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Ubuntu Usability review

He makes some good points, especially about the menu inconcistencies. However, some of his points, such as GAIM displaying his own AIM account is just nit picky.

In any case, I guess it shows how much time and effort go into developing user friendly and visually appealing GUIs.
 
I tried ubuntu and found is much better than XP, but microsoft is all I know. Most of this guys comments are moronic and ignorant. Read what he says about firefox. And look at this quote alone :

"The icons for all available toolbar buttons in Firefox face directly towards you, except for the Home button, making it look out of place."
 
Originally posted by: ComatoseDelirium
I tried ubuntu and found is much better than XP, but microsoft is all I know. Most of this guys comments are moronic and ignorant. Read what he says about firefox. And look at this quote alone :

"The icons for all available toolbar buttons in Firefox face directly towards you, except for the Home button, making it look out of place."
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Did you read what he does for a living? I'd call plenty of them misguided, but not moronic.
 
This guy knows next to nothing about Linux, but that's ok.

he has some decent points and has his own ideas about things.

For instance he bitches that Ubuntu supports the 'capslock key'!!!! Who the hell thinks of crap like that? Who doesn't support the capslock key?

But he actually has a good rational reason why you shouldn't support the caps lock or insert key.. They suck.

But whatever. It's food-for-thought type crap. A lot of it is worthless, but it's a fairly comprehensive view of his own personal opinion and that's all it is.

He complains about 'username' and 'reboot' terms for good greif.😕
 
Originally posted by: drag
This guy knows next to nothing about Linux, but that's ok.

he has some decent points and has his own ideas about things.

For instance he bitches that Ubuntu supports the 'capslock key'!!!! Who the hell thinks of crap like that? Who doesn't support the capslock key?

But he actually has a good rational reason why you shouldn't support the caps lock or insert key.. They suck.

But whatever. It's food-for-thought type crap. A lot of it is worthless, but it's a fairly comprehensive view of his own personal opinion and that's all it is.

He complains about 'username' and 'reboot' terms for good greif.😕
Click to expand...

The reason I said I think he is misguided is because he isn't looking at it from a Linux user's perspective. I'm not sure, but I'm thinking the Gnome guys are programming for themselves and not necessarily to conquer the world (I hope so anyhow).

Caps lock should be deprecated, and I've used insert once in my life. I had to hit it to get word back to normal after I accidentally pushed that button. 😛

While the term "reboot" is probably ubiquitous, the term "username" is just stupid in linux. When you boot your machine in init 3 (or whatever CLI is these days), what are you presented with? When you ssh into a Linux system with putty, what does it ask you for? When you want to test a change to your login and you don't feel like sshing in again, you use what program?

"login," not username. Using two different terms for the same thing could be confusing to someone. Might as well just standardize on something. Maybe the word, login, since everything uses that word anyhow. 😉

Most of it is definitely worthless though. Unless they want to convert the unwashed masses. 😉
 
Note to author: File bug reports, first checking if one exists for the specific problem.
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Did you read the bottom of the page?

My boss, by the way, is Mark Shuttleworth. I?m working for his company, Canonical, as an interface designer.
 
Well guys, I thought a lot of those nit picky points need to be made about linux. If linux ever wants to take market share away from windows in a serious way a lot of these little pesky things need to be looked at more carefully.

I currently in a Human Computer Interaction course and there is a lot of science that goes behind designing things certain ways. i.e. placement, button type, size, colors, etc. etc.
This guy even mentions FITS law.

JMHO
 
Originally posted by: Davegod75
Well guys, I thought a lot of those nit picky points need to be made about linux. If linux ever wants to take market share away from windows in a serious way a lot of these little pesky things need to be looked at more carefully.
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Is that the whole point?
 
Who said Linux wants to take market share away from Windows?

And to be honest, I find that Windows has a lot more pesky usability problems than Linux.
 
OK, there are few things listed that are definitely idiosyncratic (griping about "reboot"?? Jeez-us...). There are some things that are clearly technical bugs that will be fixed (like empty, unlabelled panels). And there are others where I think he's kind of one-sided about the issue (he only wants a single close button on an alert, but doing that is equally ugly/inconsistent). But a lot of it, indeed most of it IMO, is dead-on. People say that Ubuntu is so easy to use - critical eyes like this are why. Normal people would never notice most of these things consciously, but that doesn't mean that they don't affect the user's experience.
 
Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Originally posted by: drag
This guy knows next to nothing about Linux, but that's ok.

he has some decent points and has his own ideas about things.

For instance he bitches that Ubuntu supports the 'capslock key'!!!! Who the hell thinks of crap like that? Who doesn't support the capslock key?

But he actually has a good rational reason why you shouldn't support the caps lock or insert key.. They suck.

But whatever. It's food-for-thought type crap. A lot of it is worthless, but it's a fairly comprehensive view of his own personal opinion and that's all it is.

He complains about 'username' and 'reboot' terms for good greif.😕
Click to expand...

The reason I said I think he is misguided is because he isn't looking at it from a Linux user's perspective. I'm not sure, but I'm thinking the Gnome guys are programming for themselves and not necessarily to conquer the world (I hope so anyhow).

Caps lock should be deprecated, and I've used insert once in my life. I had to hit it to get word back to normal after I accidentally pushed that button. 😛

While the term "reboot" is probably ubiquitous, the term "username" is just stupid in linux. When you boot your machine in init 3 (or whatever CLI is these days), what are you presented with? When you ssh into a Linux system with putty, what does it ask you for? When you want to test a change to your login and you don't feel like sshing in again, you use what program?

