Quality And Quantity

By Andrew Price, 2005-08-12 23:14:04 in General. Leave a comment

Is it just me or is Linux getting into the press with increasing regularity recently?

Maybe it's just the technology orientated news sites that comprise the majority of my visits when I surf the web for news, but lately publicity for Linux seems to be increasing rapidly.

Just this week I've read about:

  1. Linspire being used in several schools in Indiana
  2. Linux mentioned heavily in Paul Graham's recent essay on open source (mentioned in my last blog entry)
  3. Various articles on the LinuxWorld and Linux 2005 conferences
  4. Some smart alec installing Linux and Doom on his iPod
  5. Microsoft "embracing" Linux
  6. A lot of Linux related articles that I've forgotten

More interesting than anything, a large amount of articles about Linux making its way - or struggling to get onto - the desktop. I think the first I read about this was on Asa Dotzler's blog, where he has been blogging a 7 part (at time of writing) series of entries stating his opinions on Linux and what needs to happen for it to become a genuine alternative for Regular People. These entries raised a lot of pulse rates as a lot of people left comments arguing with Asa's thoughts. I have to agree with a lot of what he said though.

From my current job helping to implement a new grants management system, I'm aware of just how much hand holding Regular People need to get to grips with something new. Just the other day I had to help a colleague find the right-hand edge of a table in a Word document because the left-hand margin was set too wide. This may seem quite simple to people who understand intuitively how the layout of objects works in a document window but to Regular People (to steal Asa's term) it can take a while to get the hang of these things. That's if they don't give up before finding the solution of course. From a Computer Science geek's point of view, It's easy to look down on people who don't know much about computers and how the applications running on them work.

This shouldn't happen. I've heard it many times - to write a good application you have to put yourself into the mind of the user. I think the Mozilla team did a great job where Firefox is concerned. It helps IE users migrate their settings and get to grips with it easily, incorporates a lot of the key bindings that IE uses and doesn't clutter the mind of the user with a barrage of different, colourful icons. It shows what the user needs to get started on the web and has enough intuitive features behind the tool menus to keep most people satisfied. Best of all, for the geeks there is still a lot to play with and tweak by pointing firefox at about:config.

On the other hand, Mozilla's Thunderbird isn't as easy to use and intuitive as I'd expect. I used to use Outlook Express as my email client, as a lot of Regular People probably do as it comes preinstalled on a large number of new PCs. From using this I became used to having all account settings separate and not dependent on each other, which is what I'd expect from an email client anyway. When I started using Thunderbird I noticed some differences in how it handles SMTP (outgoing mail server) settings. After you add one email account and specify an SMTP server, it sets the same SMTP server for all new accounts. This took a while for me to get my head around before I learnt more about how email servers work. But this brings us back to the point. Regular users shouldn't have to deal with the confusion brought on by not knowing the technical details.

Take this (untested) situation for example: a Regular User sets up two email accounts on Thunderbird and everything works fine for months. Then she decides to scrap her first email account and cancels it with the provider. This means that her SMTP service is no longer available. But now she can't send mail from the second address. She thinks something broke but doesn't know what. How would she know what happened? She gets impatient and decides to try Outlook Express since it's still installed on her PC. It works. She sticks with Outlook Express. Very small problems like this can make Regular Users lose patience with software and switch to something that may not be perfect, but is convenient and "works".

The moral of the tale? The best interface testers and the best people to learn application design from are Regular Users.

A final thought about the Linux on desktops topic: From what I've read, people have been making the old mistake of using the name Linux instead of Linux distributions. It really isn't up to Linux to make its way onto the desktop because Linux is essentially amorphous in this context. It's the challenge for distro groups such as Ubuntu, Mandriva, Linspire etc. to create a Linux distribution which is as Regular User friendly as Mac OS or Windows. With the right amount of effort, innovation and investment, I can see this happening in the next few years.