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Open-Source Software and "The Luxury of Ignorance"

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thu Feb 26, 2004 09:04 PM
from the software-soapbox dept.
Bootsy Collins writes "Using the recent experience of trying to configure CUPS on his home network, Eric Raymond has written an interesting new screed on poor design of user interfaces in general, and configuration interfaces in particular, in open source software, entitled The Luxury of Ignorance. A sample quote: 'This kind of fecklessness is endemic in open-source land. And it's what's keeping Microsoft in business -- because by Goddess, they may write crappy insecure overpriced shoddy software, but on this one issue their half-assed semi-competent best is an order of magnitude better than we usually manage.'"
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  • In related news (Score:5, Informative)

    by prostoalex (308614) * on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:06PM (#8404132)
    (Last Journal: Monday October 23 2006, @12:44PM)
    JWZ was trying to get video to play on his box [jwz.org]. More than a year old, but still a good guide to interface design.

    • Re:In related news (Score:5, Interesting)

      A similar diatribe to ESR's could be written on trying to burn a backup DVD under RH9. Gave up; I just FTP my backup over to my Lose2003 box, where the driver worky-worky.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:In related news (Score:5, Informative)

      by GMC-jimmy (243376) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:46PM (#8404503)
      (http://gmc.jimmy.home.comcast.net/)
      More than a year old, but still a good guide to interface design.


      That isn't a 'good guide' at all! It's barely more than a rant if you can manage to read between the lines.
      Here's some useful links to UI design concepts.
      I got these from the default installation of Mozilla.
      Bookmarks > Mozilla Project > Developer Information > User Interface Design:

      Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines [apple.com]

      IBM/Ease of Use/Design [ibm.com]

      Microsoft User Experience and Interface Design Resources [microsoft.com]

      KDE User Interface Guidelines [kde.org]

      Since these links come from an older install of Mozilla, some may have changed.
      [ Parent ]
    • JWZ and usability by Alethes (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:58PM
    • Re:In related news (Score:5, Funny)

      by mrroach (164090) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:59PM (#8404604)
      If you want good interface design, look no further than ESR's own beautifully [linuxjournal.com] designed [linuxjournal.com] fetchmailconf [linuxjournal.com].

      Not to say that he doesn't make good points, but... well... just look at the screenshots.

      -Mark
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:In related news (Score:5, Interesting)

        by black mariah (654971) on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:06PM (#8404665)
        Being pretty doesn't make it USABLE, and being ugly doesn't make in UNUSABLE. I was messing with fetchmailconf one day and had everything configured rather quickly. I had no previous fetchmail experience going in, and was pretty new to Linux in general. Usable, but ugly.
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:In related news by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @01:55AM
        • Re:In related news by dave420-2 (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @08:09AM
        • Re:In related news by Giggle Stick (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @12:03PM
        • Re:In related news (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Lagged2Death (31596) on Friday February 27 2004, @01:34PM (#8410139)
          It's not just ugly, it's pretty non-intuitive too.

          For example, what's the difference between "Save" and "OK?" Why are "Save" and "OK" in the middle of the dialog, in a seprate sub-pane? Why not put them at the bottom? What do the sub-panes indicate, anyway? Why is there a list of accounts in the account options dialog? Surely the options here apply to only one account at a time. How do I add a New Server on the "Novice Controls" page - type in the name and then -- what? The "Protocols" section - are those check boxes or radio buttons? If they're radio buttons with zero explanitory text, why not just use a combo box? What is the relationship between users and servers - and shouldn't this be obvious from the interface?

          The fact is, good user interface design is a discipline unto itself, and people who are good coders or good system architects aren't necessarily any good at UI design. It's hard, and it's full of trade-offs, like engineering is. It doesn't get the respect it deserves from anyone (with the possible exception of Apple, who still make a few horrifying blunders if you ask me). And I say this as someone who has been responsible for some UI design decisions, and who can see from that personal experience that he didn't (initially) appriciate the difficulty of the task and still isn't very good at it.

          [ Parent ]
        • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
      • Re:In related news (Score:5, Informative)

        It may be ugly, but in every case (save the shot behind the fetchmailconf link) there is a separate help button for every item. The "designed" link has a perfect example of a "probe for supported", as he is asking for in his article.

