Linux ado
Not the issue.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not the issue.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Take someone fully new to computers and have them learn Linux or Windows and chances are they will figure out Linux faster.
Citation needed.
I'm not being a dick, I'm genuinely curious: has there been any study on this topic, beyond anecdotal posturing?
Re:Not the issue.... (Score:5, Funny)
This is easy:
Step 1- Get two identical rooms. Fill one with computers with your favorite Linux installed, the other with computers with Windows installed.
Step 2- Put a sign on the door reading "Mac Lab". Use large letters.
Step 3- Observe resulting behavior. Write paper. Profit!
(Before anyone gets offended, I think Macs are ok and used them a lot in the past, but think this would be an interesting experiment even though different than the op suggested.)
Re:Not the issue.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not the issue.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Piffle (Score:3, Interesting)
You can still perform plenty of validation testing irrespective of what platform a person has used. If a given person can't figure out what your trying to do with the tools provided than the software needs work. When I used to do work for a manufacturer we took people off of the assembly line or equivalent, made sure they knew nothing about computers and used them to perform the testing. If they couldn't figure things out on their own, the test was considered a failure. Blaming the platform or the userbase
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm confused.. weren't you talking about word processors just two lines back? Now it's operating systems? What aspects of that operating system, exactly? Are you talking about the desktop management or the CLI?
That said.. I understand what you're trying to say.. that people are biased from their experience with a 'competing' product.
On the other hand, that bias may not be a bad thing.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Inherrent charateristic of Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
Because so many developers develop Open Source applications for personal satisfaction, they tend to focus on scratching their own itches.
A characteristic of usability testing is that your goal is to scratch the itch of your customers; your preferences have very little significance in the context of the test.
It doesn't take a genius to see a potential conflict in the two goals; on the other hand, a developer likes to see his code in actual use by actual human beings. To maximize this use, a developer must at least pay lip service to documentation and UI testing.
Many developers never make this conceptual leap, however.
Re:Inherrent charateristic of Open Source (Score:5, Funny)
Note to self. Stop shaking hands with Open Source developers...
Shockwave (Score:3, Informative)
Accessibility != Scalability (Score:5, Insightful)
User experience can be a strange thing (Score:5, Interesting)
True story here: dad's computer had OpenOffice, not MS Office. My sister's experience with OpenOffice's Impress was terrible: she needed to print all slides from a .ppt file, and couldn't find this option. As she had a tight deadline, and I had nearly zero experience with presentation software anyway, I shrugged and installed MS Office. She ran Powerpoint and found her way very easily.
Just a bit later, I tried to find out how one prints all slides from a presentation.
Guess what? It's done EXACTLY the same way in Impress and Powerpoint. Same function, same name, same location. See, this is not a "Photoshop versus Gimp" style comparison; interface-wise, they were nearly identical (that was before the "ribbon" thing). If she found her way in Powerpoint, she should have found her way in Impress. Yet, she somehow panicked with the new program.
What can a developer do about users that won't even TRY?!
I've participated in usability testing at MSFT (Score:5, Interesting)
... as a developer.
They basically have labs with one-way mirror. User is left alone in a sound-proof room and given a set of tasks to perform. Everything is recorded (including facial expressions and sound), and any developer can take a look at the test either from the adjacent room or from his/her workstation (using Windows Media Player). The only input the user gets is when he gets so confused he can't accomplish the task from the list. In which case the person conducting the test just says "next task" and that's it.
The experience is really humbling. You just realize that people out there are FAR, FAR less experienced with computers than you thought, and even working their email client is a challenge for most.
You make your assumptions on the basis of what's convenient for you. Guess what, people out there are not you, and what's good for you is torture for them (the inverse is often true, too).
We ended up redesigning the entire chunks of the UI sometimes, some features got cut, some scenarios overhauled. And in the end we still didn't do enough of usability testing (IMO), but such is life in commercial software development - you work against an arbitrary schedule.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And in the end we still didn't do enough of usability testing (IMO), but such is life in commercial software development - you work against an arbitrary schedule.
Lemme let you in to a little MSFT secret here: what you witnessed was eyewash to make you feel better about your job.
