Translated KDE/Linux Usability Report Available 424
WHudson writes "Relevantive AG, a German consulting firm who recently completed a study on Linux usability, posted their results in English translation today. Bottom line: Linux nearly as easy to use as Windows XP, but the wording of system and program messages could use some more clarity."
Re:I don't find Linux easy to use (yet) (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Usability (Score:2, Informative)
Well, first off, the link is generally called "Nero Burning ROM", which gives a good impression that it's what you'd want to "burn" a CD-"ROM". Second, either you bought Nero and installed it (by simply putting the disc in the drive and clicking Next a few times), or it came with your PC and was advertised both at the store and with papers in the box the machine came in. What is "k3b"? What does it stand for? How would I associate that with burning a CD? Make the name a little more descriptive (cdrecord is a good name, but commandline recording won't suffice), "advertise" it as the app to use to burn CDs, and people will have no problem finding it.
Re:Software installation still a stumbling block (Score:1, Informative)
Things is different (Score:5, Informative)
Laptops are famous for being a pig to install Linux onto. Proprietory hardware and unhelpful manufacturers make driver support very difficult.
That laptop has ATI graphics and LCD, which can be a pain to setup manually (don't use modelines with 4.x X!). I'd start with 16 bit VESA at 1024x768 14" (or 1400 x 1050 15"?) native resolution. If possibly, use 4.3 XFree86 as well. If VESA works, then try looking at different ATI drivers, probably "radeon" or "ati", and 24 bit colour.
As others have suggested, maybe it's worth trying a different distro (Mandrake and SuSE are worth a crack) because they have slightly different kernels and different setup/config tools. They have setup options for LCD screens, so just choose a generic 1024x768 LCD, and VESA/radeon chipset.Problems with X are unlikely to be kernel related, but the DVD might be. Maybe you need to use the ide-scsi cd driver, done with a kernel append line at boot time. I'll hazard a guess and say the ethernet is one either tulip or 8139too. I may be wrong, but try modprobe tulip and/or modprobe 8139too then ifconfig -a and see if eth0 is there. It might be something else, but it's worth trying.
Hope some of that helps.
Re:Software installation still a stumbling block (Score:2, Informative)
Use Yast2, up2date, urpmi etc and they will all do something very similar. Overall newbies do not need to b downloading items manually to install stuff.
Packages made by those dists also install into the correct menus so that should not be an issue.
If you really want a super simple to install system for users have them use lindows and pay the yearly fee and they can click to install any program online which is just a wrapper for apt-get
Well, it's not really a test of JUST Linux, either (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Usability (Score:4, Informative)
And how exactly is this better than "K3b (cd burning program)"
You obviously have never used any semi-recent version of KDE. All KDE programs have short description right beside the name in the K-menu.
Re:Error Message (Score:3, Informative)
LI The first stage boot loader was able to load the second stage boot
loader, but has failed to execute it. This can either be caused by a
geometry mismatch or by moving
installer.
and
0x01 "Illegal command". This shouldn't happen, but if it does, it may
indicate an attempt to access a disk which is not supported by the
BIOS. See also "Warning: BIOS drive 0x may not be accessible"
in section "Warnings".
Re:English Summary (Score:1, Informative)
*pouf* there it is in my gnome apps menu.
I would imagine it works similarly in KDE.
As a regular user, your distro maintainer or IT staff should be taking care of the packaging and installation for you. Teach the regular user to install the packages you set out for them and leave it at that.
Re:Usability (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Linux usability has to go up for games (Score:3, Informative)
1) If you use RedHat without Apt-4-RPM, don't even bother using Linux. Better yet, use SuSE (which has a good GUI package manager in the default install) or one of the Debian-based GUI distros.
2) Never download apps from the app's website. That's the Windows way, not the Linux way. Almost every significant app will have a package in your distro's package database. APT and Debian are better than the RPM distros in this regard (lots of RPMs, not too many keyed into Apt4RPM). To date, I've only run up against a handful of packages that weren't in the Portage database. Most of them (like d2c, the Dylan compiler) would not be installed by most users.
Re:Usability (Score:5, Informative)
Well, first off, the link is generally called "Nero Burning ROM", which gives a good impression that it's what you'd want to "burn" a CD-"ROM".
