Usability Testing Hardy Heron With a Girlfriend

toomin writes "Reviews of the latest Ubuntu version, 8.04 Hardy Heron, are everywhere, but most of them are undertaken by geeks familiar with Linux. This guy sits his girlfriend down at a brand-new Ubuntu installation and asks her to perform some basic tasks. Some of them are surprisingly easy, others frustrate and annoy. There are lots of little usability tweaks he stumbles upon just by seeing the desktop experience from the point of view of the mainstream user."

I call Shenanigans!!

[Anonymous Coward]

A Linux geek with a girlfriend?? Yeah right!

He does what with his girlfriend ?

[BattleCat]

Something is surely wrong, when instead of fscking her right proper he sits her down with Ubuntu...

Usability Testing Hardon With a Girlfriend ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is Slashdot, not PenthouseDot or PlayboyDot.
We don't have girlfriends to test the usability of our hardon's with.

Oh... Hardy Herron, who's that ?

Yeah, right.

[Aaron Isotton]

In other news, man tests usability of Duke Nukem Forever running on GNU Hurd by making his GIRLFRIEND play it.

Puts a whole new spin on the term...

[csoto]

"backporting." Ahem. Thank you. I'm here all week. Try the prime rib!

i'm upgrading!

[Anonymous Coward]

i hear that the new beta of girlfriend has built in ubuntu support

Girlfriend?

[angryfirelord]

This is slashdot! I don't have a girlfriend, you insensitive clod!

Arr matey.

[grm_wnr]

I laughed heartily at the fact that a common user scenario includes how to torrent a Spice Girls album. Not that I think that's not the case; it was just pretty refreshing to see how blatant this guy is about it.

ports...

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

Where do I get this "with a girlfriend" release? .. of course with my luck, the "girlfriend" will be the openbsd version, and ship with all ports closed by default.

Re:Only on Hardy Heron? Pah, I'm using...

[TeknoHog]

I'm a Hairy Hippie using the Horny Hardon, and I'm pissed off because neither of these codenames were accepted for the current release.

Re:Girlfriend?

[grm_wnr]

Open synaptic and install girlfriend (or just apt-get girlfriend like a true geek). Beware of the dependencies though.

Re:Arr matey.

[jimicus]

They chose Spice Girls because not even the RIAA, with their inflated ideas of what each infraction costs, could possibly demand more than about 20 US cents with a striaght face.

Re:Exceptionally good.

[papna]

Kudos to Ubuntu.

Why Kudos? Wouldn't it be better to use a native Gnome word of praise?

Re:Smart move

[ray-auch]

> Again, there is no logical reason why this hasn't been implemented before.

The word "girlfriend" should be a clue...

Re:Girlfriend?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the love of god don't do it! Girlfriend is extremely buggy.
 
The feature list might seem very appealing, but it is dwarfed by the incredible amount of bloat that comes with it! E.g. every four weeks or so it performs not only sub-par it will actually crash certain programs you would want to start as long as girlfriend is sitting in the background.
 
Girlfriend will also - seemingly randomly - and with increasing rate escalate its privileges and delete all sorts of stuff in the background, even though you didn't start it as super user.

Oh yea, and if you choose to renice girlfriend to a lower priority in order to get some work done girlfriend will actually take your computer and throw it out the window!

Re:Girlfriend?

[hedleyroos]

Real geeks compile their girlfriends from source.

Re:Girlfriend?

[David Gerard]

That's sudo apt-get girlfriend. It typically requires full access and control of your system.

Rampant Rabbit

[Rik Sweeney]

I never thought anything could beat Hungry Hippo, but I think we have a new winner here!

Re:Girlfriend?

[Centurix]

Dependency not found: money

Re:Smart move

[Wiseman1024]

Hmm, sisters... I'd date my sister.

Oh, wait, were you talking about testing Linux?

Re:He does what with his girlfriend ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure running fsck was task number 13.

No, task number 13 is to explore the oriface suite.

Re:He does what with his girlfriend ?

[tgd]

Woh, I swear I thought you said fscking her right pooper and I wondered what kind of girl this is that has a right and left pooper.