The people that matter at Microsoft know the truth: that when you have a monopoly, all that's needed is to make sure the software doesn't crash on the launch presentation and that it supports as much hardware as possible. Achieve that, and you have achieved your annual bonus because even if MS released a C# horse's butt, billions of corporate slaves would still buy it and sign up for the upgr
Um, no (Score:4, Informative)
This was a new product, in a new (for Microsoft) market. We were starting from zero marketshare against firmly entrenched competitors. It took that product about five years to even start breaking even and now it brings in a healthy profit.
People at MSFT by and large try really hard to put out the best product they can. Unfortunately, in a company the size of Microsoft it's not as straightforward as it perhaps should be. If you work on a product that's already shipped a few versions, you end up having to convince too many people to get anything changed, so unless something is truly horribly broken people tend to pick their fights and argue for the cases where have a greater probability of success.
Fortunately, this is not an issue with new, v1 products, since you're building from the ground up. Hence, in our case, we've made fairly dramatic changes as we went along.
Re:I've participated in usability testing at MSFT (Score:4, Informative)
No. That's a new problem. The parent poster's assertion used to be true, but recently it's become much less so. The users are rebelling, and refusing to upgrade to Vista and Office 2007, because the old versions are "good enough" and the new ones just introduce a lot of problems. This is causing severe problems at MSFT, because they're used to the old way, where they shovel out shit that's a little better than the previous version and everyone buys it, and now with not enough people "upgrading", their revenue stream is in big trouble.
another good user experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Go do volunteer basic computer literacy session for your local senior center. Don't try to convert them to linux or get them using Firefox or anything dumb like that. Just ask what their problems are, and how you can help. You will quickly understand how broken and unintuitive computer software is.
Nice sentiments but... (Score:4, Insightful)
this is the same Mark Shuttleworth who removed update-notifier and then when hundreds of beta-testers said 'please put that back' on the infamous https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-notifier/+bug/332945 [slashdot.org] he personally said 'no, I'm not listening to you'.
He said it politely:
"I'm marking the bug wontfix on the basis that we are confident the behaviour as at 9.04 release is a good one. I wouldn't be surprised for the conversation to continue though I do ask that it continue in a good spirit. If significant data shows this to be a suboptimal choice in future, we will revisit the point, but for now the question is settled."
but it was still a WONTFIX in the face of overwhelming public opinion to the contrary.
I'll believe he listens to users when he actually listens to the users.
But he was right... (Score:5, Informative)
For the benefit of those not familiar with this... the old behaviour of displaying updates was to display an icon next to the clock. The new behaviour is:
Friends' Ubuntu installations were rarely updated due to the limited attention received by the little icon. With the new [minimised] update window, the machines updated weekly.
It all comes down to visibility.
Cheers.
Re:Nice sentiments but... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're confusing two very different things. "Pay attention to the user's behavior" and "listen to what the user asks for".
The first is always valuable. Seeing what users do is just plain good. You should be doing that. You should absolutely be doing that.
The second, however, is a frequent mistake. Users don't know what they want. They know what they want to do, and they either know they can't do it or they know how they used to be able to do it, but the ideas they come up with to fix that issue tend to range the gamut from "barely acceptable" to "horrible".
Any change you make to an existing UI - *any change whatsoever* - will result in a storm of people calling for blood. No matter how good the idea is, no matter how good the change is, people will scream for it to be changed back. If you want to create a good UI, at some point you just have to ignore this. People yell for reversion, you tell them "no", and a few months down the line you find out if you made the right call or not.
You might think he made the wrong decision here, but "listening to the users" has absolutely nothing to do with real user experience testing.
Re:Nice sentiments but... (Score:5, Insightful)
The two really aren't the same thing, they only seem that way because you've erroneously over-simplified his position to "listen to the users."
User experience testing is essentially about usability. If you put some dude who has never seen your software in front of it, can he use it to get his work done? Is there anything seriously impeding his ability to 1) learn or 2) use the software?
