Hi,
After a discussion in a private IRC chat that turned a little sour I felt compelled to write this. I'm posting it to the ALUG list because I there's a point I'd like to get across about how I think Linux should be accessible to everyone in a way that it currently isn't - although it's something that is getting dramatically better.
Once again, I managed to cause some upset, offend people and generally unintentionally cause trouble because of my inability to get across the point I'm trying to make. When I was trying to get things to work in KDE, and then Fluxbox I reacted badly to the answers I got (and the answers I didn't get) because I was really looking at the problem from an almost hypothetical point of view.
Having tried to introduce Linux to my school, I have come under pressure to justify the change in practical advantages for users, and one of the main places my arguments fall down is how easy the interface is to use. This is why when i ask questions to anyone about Linux and get a reply that includes manually editing a config file or writing some code by hand - my negative response often suprises people and has in the past been taken as a personal insult. (Perhaps Linux is suffering from Mac-syndrome whereby its users so religiously defend it that they take any critisiscm personally - or perhaps I'm just offensive ;) )
The fact is, I see myself as the kind of person who would be perfectly willing to spend the time fiddling with code, comand line commands and config files to get something to work, hacker style, and indeed I do - but not everyone wants to (or indeed should have to) and my frustrations stem from trying to simultaneously look at the problem from a completely non-technical point of view. Although I have a background in ergonomics and graphic design in my academic studies as well as Computing, Science and Maths, I don't see myself as the kind of person who would be able to *solve* the user-friendly problems involved.
After having had this "discussion" in IRC I happened to finish reading "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" by Eric S. Raymond from the ALUG library, and was amazed how relevent the last section was to my current train of thought.
The extract here from the very last nine paragraphs of the main text of the book explains very competently the points I almost completely failed to get across in IRC:
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"...there is one such question that is worth pondering: Will the Linux Community actually deliver a good end-user-friendly GUI interface for the whole system?
In the 1999 first edition of this book, I said the most likely scenario for late 2000/early 2001 has Linux in effective control of server, data centres, ISPs, and the Internet, while Microsoft maintains its grip on the desktop. By November 2000 this prediction had proved out pretty completely except in large corporate data centres, and there it looks very likely to be fulfilled within months.
Where things go from there depend on whether GNOME, KDE or some other Linux-based GUI (and the applications built or rebuilt to use it) ever get good enough to challenge Microsoft on its home ground.
If this were primarily a technical problem, the outcome would hardly be in doubt. But it isn't; it's a problem in ergonomic design and interface psycology, and hackers have been notoriously poor at these things. That is, hackers can be very good at designing interfaces for other hackers, they tend to be poor at modeling the thought processes if the other 95% of the population well enough to write interfaces that J. Random End-User and his Aunt Tillie will pay to buy.
Applications were 1999's problem; it's now clear we'll swing enough ISVs to get the ones we don't write ourselves. I believe the problem for 2001 and later is whether we can grow enough to meet (and exceed!) the interface design quality standard set by the Macintosh, combining that with the virtues of the traditional Unix way.
As of mid-2000, help may be on the way from the inventors of Macintosh! Andy Hertzfeld and other members of the original Macintosh design team have formed an open-source company called Eazel with the explicit goal of bringing the Macintosh magic to Linux.
We half-joke about 'world domination', but the only way we will get there is by *serving* the world. That means J. Random End-User and his Aunt Tillie; and *that* means learning how to think about what we do in a fundamentally new way, and ruthlessly reducing the user-visible complexity of the default environment to an absolute minimum.
Computers are tools for human beings. Ultimately, therefore, the challenges of designing hardware and software must come back to designing for human beings, *all* human beings.
This path will be long, and it won't be easy. But I think the hacker community, in alliance with its new friends in the corporate world, will prove up to the task. And, as Obi-Wan Kenobi might say, "the Source will be with us". " ------------------
I hope that in the future I will be able to contribute to bringing Linux to everyone - so that the freedom and quality of an Open Source operating sytem will not be held back by the hurdles of the interface between human and computer.
I'm sure Eric won't mind me quoting this large chunk from one of his essays, the book btw is well worth the read for anyone who hasn't already done so!
To those who I upset: Hope this explains things a bit better than I did!
-- Ben "tola" Francis