In some languages, ROM is the name of the Italian city you probably know as Rome, which Nero did actually burn down. It's a nice play on words, but there are plenty of people who won't make the link between that and writing data onto an optical disk.
-- Steve
Re:Usability (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to burn a CD, you need to look in the menu under Archiving/CD-burning, there you'll find the CD-burning programs that are installed. This migth be one, or it migth be more, depending on your choises during installation.
It's probably not a stretch to have a novice user guess that the program located as: Archiving/CD-burning/eroaster is some sort of cd-burning program, same for Archiving/CD-burning/k3b
Sure "k3b" alone isn't going to tell anyone anything, but the fact that it's placed where it is will help a lot.
Actually, the normal procedure is even simpler, you don't go looking for k3b at all. Instead you simply use your normal file-browser to look for files or directories you want to burn. When you found them, you rigth-click on them and select "Burn data-cd" from the context-menu.
Re:I don't find Linux easy to use (yet) (Score:1, Informative)
this is a rebatched Presario 900 laptop. Remember to check through the archives.
Basically it has an ATI IGP + ALi combo which was supported very well under Linux until recently (thanks a lot to Alan Cox who participate in that mailing list and got a lot of stuff integrated in the Marcelo's 2.4 tree through -ac patchsets).
You will have to do couple of tricks to get at least RedHat 9 installed on that one:
1. pass on "nousb" option for the installation kernel (at the installation prompt, type linux nousb)
2. Choose "vesa" driver for XFree86 (as the Radeon driver doesn't yet that video card, but then again that will be a thing of past considering XFree86 4.4 beta and >=Linux-2.4.22-pre10-ac1 you can use 3d accelerated radeon driver).
3. Hard code "nousb" option as the boot parameter during the boot loader configuration screen window during the installation.
4. If you really want to use the USB sub-system then you need latest Linux 2.4 kernel with ACPI built-in, for eg, 2.4.22-rc2 etc..)
Hope that helps. In any case please contact Presario 900 mailing list for any help on this laptop.
Thanks
Hari
Re:usable but not the same (Score:3, Informative)
I've found it initially difficult (particularly with Open Office), but I'm now fine, and find using Outlook less pleasant than using Thunderbird.
Recent Experiences (Score:2, Informative)
Over the last weekend I decided to try some of the latest distros, hell it beat talking to the Mrs. Normally I have very little time spare to sit and play with Linux so this was quite cool, this is the order I tried stuff and the initial impression.
-Mandrake: Would have been a nice install but the usb keyboard doesn't work; yet the mouse does. Clever. Does install though without the keyboard working and it works once installed, the modem doesn't though. Failed to get modem working after a few tries dispite this been the only distro that is speed touch friendly. The package update gui is lousy, dropped to console. Learn that the modem support is selected during install and that there is not a gui to do it after install, WTF. Reinstalled, eventually found the modem section, couldn't type entries into gui due to no usb support. Sigh.
-Lindows: The best install routine, up and running in 10 mins. Distro doesn't include make or gcc, so couldn't compile anything to get modem working. Installed these from another distro but modem still farked. Click and run is a good concept for continual revenue. Will be the granny friendly distro but not there yet.
-Redhat: Nice install, feels professional but boated, took an age to install and runs as fast as a dead dog. Modem doesn't work. Stupid speed touch. Is it me or is Redhat just dull?
-Knoppix: Booted CD, left at console. CBA, next CD in line please.
- SUSE: Doesn't support usb during install, won't allow the install without detecting a keyboard, useless.
By this time I knew the stupid speed touch inside and out and got it running in Mandrake, though I've learned enough that I could get the modem working now under debian/lindows easily so I might go back to lindows tbh, but it is hard to forgive them for not including gcc and make by default.
Re:It's called.. (Score:1, Informative)
Most Apple applications have fairly generic names, "Mail", "iTunes", "iPhoto", "iMovie", "iDVD", "Preview", "Disk Utility", "Image Capture", "CPU Monitor" and "Safari"
Real ease of use that neither Windows XP or Linux have.
Err, KDE comes by default with a menu that has a description after each entry, like: Kooka (Scan & OCR Program).
Re:My experience (Score:3, Informative)
Windows does this for you because it's *preconfigured and preinstalled*! It doesn't seem fair to me to compare a preconfigured and preinstalled OS to one that you install from scratch without help.
