Author: Anthony Cozzie
Date: 05:28:15 10/25/03
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>Right, but the basic paradigm (windows, icon, mouse, pointer) is the same >between all windowing systems and transfer is quite easy. (I've sat people in >front of an X-based system and, after the initial worries, they've adapted >readily). Look, as I stated in my other posts, I'm not talking about programmers. One of the differences with people that are computer savvy is that we are generally willing to simply *try* things. Hmm, that looks like a taskbar, I bet that funky button on the lower left is the START equivalent. Most people aren't willing to do that because they are afraid they'll erase all their data :) Plus, having an expert looking over their shoulder helps a lot. >That is rapidly narrowing down to two, KDE and Gnome. Anyway ... as 1. I don't like KDE or Gnome. Try Blackbox and after a few days you won't go back. It doesn't waste memory/cpu - starts up in .1 seconds, and is lightning fast afterwards. I had trouble with Bluecurve being slow on a Celeron 1.8!! Blackbox is very conservative with your screen space - no foolish taskbar. And it simply _looks slick_. So this is at least one person who *likes* a little freedom in the windowmanager world. >Actually, almost all of the really significant UI work was done in the 1970s, >well before Microsoft and Apple haled up over the horizon; what is done now is >effectively marketing, and the need to make things appear different and "new" >from time to time to drive product updates, than anything else. > >If there is usability-based rationale for the application colour scheme changing >from silver in Office 2000/XP to blue and orange in Office 2003 I can't think of >it! OK, I'm not talking about "significant work". Although I believe MS invented the tabbed dialog, which was a major step forward. And very little has happened to Office since Office95. And MS definitely has their good and bad applications. BUT, the point is that MS spends money asking the people what they want, monitoring their tech support calls, etc. And its a circle, because people get used to MS products, and MS adapts to them, and that is why MS is in their monopoly position today. >The problem here is that it is not really known what "ordinary people" use their >computers for. If they are forever installing and uninstalling software, you're >right. However, if there is little change from a basic setup - or it is a >corporate setup with everything locked down - the type of "usability" you talk >about doesn't matter. One of the points that I will certainly concede (as I did to Christophe) is that there is a big difference between "Linux" and "Someone knowledgeable installed Redhat 9.0 on my system". For example, the Wean cluster at CMU runs TWM as their default window manager. TWM has the charming characteristic that you had to place *every new window* yourself. So you would type mozilla, and suddenly your mouse would have this hollow grey rectangle attached, and you would have to click somewhere to get your window. Windows, as I keep harping on, is always the same. However, I think you are missing the point. Lots of people install software all the time. They buy a new game or something. In fact, I would go so far as to say almost everyone (not in a corporate environment) installs software. >(I note that your definition of "usability" seems to be "ease of tinkering", >whereas mine is a wider one of "ease of performing task whatever that might be" >:) Not entirely. Right now I am writing on Mozilla firebird, and it seems to have an annoying bug where sometimes the text field locks up. This is (for some reason) fixed by pasting out of the window. Don't ask me why. Or, I used KWord to write some reports. Its "print" function didn't quite work; it couldn't align text properly, and sometimes it would get chopped off. Again, the overal quality of stuff on linux just isn't there yet. Its a heck of a lot better, but its not there yet. Remember I'm on your side here. I don't even have Windows on my computer. And there are a lot of things you can't do in windows: Run a journaling filesystem, Logical Volume manager, no sed, etc. The default windows gui has no virtual desktops, and maximize is right next to close, for some stupid reason, etc. So Windows is far from perfect. BUT, the average Joe who has never used linux will find Windows easier to use, whether he is installing software, hardware, or just using his system. anthony
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