What you're referencing is that something changed and people don't like the change. For starters, most people don't like change even if it is ultimately change for the better. More to the point though, it has nothing to do with learning or using a piece of software. They simply preferred one behavior to another for a set of reasons that may or may not address any of the reasons the change was ultimately made. A user below suggested that the previous situation (apparently, an icon in the dock for updates) was terribly ineffective but that the new system now achieves much higher update rates. In a situation like that, where some users are annoyed by a behavior but there is a demonstrable and measurable net positive to the change, reverting it is probably the wrong answer even if his motto was "listen to the users."
For what it's worth, as somebody who has no vested interest in the change either way I think his response was perfectly reasonable.
Was it overwhelming public opinion? Sorry if I'm wrong in my assumptions, but I smell some bias in your post. It seems to me like you were one of the ones who want the change reverted. There's nothing wrong with that, but combine selection bias with the general megaphone that negative reactions get compared to positive ones (far more people hop on to review something they hated than loved) and I don't know it's as clear-cut as you suggest. Plus, this is a bugtracker. For all the increased likelihood of bad comments to good in general, most people wouldn't even think to log onto a bug tracker if they liked or accepted the new behavior. And why should they?
It's also worth mentioning that "listen to your users" wouldn't necessarily equate with "give your users everything they want" as well.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You may not want it but others do, including me. Linux (currently Debian stable on the desktop and Arch on the laptop) has been my sole desktop OS for years, and the same is true for millions of others. Who are you to say that Windows and Mac are fine?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't give a sh*t about such metrics.
I am more worried about the usefulness and usability of available applications.
I am more worried about driver support and interesting driver features like Purevideo.
I can fully exploit a HD-PVR on my MythTV server and have it stream to an ION box with full hardware acceleration for h264.
Tell me again why I should care about your "world domination metrics"?
Re:We DO need another desktop OS. (Score:4, Insightful)
So what?
Look, your wife is well served by Windows. My father is well served by MacOS. Great. There are operating systems for them.
I use desktop Linux. I've used desktop Linux since 1996. I use it because it's well suited to my needs, and I do not care who else does or does not use it. If it fits their needs, they can use it. If something else fits their needs, they can use that. As long as there are enough users to keep development going, why would I care about more people adopting Linux?
In fact, changing Linux to make it appeal to your grandmother is just likely to make it less useful to me, because your grandmother and I have different needs. Which is why we just might need to use different operating systems.
So long as the data on the wire are standard, the end node operating system doesn't matter. Use what works for you. Shuttleworth cares about market share because he's in it for a buck. What's in it for the rest of us?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Whatever. I had to explain disk images to a fucking Ivy League professor (a young one, not some doddering 80-year-old). People are fucking stupid. Especially Christians.
Was that before or after he told you how much money he makes, how he gets a year off after 6 years of work, and the awesome retirement plan? Not to mention the fact that he's paid to do jack-all.
I suppose I'd rather be uninformed (not stupid, as you imply) and on easy street, than whining about people like that on slashdot.
Re:We don't need another desktop OS. (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, the simple fact is there is no need for another desktop OS. Windows and Mac are fine. I don't know why people think Linux will _ever_ make headway in that space when there's no conceivable way it ever will.
Instead, how about focusing on being a workstation OS and a server OS?
Mr. RightSaidFred99, I think it's time for a big dose of, as Mr. Shuttleworth himself so elaborately expressed, shut the fuck up.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Sorry, the simple fact is there is no need for another desktop OS.."
"Instead, how about focusing on being a workstation OS and a server OS?"
The subtlety between being a desktop OS and s workstation OS is lost on me. So is the need to differentiate.
If this is the thinking going on behind Linux desktop development, then I understand why it is still almost there, but never quite. No surprise.
ps- the SFTU protocol is truly needed in the Linux community. I still get the predictable responses to requests for
Re:We don't need another desktop OS. (Score:5, Funny)
Ironically, Linux is a far better desktop OS than a Workstation OS. Microsoft is just too far ahead on making it easy to manage thousands of workstations with minimal setup.
Perhaps, but I don't think botnets really count as an example of superiority over Linux.
