9:47 a.m.
Hi
Aza dotzler presentation on requirements for Desktop Linux is a relevant
article for what is appealing to the target audience
http://piercedotzler.com/asa/linux%20%96%20in%20search%20of%20the%20deskt...
regards
Rahul
1:52 p.m.
On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 20:17 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Hi
Aza dotzler presentation on requirements for Desktop Linux is a relevant
article for what is appealing to the target audience
http://piercedotzler.com/asa/linux%20%96%20in%20search%20of%20the%20deskt...
Owch, painful to read presentation. Guess my desktop isn't ready for
it.
This is the usual chicken-egg problem. He is full of what desktop
developers should do.
There are a few good points in there, which are overshadowed by problems
not addressed. For example, how does he propose getting all of these
preferences off a proprietary file system and out of proprietary
applications? To live side-by-side, Windows needs to be installed on a
FAT file system, which is usually not the case in the NTFS world.
I appreciate that Linux desktop developers are trying to do better than
just to cater to Windows users.
People act like Windows is the be-all of computer experience. People
get used to changes because they have to. Linux desktop being
widespread will likely come about for the same reason Windows got
widespread -- businesses adopted it, users got used to it at work, and
they brought it home.
When that happens, I will be proud that we didn't produce a Windows
clone.
- Karsten
--
Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
gpg fingerprint: 2680 DBFD D968 3141 0115 5F1B D992 0E06 AD0E 0C41
Red Hat SELinux Guide
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/selinux-guide/
1:58 p.m.
Karsten Wade wrote:
On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 20:17 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>Hi
>
>Aza dotzler presentation on requirements for Desktop Linux is a relevant
>article for what is appealing to the target audience
>
>http://piercedotzler.com/asa/linux%20%96%20in%20search%20of%20the%20desktop.pdf
>
>
Owch, painful to read presentation. Guess my desktop isn't ready for
it.
This is the usual chicken-egg problem. He is full of what desktop
developers should do.
There are a few good points in there, which are overshadowed by problems
not addressed. For example, how does he propose getting all of these
preferences off a proprietary file system and out of proprietary
applications? To live side-by-side, Windows needs to be installed on a
FAT file system, which is usually not the case in the NTFS world.
I appreciate that Linux desktop developers are trying to do better than
just to cater to Windows users.
People act like Windows is the be-all of computer experience. People
get used to changes because they have to. Linux desktop being
widespread will likely come about for the same reason Windows got
widespread -- businesses adopted it, users got used to it at work, and
they brought it home.
When that happens, I will be proud that we didn't produce a Windows
clone.
- Karsten
The presentation speaks for itself as to why Linux can't get across.
-Sam Hiser
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2:23 p.m.
swhiser wrote:
Karsten Wade wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 20:17 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>
>
>> Hi
>>
>> Aza dotzler presentation on requirements for Desktop Linux is a
>> relevant article for what is appealing to the target audience
>>
>> http://piercedotzler.com/asa/linux%20%96%20in%20search%20of%20the%20deskt...
>>
>>
>
>
> Owch, painful to read presentation. Guess my desktop isn't ready for
> it.
>
> This is the usual chicken-egg problem. He is full of what desktop
> developers should do.
>
> There are a few good points in there, which are overshadowed by problems
> not addressed. For example, how does he propose getting all of these
> preferences off a proprietary file system and out of proprietary
> applications? To live side-by-side, Windows needs to be installed on a
> FAT file system, which is usually not the case in the NTFS world.
>
> I appreciate that Linux desktop developers are trying to do better than
> just to cater to Windows users.
>
> People act like Windows is the be-all of computer experience. People
> get used to changes because they have to. Linux desktop being
> widespread will likely come about for the same reason Windows got
> widespread -- businesses adopted it, users got used to it at work, and
> they brought it home.
>
> When that happens, I will be proud that we didn't produce a Windows
> clone.
>
> - Karsten
>
>
The presentation speaks for itself as to why Linux can't get across.
-Sam Hiser
I mean, is that Sanscrit?
-Sam
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> --
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>
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2:30 p.m.
On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 14:58 -0400, swhiser wrote:
The presentation speaks for itself as to why Linux can't get
across.
I disagree, but that's mainly because a presentation of slides /= a real
report. Fortunately, I read his article[1] as well. Or do you mean,
because he used special Acrobat PDF extensions and non-free fonts, the
presentation looks terrible, and that speaks for itself? That's like
blaming proprietary document formats being unreadable on the recipient,
instead of the sender and they proprietary software vendor.
The problem is, he is discussing Linux in general, as if it were one
entity. Anyone is welcome to put the kind of polish on a desktop that
he is proposing, without having to make "all of Linux" do that.