I can't be the only one...

[digitalsolo]

I can't be the only one who read this as "Usability testing hardy heroIn with a girlfriend".

I mean, I'm sure it will work, but that is likely to soon require a replacement girlfriend...

Re:Interesting

[bmorency]

Free IT support when I'm available at home

Your wife wants to switch to linux because she will get free support from you? Did you charge her when she was using windows? :-)

Re:He does what with his girlfriend ?

[kevingolding2001]

This would be the deluxe model multi-user inflatable girlfriend.

Re:I call Shenanigans!!

[iminplaya]

I wonder if his wife knows about this...

Re:He does what with his girlfriend ?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's really not very funny. I would think that the geeks here would appreciate women as more than just something to gratify their desires.

A lucky one?

[Anonymous Coward]

If one eye goes bad, we have a spare. If one lung goes wrong, we have a spare.

If one pooper goes bad, we explode.

Re:He does what with his girlfriend ?

[Wiseman1024]

While task number 14 would be to try backports. I'd love backporting her to the current version of my hardy hardon.

Re:He does what with his girlfriend ?

[Provocateur]

Well, what's your definition of foreplay?

Guy uses remote to start the Barry White

GF: What's it called again?
BF: Hardy Heron...
GF: What er distro is this?
BF: Ubuntu, baby, which is African for Jungle Love...

(cue fireplace shot)

Re:ports...

[Mastadex]

"Most women [...] ship with all ports closed by default."

I disagree. I believe that there is one port thats constantly open. The sad truth is that the volume knob only has one setting: 10.

Re:I call Shenanigans!!

[MBGMorden]

Particularly suspicious is that the only picture shown in the article of the alleged "girlfriend" is an admitted photoshop (that she apparently did herself) :).

Re:I call Shenanigans!!

[Dystopian Rebel]

A Linux geek with a girlfriend?? Yeah right!

If the geek is ambidextrous, the "girlfriend" could be the right, or could be the left.

Re:I call Shenanigans!!

[AikonMGB]

This is one of the problems with GIMP.. Who wants to show someone a picture that they edited and say "I GIMPed her in this picture"?

Aikon-

Re:I call Shenanigans!!

[Blakey Rat]

Usability testing? With an OPEN SOURCE product?!

This article is pure fiction. After all, usability testing is one of those things that evil proprietary software companies like Microsoft do!

Re:I call Shenanigans!!

[spun]

My girlfriend finds my hairy hardon perfectly usable since it came out of beta.

Isn't a beta [betafacts.com] a type of fish?

Re:Wonderful emphasis

[jrob323]

As a female computer programmer, should people assume my husband is computer illiterate? No? Then why assume his girlfriend is?

Your husband is a female computer programmer? And he has a girlfriend? I admire your honesty, ma'am. -golf clap-

Re:I call Shenanigans!!

[cloakable]

Not even Microsoft does usability testing - look at Vista!

Re:Smart move

[Random_Goblin]

Maybe a better test would be to have someone who is not familiar with Windows to test it.

uh huh... and where are you going to find these people? I think you may have better luck specifying virgins or unicorns as testers...

Re:Exceptionally good.

[ElleyKitten]

I'd love to see someone sit their girlfriend in front of a fresh XP install; "Now, go find drivers for network card, graphics card, divx codecs etc" Yeah right.

Some of us girlfriends have been able to do that for longer than out boyfriends. It's not like you need a penis to figure out PCs.

Re:He does what with his girlfriend ?

[mrscorpio]

Well, what's your definition of foreplay?

I put on my robe and wizard hat....

Re:I call Shenanigans!!

[syousef]

This is one of the problems with GIMP.. Who wants to show someone a picture that they edited and say "I GIMPed her in this picture"?

I don't know what it is about open source software and attrocious names. Ubuntu is no better. Fiesty Fawn? Gutsy Gibbon? Hardy Herron? I mean it's hard to come up with sillier names (but I'll try). I don't think I'll be using Ubuntu until I can casually say my wife got upset at me spending my weekend with Slutty Sow, Homo-erotic Horse, Randy Rhino and Lewd Lama.