Re:We DO need another desktop OS. (Score:5, Insightful)
My biggest complaint about Linux on the desktop is the lack of a true universal UI
Not much of a problem though, for most people, Linux isn't Linux but a Linux distro, that is if you have Ubuntu, you get GNOME, if you have Kubuntu you get KDE. Similar to how you can either get Windows XP or Windows Vista/7 with different UIs.
and the difficulty in user software (a user should be able to run every application without tweaking text files)
Most user-level applications don't require you to tweak text files unless you need some obscure setting. A few "pro" level applications (as in, your going to be programming or know something about computers) use text files because they are easier to edit, debug and generally give support for a knowledgeable user.
and ease of administration
Compared to Windows, Linux administration is a breeze. A Linux system ran by a normal user who doesn't screw around as root, will remain stable. Simply going to a site can get you a virus in Windows. Because of this and the -large- amount of viruses on Windows, it is pretty much required to run a virus scan pretty often. With Linux, even if you are running a vulnerable everything, chances are you simply won't get a virus.
Plus, with Windows update you never know what you are going to get, "features" constantly creep in (remember the search bar that was a "critical update"?) and large changes are considered updates. It takes a lot more work administrating a small amount of Windows boxes compared to Linux.
When it achieves the same level or better of intuitiveness as Windows, then it can compete.
Windows has not intuitiveness. The only reason why we think it has is because most people have been using it for 20 some odd years. A lot of the Windows conventions have been -proven- to be counter intuitive and plain confusing (anyone else wonder why Add/Remove programs is called that even though you really can't add in any programs from there). Windows is terribly unfriendly, we just have gotten used to it.
Re:We DO need another desktop OS. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Windows has not intuitiveness. The only reason why we think it has is because most people have been using it for 20 some odd years."
Exactly. Those old exclusivity agreements that MS insisted on are still paying off. People are used to MS, and anything different is "wrong".
Not to mention - Dell, Compaq, and other OEMS basically did all of MS hardware compatibility for them. Linux is still struggling to make some hardware work that was "designed for Windows".
Just a few years of unfair advantage can translate into decades of revenues.
Re:We DO need another desktop OS. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well if a million users expect a certain UI widget at a certain spot doing certain things, what's there to stop someone from fulfilling this expectation?
If the goal is mass appeal to Microsoft fanbois, well, make it appealing then. It's much easier to change a bit of code than try to evangelize some million users. Improving any one's deep ingrained wrongness can backfire when everyone is used to it and has to adapt to everything new at once, that's life, always has been.
Car analogy: all car makers seem to have different layout of their reverse gear in stick shifts. We can't rip out all stick shifts, we cannot standardize, because people who've always driven a particular will lament for weeks when something changed. So we have a status quo for decades which nobody quite wants to change.
Microsoft got heavy flak, no, nuclear artillery, for every single change they did to the Windows UI in the last 10 years. People actually seem to like the "Windows standard"-mode of XP and all users at my company fought tooth and nails to keep that when we migrated to new terminal servers - they like it so much that people constantly ask if they could somehow revert Vista or Windows 7 to that look.
So Microsoft get's their own dose, really. Since XP, GUIs (and their userbase) have come to a point of maturity where progress can now only move forward very good reasons. We may use other window managers, different layouts or whatever, but to the general public, the Windows XP non-kiddy GUI mode has been the definitive gold standard for most regular people - for now more than half a decade.
When Microsoft could copy over the descriptive buttons from MacOS ("Overwrite:" [yes|no] and "Keep this setting [yes|no]" to File exists: [overwrite|don't overwrite] and "[Keep setting|abandon setting]" etc.), we're actually finished building a UI metaphor.
Re:We DO need another desktop OS. (Score:5, Funny)
This has to win an award for the longest sentence ever posted on Slashdot, with a special mention for incoherence.
Re:We DO need another desktop OS. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:We don't need another desktop OS. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The desktop is dying. (Score:5, Insightful)
They've been predicting the death of the desktop and a return to centralized computing for 20 years.
Re: (Score:3)
I've used Linux as my desktop since 1996. I still need to resort to using a windows machine periodically, but that's not the fault of Linux in my eyes, it's the fault of stupid management decisions that require me to use specific windows-only software (usually implemented as an ActiveX component) even though there are perfectly suitable Linux software solutions to the same problems.