I find his ideas contradictory. For example, in his article he
specifically mentions the reversal of OK and Cancel in GNOME is stupid,
then he says, "... application developers need to make some of the hard
choices and stop falling back on the "make it a user option" solution
that seems to be all too popular in most software these days."
Well, are we to trust our usability experts to make these decisions or
not? He seems to think yes, and well, no. It depends on how "valuable
to change" an area is, versus how "comfortable" the change is.
As long as the future of Linux on the desktop is couched in the terms of
how like Windows it is for Regular Users, I think we'll do little more
than be a Windows UI clone. Since the Windows UI sucks, why clone it?
After all, we already have Xandros.
FWIW, no amount of catering will get people to be unlazy. I tend to
agree that a Windows2Linux migration project would be good and helpful,
but I already encounter people who were surprised at how easy a modern
Linux desktop is to learn. Even if there were a feature-for-feature
compatibility and it all looked the same, what would be the value gained
for the few stragglers brought along? This value would all be in the
hands of the people prepared to sell those new Windows-like desktops to
companies, which brings us back to the chicken-egg scenario.
- Karsten
[1] http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/008499.html
--
Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
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Red Hat SELinux Guide
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/selinux-guide/
2:37 p.m.
swhiser wrote:
swhiser wrote:
> Karsten Wade wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 20:17 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> Aza dotzler presentation on requirements for Desktop Linux is a
>>> relevant article for what is appealing to the target audience
>>>
>>>
http://piercedotzler.com/asa/linux%20%96%20in%20search%20of%20the%20deskt...
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Owch, painful to read presentation. Guess my desktop isn't ready for
>> it.
>>
>> This is the usual chicken-egg problem. He is full of what desktop
>> developers should do.
>
Linux Desktop adoption is a set if social problems. Nowhere is it being
discussed in open-source circles what the go-to-market strategy is to
get across the Chasm.
Companies have a strategies and are martialing their resources while
Linux becomes more palatable to Mom & Pop:
Red Hat: [you know better than I]
Novell: [slow progress]
IBM: Workplace! This is brilliant because it makes Windows
irrelevant without threatening its replacement. It is a Cross-the-Chasm
strategy that acknowledges that large oganizations really don't want to
touch the desktop. I mean, the only thing more freightening than the
patch regime and the instability of Windows is the idea of disturbing
it. We need non-threatening alternatives while popular opinion moves to
accept a Linux situation.
-Sam
>>
>> There are a few good points in there, which are overshadowed by
>> problems
>> not addressed. For example, how does he propose getting all of these
>> preferences off a proprietary file system and out of proprietary
>> applications? To live side-by-side, Windows needs to be installed on a
>> FAT file system, which is usually not the case in the NTFS world.
>>
>> I appreciate that Linux desktop developers are trying to do better than
>> just to cater to Windows users.
>>
>> People act like Windows is the be-all of computer experience. People
>> get used to changes because they have to. Linux desktop being
>> widespread will likely come about for the same reason Windows got
>> widespread -- businesses adopted it, users got used to it at work, and
>> they brought it home.
>>
>> When that happens, I will be proud that we didn't produce a Windows
>> clone.
>>
>> - Karsten
>>
>>
>
> The presentation speaks for itself as to why Linux can't get across.
> -Sam Hiser
I mean, is that Sanscrit?
-Sam
>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>> --
>> Fedora-marketing-list mailing list
>> Fedora-marketing-list(a)redhat.com
>> http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
>>
>
> --
> Fedora-marketing-list mailing list
> Fedora-marketing-list(a)redhat.com
> http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
>
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2:41 p.m.
Karsten Wade wrote:
On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 14:58 -0400, swhiser wrote:
>The presentation speaks for itself as to why Linux can't get across.
>
>
I disagree, but that's mainly because a presentation of slides /= a real
report. Fortunately, I read his article[1] as well. Or do you mean,
because he used special Acrobat PDF extensions and non-free fonts, the
presentation looks terrible, and that speaks for itself? That's like
blaming proprietary document formats being unreadable on the recipient,
instead of the sender and they proprietary software vendor.
Yes, Karsten the font is a large problem in Asa's presentation; but it
violates my personal Principle of Minimalism: Do Not Compete with Your
Visuals. Too many letters and words.
Additionally, I disagree with many of his statements and, particularly,
assumptions & emphasis.
-Sam
The problem is, he is discussing Linux in general, as if it were one
entity. Anyone is welcome to put the kind of polish on a desktop that
he is proposing, without having to make "all of Linux" do that.
I find his ideas contradictory. For example, in his article he
specifically mentions the reversal of OK and Cancel in GNOME is stupid,
then he says, "... application developers need to make some of the hard
choices and stop falling back on the "make it a user option" solution
that seems to be all too popular in most software these days."
