On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, Ben Francis wrote:
The fact is, I see myself as the kind of person who would be perfectly willing to spend the time fiddling with code, command 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.
I'll give my standard apology that, not having been in the IRC discussion, I might be going over old ground. I've recently discussed some of these issues off-list with another ALUG member, and have what may or may not be some useful insights.
I agree with the principle that it's great to have GUIs available for those users who have a personal preference for them (and equally great to have command lines and text config files for those users who prefer to do things this way.) However, I'd be rather surprised if your end users needed to do anything for which there was no GUI already available in Linux distros. (I wouldn't be quite so surprised if you as the sysadmin were occasionally left with only command line/text config file solutions for some of your tasks, but if I've read you aright, you don't mind.) I'm going to hazard a guess that the reason you hear about the non-GUI solutions for end user problems, when you ask in ALUG, is that the people answering have a personal preference for command-line/text config solutions, and therefore this is what they've (we've) practiced, and what they (we) know how to explain. Once again, it doesn't necessarily mean the GUI solutions don't exist.
Here's what I propose. If you're on this list, and you see a text-based answer to a user's problem, and think "that's new, I would have done it with such-and-such a set of dialog boxes/menus instead" (or vice versa,) don't hold back, post your version as an alternative.
What do people think? Might this work? Or am I talking complete rubbish?
Of course, sometimes there really won't be a GUI. Then someone's got to write one ;-), if people want to use it. When I was discussing this stuff recently, I came up with the (possibly rather cryptic) assertion "In the absence (mostly) of the profit motive, you have to find more subtle ways of getting the community to respond to customer demand." I understand you've just read _The Cathedral and the Bazaar_ (as have I,) and this might give you some idea what these ways are.