"login," not username. Using two different terms for the same thing could be confusing to someone. Might as well just standardize on something. Maybe the word, login, since everything uses that word anyhow. 😉

Most of it is definitely worthless though. Unless they want to convert the unwashed masses. 😉
Click to expand...

I definately agree with both of you on the caps lock. That thing sucks. Same thing with insert..

but the username is standard. That's what I ask when I am talking to someone: "what is your username?". I rarely ask "what is your login?". hell I use the term 'login name' more often then just login.

I think they are interchangable.
Also when you log into anandtech, what does it ask you for? 😉

Conceptualy what he has to say is interesting though... Although impractical (it's more practical to have the technical gibberish at startup then not have it. Also he wanted to have the window menus be at the top of the screen like in Mac OS, but you can't do that in X Windows without major hacks. Stuff like that.)
 
Originally posted by: drag
Conceptualy what he has to say is interesting though... Although impractical (it's more practical to have the technical gibberish at startup then not have it....
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I don't know... the Linux Progress Patch and cousins like Red Hat's boot screen seem to cover that pretty well. Show a pretty screen with a simple bar, but have a clickable link that reveals the details. I think that's pretty slick. Better than Windows where you need to press a key to reveal what's happening - not that pressing Escape is all that difficult.
Also he wanted to have the window menus be at the top of the screen like in Mac OS, but you can't do that in X Windows without major hacks. Stuff like that.)
Click to expand...
Sure, that's definitely showing some limitations of the architecture (different toolkits and environments and such...). But a lot of times the important part of usability is becoming conscious of the exact problem. Better to have people like this point out the problem without worrying about underlying technical causes. It's easy enough for the engineers to identify the low-hanging fruit from there.

There are still enough things that I consider outright usability bugs. Clicking the address bar in Firefox is a great example. Most non-technical users I know go to a new page by clicking the bar and then erasing the current address rather than using Ctrl-L. Why demand extra action from the user?

 
Originally posted by: drag
I definately agree with both of you on the caps lock. That thing sucks. Same thing with insert..

but the username is standard. That's what I ask when I am talking to someone: "what is your username?". I rarely ask "what is your login?". hell I use the term 'login name' more often then just login.

I think they are interchangable.
Also when you log into anandtech, what does it ask you for? 😉
Click to expand...

I tried to stick to OS related things. If a user is used to seeing login: on the system, presenting him with username: might be confusing.

Personally, I think it's kind of silly, but I see where he is coming from on that one.
 
Sure, that's definitely showing some limitations of the architecture (different toolkits and environments and such...). But a lot of times the important part of usability is becoming conscious of the exact problem. Better to have people like this point out the problem without worrying about underlying technical causes. It's easy enough for the engineers to identify the low-hanging fruit from there.
Click to expand...

Well as far as Mac OS style menus, people have been wanting to do that stuff for a long time now.. it's just not practical.

I kinda like that style, but it has it's drawbacks. But it's nice for multi window applications like GIMP, without having to resort to the single parent window style like you have to do with windows.

I think that it will be possible to do this once X.org is finished warming over X, though.

I may disagree with some points, but I like the guy's attitude. He has his own ideas and doesn't seem to be swade by popular conviention. (i.e. I would switch to Linux if everything was exactly like Windows syndrome)
 
Originally posted by: drag
Sure, that's definitely showing some limitations of the architecture (different toolkits and environments and such...). But a lot of times the important part of usability is becoming conscious of the exact problem. Better to have people like this point out the problem without worrying about underlying technical causes. It's easy enough for the engineers to identify the low-hanging fruit from there.
Click to expand...

Well as far as Mac OS style menus, people have been wanting to do that stuff for a long time now.. it's just not practical.

I kinda like that style, but it has it's drawbacks. But it's nice for multi window applications like GIMP, without having to resort to the single parent window style like you have to do with windows.

I think that it will be possible to do this once X.org is finished warming over X, though.

I may disagree with some points, but I like the guy's attitude. He has his own ideas and doesn't seem to be swade by popular conviention. (i.e. I would switch to Linux if everything was exactly like Windows syndrome)
Click to expand...

He's an eternal outsider. He's looking at everything from the outside, and not being attached to any one thing. It's admirable, but I'd miss OpenBSD way too much. 😛
 
I required my caps lock key not too long ago: working with the fairly arcane IBM Universe "database" which was requiring all caps for sql keywords. No use for the insert key yet, other than pissing me off when I reach too far for the backspace. 😛

I've got no problem with what the guy's doing (although obviously some of his specific points were wack) but what really struck me is that it must suck hating computers as much as he does. He can't use a system for a few days without compiling an essay on how it displeases him. He must be eternally frustrated by everything he uses 😕
 
I'm missing what the issue is with the CAPS lock. Do people not have the need to type in capital letters without holding down Shift?
 
I'm missing what the issue is with the CAPS lock. Do people not have the need to type in capital letters without holding down Shift?
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I think that's the idea. If you're typing in call CAPS you're either doing something wrong or really odd like programming in COBOL.
 
Disabling caps lock, that's hilarious. As a nerd I generally find it an insult to neuter something to save me from my own stupidity, but it is an interesting idea for ridding the world of those annoying non-techy types WHO TYPE IN CAPS FOR NO F#%CKING REASON. It almost reminds me of spaying and neutering pets or something.
 
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