Well, are we to trust our usability experts to make these decisions or
not? He seems to think yes, and well, no. It depends on how "valuable
to change" an area is, versus how "comfortable" the change is.
As long as the future of Linux on the desktop is couched in the terms of
how like Windows it is for Regular Users, I think we'll do little more
than be a Windows UI clone. Since the Windows UI sucks, why clone it?
After all, we already have Xandros.
FWIW, no amount of catering will get people to be unlazy. I tend to
agree that a Windows2Linux migration project would be good and helpful,
but I already encounter people who were surprised at how easy a modern
Linux desktop is to learn. Even if there were a feature-for-feature
compatibility and it all looked the same, what would be the value gained
for the few stragglers brought along? This value would all be in the
hands of the people prepared to sell those new Windows-like desktops to
companies, which brings us back to the chicken-egg scenario.
- Karsten
[1] http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/008499.html
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10:32 p.m.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Aza dotzler presentation on requirements for Desktop Linux is a
relevant
article for what is appealing to the target audience
http://piercedotzler.com/asa/linux%20%96%20in%20search%20of%20the%20deskt...
Rahul, thanks for the link.
Unfortunately, we seem to be moving in the same loop of *Why can't my
desktop be like Windows ?* Very wrong and not the right way to a good
and proper Linux Desktop.
Both in this presentation and the blog, the issues mentioned relate
mostly to Usability on the Linux Desktop Environments vis-a-vis the
Windows UI. The assumption for this hypothesis is that the Windows UI is
picture perfect - not true at all. Assuming that there is no real need
to clone a Windows UI to make a usable Linux desktop, the real challenge
is to enhance learnability.
The few deployments of Fedora based LTSP setups that I have been
involved with have resulted in one conclusion - given no prior
experience of a desktop, the FC/Linux desktop is easily learnt by the
end users. On the other hand, anything above Windows98 (and by that one
includes a majority of the Government offices in India) causes usability
issues in terms of terminal usage/command-line interface, print-tool
usage, browser usage (inexperience with tabs) and mail client feature
requests.
A W2L migration without putting in place a proper study of functional
usage normally leads to cribbing (pardon this term, could not find a
better word) about the *learning curve*.
Regards
Sankarshan
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12:59 a.m.
Karsten Wade wrote:
FWIW, no amount of catering will get people to be unlazy. I tend to
agree that a Windows2Linux migration project would be good and helpful,
but I already encounter people who were surprised at how easy a modern
Linux desktop is to learn. Even if there were a feature-for-feature
compatibility and it all looked the same, what would be the value gained
for the few stragglers brought along? This value would all be in the
hands of the people prepared to sell those new Windows-like desktops to
companies, which brings us back to the chicken-egg scenario.
Speaking about migration, I have serious doubts regarding his strategy:
"It will need to install on machines next to Windows, leaving that
intact and easy to return to, and carry over all or nearly all of user's
data and settings."
Having the "safety" of Windows to return to will decrease the user
motivation to migrate.
Also I don't agree with the idea to copy all the settings, for example a
GNOME desktop should be leaved with the default GNOME settings, as it
was designed, trying to made it behave like Windows will produce only an
inconsistent and hard to use desktop.
PS: I guess the title is wrong, , instead of "Linux not ready for the
desktop" it should be "GNOME not ready for the desktop" or "KDE not
ready for the desktop"
--
nicu
4:21 a.m.
Hi
PS: I guess the title is wrong, , instead of "Linux not ready for the
desktop" it should be "GNOME not ready for the desktop" or "KDE not
ready for the desktop"
You are arguing semantics there. Large majority of end users make no
differentiation between GNOME/KDE UI and a "Linux UI"
regards
Rahul
4:26 a.m.
Sankarshan Mukhopadhay wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>Aza dotzler presentation on requirements for Desktop Linux is a relevant
>article for what is appealing to the target audience
>
>http://piercedotzler.com/asa/linux%20%96%20in%20search%20of%20the%20desktop.pdf
>
>
Rahul, thanks for the link.
Unfortunately, we seem to be moving in the same loop of *Why can't my
desktop be like Windows ?* Very wrong and not the right way to a good
and proper Linux Desktop.
Both in this presentation and the blog, the issues mentioned relate
mostly to Usability on the Linux Desktop Environments vis-a-vis the
Windows UI. The assumption for this hypothesis is that the Windows UI is
picture perfect - not true at all. Assuming that there is no real need
to clone a Windows UI to make a usable Linux desktop, the real challenge
is to enhance learnability.
