Fedora Present and Future: a Fedora.next 2014 Update (Part I,?“Why?”)

Vikram Goyal vikigoyal at gmail.com
Wed Apr 2 10:16:20 UTC 2014


I am using fedora or rather redhat based distribution since there was
Redhat 5 ( probably in middle ninteies or something )

As far as I can tell the disk partitioning scheme under F1/20 definetly
needs some kind of rework to make it unambigious to users.

The developers must understand one thing from user's perspective that:

1} The systems being installed are mostly dual boot having other
   OSes &/Or partitions, already having precious data in them.

2} The users are always jittery if they do not fully understand where
   the whole thing is leading to, especially in regard to partioning.
   So a bit of more verbosity & transparency of what exactly the
   installer is doing will go a long way in mitigating the user's
   complaints.

3} Developers have built the UI & know its INs & OUTs. If they try to
   use the UI 'as a user', it will always lead to false analysis because
   their knowledge will always warp the UI experience & they will always
   make the right decisions even if those decisions are the most
   difficult. So in order to understand the UI from a User's Perspective
   they should always listen to users & give weightage to their
   complaints because that is exactly what the UI is delivering & not
   what the developers are thinking.

But then point 3 goes for all the UI in place be it installer or full
fledged Desktop GUI. In case of installer, it just becomes a very dicey
from the user's point of view with so much at stake & so little
information.

Developers must understand that even if what appears to be a very dumb
question/complaint, it actually is not dumb but just plain ambigiousness
in UI. Confusion mostly arises from inadequate info where decision making
is required, which is amply available with the developers but to the
users, due to bad UI.

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