Try installing Windows XP from scratch. I've had better experience with installing Linux from scratch than XP from scratch.
"Suse, RedHat, Debian, Slackware, FreeBSD, Gnoppix??? Which one, and why should I use it? Ive seen enough flame wars out there to simply confuse me for life."
If you've informed a bit more, you'll no doubt at least find these facts:
- The most popular *desktop* distributions are RedHat, Mandrake and Suse.
- FreeBSD is not Linux so you can ignore this.
- Debian and Slackware are oriented towards gurus who hate wizards and GUI stuff.
So what do you do?
1) You pick out all the desktop distros.
2) You pick out the most popular ones among those distros.
3) From that list, just pick out one at random.
There, how hard was that? If you don't know what to do, just pick out a random one from the most popular distros. It's not like you can't try out another distro.
"KDE or Gnome? I dont know?! Bluecurve? What the hell?"
If this confuses you then use whatever desktop was set as default. How hard is that?
Re:usable but not the same (Score:3, Informative)
Basically, "anything not specifically permitted is forbidden" is authoritarian, and "anything not specifically forbidden is permitted" is libertarian. Then "make as much money as you like and never mind who gets hurt in the process" is capitalism, and "make sure everyone gets a fair share" is socialism.
Re:Usability (Score:3, Informative)
Linux is no different than Windows in the sense that it can use binary installers with included libraries, in just the same fashion. Take Icculus' ports for instance. Installing Serious Sam for Linux is simple. Pop your CD in the drive and run a bin (Linux EXE) that has a sugar-coated installer by means of the Loki Games Installer (like a Linux InstallShield).
OpenOffice is similar. Run a "setup" binary and it's installed.
Opera works the same way, though its installer is commandline based.
Netscape does this as well (graphical installer).
The list goes on and on. In 99% of standard desktop installations, it's likely that you'll never have a dependency problem, as long as you aren't using a terribly out-of-date distribution.
People keep propagating myths of Linux of yesterday. Linux of today is far different. You shouldn't comment unless you know for fact that things haven't changed.
Granted, many of Linux's apps, being GPL'd with open sourcecode, still need to be compiled. But normally, you can find precompiled programs that don't use conventional installers, but are still quite simple to manipulate.
Re:Don't forget gnome. (Score:3, Informative)
Well of course. How many times would normal users use this option? People like my parents certainly don't care. 99% of all users don't need this option, so what point is there in bloating the UI with this option?
If you are part of that 1% that do care, then you are a geek or guru. You should have no problem using gconf-editor.
"Want to enable gtk1 style "tear-off" menus, which are very useful in so many applications."
And confuses the hell out of new users. That's why they disabled it by default.
"Want to Drag and drop files from your digital camera to your freinds computer via ssh? Nope, nautilus won't let you do that because that would be "too compex". So you would have to do cut&paste your files to a tempory folder, then open a terminal and do a scp *.jpg."
This has got nothing to do with being "too complex". This is only because the feature hasn't been written yet. There is currently no scp backend for gnome-vfs.
Either submit a polite (notice the word polite!) feature request, or contribute code.
"Screensavers, yes there are plenty of screensavers, but what is with the password dialog. My mum screamed you ****ing caught the computer on fire when she first seen the BURNING MONITOR logo on it. Please change that."
This is xscreensaver, not GNOME. And yes it does need change.
"The gnome desktop seriously need some real configuration options and less "HIG" propoganda."
And then other Slashdotters will flame them down for not having a HIG like MacOS does. What is it that you people want? Damned if you do, damned if you don't?
Knoppix as reporter. (Score:3, Informative)
The chances are good that Knoppix (www.knoppix.de) will get the machine to a desktop. Assuming that it does, make some notes.
#lsmod
will tell you what modules loaded.
The XF86Config-4 it settled on will be in
There will also be any number of helpful hints in the
Re:Linux usability has to go up for games (Score:3, Informative)
*> This coming from the guy who runs KDE CVS...
KDE's usability; kghostview's irony (Score:2, Informative)
For those with the same problem, there's an easy workaround:
$ pdftops digrdp1.pdf
$ kghostview digrdp1.ps
Re:Usability (Score:3, Informative)
Internet
|-> Konqueror (Web Browser)
|-> KNode (News Reader)
|-> KPPP (Internet Dial-up Tool)