We have to make it easy for people to migrate from the Windows UI
regardless of its flaws. We dont need to create a perfect clone. That
would be monumentally stupid but we can try and understand what makes
the current UI a higher learning curve. My opinion is that data
migration is of a even higher priority than UI similarity. GNOME and KDE
is comfortably close now. There are other points like installing legacy
group by default which is trivially easy. Lets say you try to install
Real player (ignore for the moment that its a proprietary player, a open
source off repository player will do the same thing) on Fedora Core 4,
you will get a obscure error about some .so file missing which you will
have to rectify by using installing a compat libstdc++ library.
on the other hand, anything above Windows98 (and by that one
includes a majority of the Government offices in India) causes usability
issues in terms of terminal usage/command-line interface, print-tool
usage, browser usage (inexperience with tabs) and mail client feature
requests.
Precisely. So lets look at the action items here
* Install the legacy group in Anaconda by default for better backward
compatibility. The Fedora Extras repository is not going to cover every
software out there.
* Mount FAT filesystems by default in first boot. (NTFS is off limits)
* Investigate a tool like openmover.sf.net for data migration after
confirmation with user on first boot
* Trim down core to defaults as much as possible
regards
Rahul
6:13 a.m.
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Hi
Aza dotzler presentation on requirements for Desktop Linux is a
relevant article for what is appealing to the target audience
http://piercedotzler.com/asa/linux%20%96%20in%20search%20of%20the%20deskt...
Tom Tromey brings out a bulletin list from Aza's presentation
http://www.peakpeak.com/~tromey/blog/2005/08/16/#even-more-oscon
regards
Rahul
2:37 p.m.
On Wed, 2005-08-17 at 14:51 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Hi
>
> PS: I guess the title is wrong, , instead of "Linux not ready for the
> desktop" it should be "GNOME not ready for the desktop" or "KDE
not
> ready for the desktop"
>
You are arguing semantics there. Large majority of end users make no
differentiation between GNOME/KDE UI and a "Linux UI"
Yes, but authors such as the one of the article discussed here need to
have some clue about that.
After all, arguing about the desktop with a kernel engineer is like
discussing dashboard layout details with the powerplant automotive
engineer.
It is worth noting because both GNOME and KDE have particular ideas
around usability. They are not just pulling features from their rear
clefts.
- Karsten
--
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Red Hat SELinux Guide
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/selinux-guide/
2:42 p.m.
Karsten Wade wrote:
On Wed, 2005-08-17 at 14:51 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>Hi
>
>
>
>>PS: I guess the title is wrong, , instead of "Linux not ready for the
>>desktop" it should be "GNOME not ready for the desktop" or
"KDE not
>>ready for the desktop"
>>
>>
>>
>You are arguing semantics there. Large majority of end users make no
>differentiation between GNOME/KDE UI and a "Linux UI"
>
>
Yes, but authors such as the one of the article discussed here need to
have some clue about that.
I am pretty sure he understand Desktop Linux interfaces to stand for
GNOME/KDE or dozens of alternative WM 's or DE's. The presentation does
apply to all of them. Clarifying that is side stepping from the actual
issues being discussed
regards
Rahul
8:08 p.m.
>
We have to make it easy for people to migrate from the Windows UI
regardless of its flaws. We dont need to create a perfect clone. That
would be monumentally stupid but we can try and understand what makes
the current UI a higher learning curve. My opinion is that data
migration is of a even higher priority than UI similarity. GNOME and KDE
is comfortably close now. There are other points like installing legacy
group by default which is trivially easy. Lets say you try to install
Real player (ignore for the moment that its a proprietary player, a open
source off repository player will do the same thing) on Fedora Core 4,
you will get a obscure error about some .so file missing which you will
have to rectify by using installing a compat libstdc++ library.
I agree with this whole heartedly however the problem is people like to
download a file and then *install* it I like the fact of compiling but
thats me. An average user would not want to compile a program. Plus
even when compiling e.g. mplayer there are all different files/codecs
that can and can't /shouldn't be used I think that while we stress the
packaging system thats all we really can do since we do not have control
over the creators.
>
>
Precisely. So lets look at the action items here
* Install the legacy group in Anaconda by default for better backward
compatibility. The Fedora Extras repository is not going to cover every
software out there.
* Mount FAT filesystems by default in first boot. (NTFS is off limits)
* Investigate a tool like openmover.sf.net for data migration after
confirmation with user on first boot
* Trim down core to defaults as much as possible
There was a script and I'll try to find it that goes through your
harddrives and finds different partitions and mounts them under
the /media folder. I possibly think that in addition to this it could
be added to Places in gnome. I'm not sure if it automagicallly does this
however if it doesn't may some editing of the file can help.
I'll try and find that bash script and add it to another post.
Regards,
Marc
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14 comments
6 participants
participants (6)
-
Karsten Wade -
Marc Wiriadisastra -
Nicu Buculei -
Rahul Sundaram -
Sam Hiser -
Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay