Graham Trott wrote:
And not a lot has changed. This is as true for Windows as for Linux; does the Windows on-line help really tell you from scratch how to install a network card? Don't think so.
Whilst the GUI interace is heralded as intuitove, the typical GUI application is more of a toolbox where the selection of tools is chosen to be useful for the task for which the application was designed which, unforunately, doesn't help a beginner who has no idea what tools to expect or how to use each of them. This is clearly the reason many Windows applications now include a "Wizard" to guide the user through a task.
Documentation is much the same. Typically the on-line help that comes with a GUI application is a reference guide to the set of available tools, describing each menu, the options on it and the dialog boxes that will pop up. This is exactly equivalent to the Unix man pages which describe each available command and its options. Neither of these help the novice as they don't explain how to do a task.
The Linux Documentation Project is a huge step forward because the HOW- TO documents describe how to do a task. Even if the HOW-TO is not perfect it is a tremendous help, not least because it tells you which tools you are likely to find that would be applicable to the task in question so if you want to do something slightly different from what is described you know what other documentation you need to consult.
Documentation is only part of the picture though because, however good documentation is, people are reluctant to consult it. Perhaps the biggest difference is for an application designer to be able to think like the kind of user who just regards the computer as an appliance, so if the user thinks "Copy CD" don't make the user worry about "Extract CD to file on hard disk, Write CD from file on hard disk".
Much has been made of clever hardware detection and installer technology and yes this is an important area, but it is worth bearing in mind that even setting up windows on some hardware is too complicated for many people, requiring the user to know who made what and downloading extra drivers (or fixed ones). For many users the whole thing is taken care of because Windows comes pre-installed. I am very pleased to see Dell offering Linux pre-installed on some of their servers and I guess there are others too - it would be nice for pre- installed desktop sytstem to be available too.
Finally, we must bear in mind that however much effort we go to, someome will still find things too hard. I am thinking at this point of the father of a guy at work who compained to his son that whenever he turned off his PC it forgot the text in his word processor. It turns out he hadn't discovered the "Save" button and, because he just turned off the PC rather than shutting it down, nothing prompted him to save!