That said, 5 years ago I probably resorted to using a Windows machine to do something at work once or twice a week. Now it's on
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that desktops are generally poor target systems for hackers, they have slow connections (especially slow upstream bandwidth on most consumer level connections), and are frequently rebooted or turned off when not in use...
Linux has a significant portion of the server market, especially when it comes to internet connected servers, and servers typically have a lot more bandwidth and are running 24/7, a lot of companies specialize in hosting dedicated or virtualized linux servers that are operated by clu
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully it's for UI design ability.
Re:Pretty good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Your fears are unfounded. If they were valid, we wouldn't have GNOME & KDE & the hundreds of other desktop environments and window managers.
In fact, this will make things even better. KDE will still be KDE, but it will be more usable. Same with GNOME. Some of the more esoteric systems will not change, because they aren't aimed at regular people.
There is no single Linux OS that can be bettered/ruined by a single person. There are literally *hundreds* of Linux OSs. And even if there were just one single Linux OS, how can you argue *against* usability testing? If there's just one OS, and it goes through testing, it will almost certainly be made better, but if you *don't* test, it will still be the single Linux OS that everyone has to use, it just won't be as good.
Re:Ubuntu not ready! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ubuntu not ready! (Score:5, Informative)
Windows has no touch screen support out of the box either.
Vista does. You're either full of shit, or talking about an ancient Windows version. Given, Vista doesn't have *multi-touch* screen support, but neither does Linux or OS X. And Windows 7 will. So... yah.
Please do the world a favor and stop spouting bullshit. If you don't know for sure, don't write the fucking post.
Re:Ubuntu not ready! (Score:4, Informative)
My comment was aimed at the people who rip on Linux because they have to install drivers (it really doesn't matter what type.) I was pointing out that you need to do that in other OS's as well.
Re:Two Things (Score:4, Interesting)
Why should software go through Ubuntu to get validated by UI Experts?
I'm guessing the *primary goal* is to get developers to have UI experts look at their software, PERIOD. I'm sure Shuttleworth would be happy if it were someone else's UI experts.
The sad but true fact is that today, the vast majority of open source software *never* has any usability testing done.
Read it like this: "Linux software needs usability testing done. The Ubuntu project can provide resources to help accomplish that."
If he wants to make Ubuntu financially self-sustaining, Linux desktops that play well with media conglomerates aren't going to get anywhere.
Huh? What the hell are you talking about?
Bottom line, I get the feeling he sees himself as the great entrepreneurial hope for all of Free Software and that it, in general, will be successful when his company is successful. Well, Mr. Shuttleworth, they were doing fine without you.
Not in the realm of developing usable applications and OSes, they weren't.
*A consistent user interface doesn't exist. Mac's Finder UI looks remarkably similar to the Disk Utility, it doesn't help you work with either one! If anything, one builds expectations the other fails to deliver.
So, since a 100% consistent user interface doesn't currently exist, we should therefore give up and not even attempt to make one? If everybody thought like you, nothing would ever happen.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I do usability studies as part of my job.
We do a one-on-one facilitated session with a user in one room, have an observer session in another room watching in real-time.
You want to have developers in the observer session, and part of the point of this is to change developer minds, and give them unfiltered feedback on what users are doing with their work. I've watched this in action many times, and it has a profound effect on developers.
Most developers write UI and processes for other developers to use. On
But if it can't do 100% of what I need (Score:5, Insightful)
It is 100% worthless.
I have a job to do, it involves many facets. I need to be able to do all of them. It isn't an option to say "No I am not going to do this part of my job." Well, my Windows system does 100% of what I need. It runs all the different kinds of software I need to do the various parts of my job. Ok, great. Now if Linux doesn't, it is worthless. Why? Because there's no point in running a different OS, if I still have to have Windows. If Linux does 80% of what I need, and Windows does 100%, then I might as well always be booted in to Windows. Why would I boot to a different OS, if it can't do everything?
Also, in terms of switching, it isn't good enough to say "You can do everything you need." It most certainly isn't worth a switch if you can do everything you need, but it is harder or more complicated to do. It isn't even good enough to say "You can do everything you need just as easy." Even if everything works as smooth as it does with what you currently have, it isn't worth switching because there's no advantage.
