ot-no free lunch and UI issues

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 10:30:20AM -0500, Paul Sutton wrote:
> I am not sure if I fully understand what all this means,  I place value 
> on data,  as would anyone,  what people want is a reliable way of 
> creating and storing that data,  on a system that will not trash this 
> data,   Windows does that, only then suffers from problems that causes a 
> virus or whatever to trash the data, Linux does not have that problem 
> but I hve had to nuke adn reinstall because of a problem I don't 
> understand and can't fix.  Most people can fix problems in windows or 
> ask a friend to fix it,  because in most cases their friend can be there 
> to fix it,  as in on site.  I know lots of people who can use Linux and 
> ther are about 6 of us including me living in torbay,  who are on the 
> local Linux user group.

No actually many problems on windows can't be fixed because the system
has trashed itself too badly to be fixed.  Best you can do is mount
drive on another system to get your data off it and reinstall.  Linux is
a whole lot easier to fix.  I haven't had to reinstall a linux system
due to it being broken except once (which for 12 years use isn't too
bad).  That one was redhat 6.0 which was so broken that I replaced it
with Debian.  I should have followed to rule then of 'never use a redhat
.0 release'.  I knew that, and ignored it anyhow. :)

With linux, as long as I can boot the kernel, mount / and start a shell,
I can fix almost anything.  I don't even need a working boot loader as a
grub image will boot whatever is on the HD.  A rescue cd can be needed
if the filesystem is too damanged and needs to have fsck run.  (I have
had to do that with the win2k cd rescue console many times on certain
win2k systems too that liked corrupting their filesystem).

With windows you can do very little from the rescue console other than
fix filesystem corruption and maybe replace a few dlls.  On linux a
shell means I have access to everything.  Much better for doing
recovery.  Of course I very rarely need to do recovery on a linux
system, while I can't say the same for windows.  I can't boot windows
with only a shell running and be ensured no viruses or other crap have
had a chance to load and take over things yet.  Given the number of
viruses on windows and how well some of them hide now, that is a big
problem.  It needs a way to say "Boot with nothing but a shell and
taskmanager".  It unfortunately requires the bloody gui to do anything
which requires tons of drivers and other crap to be loaded too.

> It depends on what you want back from the users,  I think a simple 
> e-mail to say this works,  goes a long way,  The community needs to find 
> a way to make it easier for users to provide feedback to developers,  
> even if this is via user groups,  then the developers need to take note 
> and act on these recomendations.  The oo.org method seems very over 
> complex, I have sent a new poster in for the software and asked if it is 
> ok to use the various logos within it,  as I took these from the flyer 
> ,includng the windows logo,  as the software works with windows,   So 
> far I have had very little feed back,  on it's been christmas, but not 
> many people have even read the issue.   I think others feel the same 
> way,  they don't want to create issues etc they just want to contribute 
> something.
> 
> some examples of UI problems

Well I think GUIs often are the UI problem.  They make things too
complicated and hide options for the sake of making things "simpler"
rather than complete and correct.

Adding users should only be possible for root in general, it is not a
normal and frequent operation.
Root should not be running X or other non trustworthy applications
Hence you should not have a gui for adding users.  A dialog based
interface might be ok.  I know redhat used to have one that wasn't too
bad other than the horrible things it always insisted on doing to the
sendmail config.

> In control center  - part of kde there is a Login manager section but 
> this does not seem to include a way to add users,  however to do this I 
> use kuser which is a separate program,  not included in control panel,
> 
> This is the problem.  In windows I would goto control panel,  but in 
> Linux I have to go somewhree else,  after I have gone to somewhere where 
> I would expect to find this tool. I spend a lot of time searching for 
> stuff,
> 
> Another example is on kanotix there is a games menu, there is also a 
> debian games menu,  try finding something and it's no on one so try the 
> other,  there should be ONE games menu yes with submenus, but lets keep 
> it simple.  Ok saying that at least I know where games are, try with 
> windows and it just sticks stuff anywhere, so in this sense Linux is a 
> little better.

Debian decided to leave the KDE stuff in the KDE menus, while leaving
all the debian applications with menu entries (a lovely system in debian
by the way) in a seperate sub menu of the kde menu.  Keeps kde stuff
here kde stuff goes and still leaves easy access to the other stuff
debian provides.  Seems like a good system to me.

> Another example is the adsl connection too,  if it can't find a 
> connection it says something about an "access concentrator" perhaps 
> developers here need lessons in ENGLISH,  ie in dump the techno babble 
> and say I am unable to detect a connection to the internet,   it also 
> says about perahps another process is using pppoe or something.  I 
> understand it kind of but people with no knowledgre don't stand a chance.

Why invent new terms for things that have already had names for decades.

> Again for people like me I have learnt now I can type dhclient in a 
> console window,  and get a connection,  I kind of understand what is 
> happening, but toa total newbie this would be really off putting.

Some distributions will setup dhcp for you when you install them.  Some
won't.  Again it is an administration task, not a common thing.  Ask
someone that knows how to administrate a system to help get it setup,
and then when that is done, you can just use it as a user.

> Most users who get stuck with the second example can't even get on the 
> net to make contributions in the first, place, or even ask for help, so 
> they boot into windows (which works) in order to ask for help on 
> something that should work better.  what is needed is simplicity, 
> without sacraficing the power of the system,  or perhaps Linspire is the 
> way to go, easy to use,  where as those of us who want power and the 
> toools can use different distros, 

Perhaps of people would read the install guide and other documentation
before starting the install they would fare a lot better.  The real
problem is that people expect computers to be magic and do everything
for them or walk them through everything with baby steps in a gui wizard
with pretty flashing buttons because they are too lazy to read and learn
a few simple things for themselves.  The term RTFM was invented a long
time ago for a reason.  The main difference is that there is a lot more
friendly documentation now than there was in the past, yet people still
won't read any of it.

> Get the base system working, theh give average person out there, the 
> tools they need.

The average user is just that: The average user.  They are not an admin,
and they don't know how to make a computer ready for use.  The only
reason so many people can use a machine with windows is that it came
that way in the box.  Most wouldn't be able to install windows on their
own machine if they had to do a reinstall.

The two worlds really are not that different.

Len Sorensen
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