To be worth switching, you have to show how things are going to be BETTER. You have to show that you can do 100% of your job, and that it'll be better. Otherwise, it really isn't worth it.
I think that is part of the problem that often when people say "Well you can do what you need to do in Linux," they haven't really looked at what the person does. What the truth can be is "You can technically do what you need to do, but it'll be a whole lot of work, a good deal of retraining, and not nearly as smooth as what you have now."
Re:But if it can't do 100% of what I need (Score:4, Insightful)
I see what you did there. But I'll see it and raise.
First, there's a lot of software I use on a daily basis that either isn't available for Windows at all or requires a bunch of dicking around to get running. Sure, I can do about 75% of the things I need, as long as I'm willing to accept subpar applications that do a shitty job of what I'm trying to accomplish. Windows is therefore 100% worthless.
Second, if you can't name a dozen ways off the top of your head that the Linux desktop(s) are better than Windows, you've obviously never tried it and therefore have no place in this discussion.
Re:Linux desktop is not dead. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Jim! I'm on the Lynooks now, and I printed off 500 envelopes for the newsletter, but they're all rotated! I put the envelopes in this way, but they come out all wrong!"
You seriously overestimate the ability of a standard plebe to adjust to any change.
I have a bunch of clients that I've switched to Linux that would undoubtedly take great umbrage at this characterization. People aren't stupid by nature. But when you pound it into their heads that they are stupid, they'll internalize it. Most people have heard nothing but "computers are too complicated for you to understand," so that's what they believe. But it's bullshit. And it's usually being fed to them by bad people who are trying to pick their pockets. Which I guess is capitalism in action and probably won't change. But what I'm fucking sick of is this attitude coming from the geek community that "the proletariat just will never be as smart as us." It's obnoxious, it's offensive, and most of all it's fucking wrong. I bet you can't skydive. But if someone taught you you could.
Humans are great at adapting, but only when forced.
You might be on to something with this. Damn good thing for my business that Microsoft is great at forcing people's hands.
Re:Linux desktop is not dead. (Score:4, Interesting)
But why spend time and money teaching when continuing on with what you have works?
It doesn't work. There's an entire industry built on the fact that it doesn't work. There are entire job classifications based upon the premise that it doesn't work. And we (The People) are no longer in a position where we have the luxury of continuing to throw money at this woefully broken piece of shit.
Re:Linux desktop is not dead. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, last time I did it, it went like this.
One of the grad students in the lab decided he needed to use Linux, but he only had experience with Windows. No problem, a good first step is to install Linux at home so he gets lots of exposure to it.
Okay, install Ubuntu. Not bad (the install process has come a LONG way - proof that UI improvements can be made). Okay, everything is going fine, but how come the second monitor doesn't work? Now there's a good question: Windows and OS X both would have autodetected the monitor and just made it work. Strike 1.
But sure, let's just open up the System->Preference->Display. Oops. Second monitor isn't there. Hm. Strike 2.
All right, Google it. Here's a utility that's supposed to do the job. Install, run. Wants to install a driver. No problem, do it. Which one? The latest one. Fine. Uh oh, X won't even start. Strike 3.
Okay, fine, it's been a while since I've edited an Xorg.conf file, but let's dive into it.... That's the point where the guy decided to wipe Linux and reinstall Windows, and I can't really blame him. It turns out later that after two strikes we almost had it, except you had to pick the next to latest driver because the most recent one dies a horrible death when used with more than one monitor.
By the way, I'm not at all sure you know what you're talking about. If you type "multiple monitors" into the Ubuntu help webpage you don't get "just go to System>Preference->Display. You get this:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/XineramaHowTo [ubuntu.com]
So either you're wrong, or the Ubuntu help web site is crap. Either way, strike 4.
I hope Shuttleworth's emphasis on usability pays off. There's no reason why Linux CAN'T deal with the myriad little problems like this one, and Ubuntu has not only fixed a bunch of them in the distro but also spurred other distros into fixing long standing, stupid issues.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)