        Here's where I cave a little... On the last screen shot, it did take me a little too long to figure out that the password being asked for is listed in the topmost sub-section. However, I'm confident that the help button would have told me what I'm looking for.

        If anything, mrroach's post does point out smartly that the article is a plug to "do things more like I do". Yeah, not so "pretty", but sure as feces, it won't get Aunt Tilly too flustered.

        [ Parent ]
        • Re:In related new (Score:4, Insightful)

          by mrroach (164090) on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:24PM (#8404787)
          I submit that it *would* confuse an inexperienced user. I personally found it easier to sit down and read the man page for fetchmail. This is not because I love me a conf file, but becuase I tried fetchmailconf, and was confused by it.

          Take a look again and tell me why

          #1 There are ok/quit/save buttons at the top and what they apply to,
          [ Parent ]
          • Re:In related new by GAVollink (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:37PM
            • Re:In related new by ealar dlanvuli (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:42PM
              • Re:In related new (Score:5, Insightful)

                by Mysteray (713473) <marsh-sd@@@mysteray...com> on Thursday February 26 2004, @11:11PM (#8405092)
                (http://mysteray.com/)
                Yes, the fact that the dialogs don't follow an established STANDARD does hurt the usability, but I don't think that they are BAD.
                Yes, that is pretty much the definition of a bad GUI program.

                Some of the most usable UIs don't conform to an established standard. For example, there are shopping cart apps that can be used by people who've never used a computer before, yet they don't get in the way of the expert user much either. Some custom-designed kiosk systems serve their purposes very well without following any standard other than "touch me".

                Apple and Microsoft seem to throw out their own guidelines whenever they feel the need to "innovate". There's no hope of improving usability if no one's allowed to experiment.

                Check out Alan Cooper's books [cooper.com] if you want some solid reasoning behind this (better than I could give you). Edward Tufte [edwardtufte.com] is also a classic.

                [ Parent ]
              • Re:In related news by Tassach (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @11:03AM
              • Re:In related new by ealar dlanvuli (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:29PM
              • Re:In related new by Mysteray (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @07:49AM
              • Innovation != improvement (Score:4, Interesting)

                by Anonymous Brave Guy (457657) on Friday February 27 2004, @08:09AM (#8406949)

                While I certainly agree with you that following standards may not lead to a good user interface for all applications, I would submit that (at least for end user applications on mainstream PCs) it is usually better than not following the standards, and that most attempts to "innovate" are usability failures. To wit:

                Apple and Microsoft seem to throw out their own guidelines whenever they feel the need to "innovate".

                This is true. And as a professional developer using Visual Studio .Net, I'd like to thank Microsoft personally for giving us:

                • properties dialogs with non-standard, or effectively non-supported, keyboard navigation;
                • properties dialogs that change focus behind your back if you switch to another application and then switch back again;
                • "context-sensitive" features, particularly the help system, that make it far harder than it ever used to be to do things because the software is constantly second-guessing you;
                • non-standard File Open dialogs that freeze your system for half a minute while they scan a directory with thousands of files in it, when the default dialog in any other app takes a second to populate;
                • a macro system so powerful that my one-liner "There is a hack here" comment macro takes 30 seconds to load the first time I hit the shortcut key, when it used to be instant;

                and all the other "innovations" that cost me several minutes of my valuable time every day.

                To their credit, Microsoft's developers (at least those I've talked to) do seem to have a genuine interest in improving this, and their hearts are in the right place. Some of the nasty context-sensitive stuff can be disabled in the 2003 version, for example. But a lot of these "usability innovations" gain me nothing, while slowing me down and/or wasting valuable screen real estate.

                [ Parent ]
              • Re:In related new by dave420-2 (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @08:12AM
              • Re:In related new by cybergrue (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @10:41AM
              • Do Tibetan Yetis Work For Microsoft? by Ilan Volow (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @11:07AM
              • Re:In related news by ealar dlanvuli (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @12:00PM
              • Re:Do Tibetan Yetis Work For Microsoft? by Anonymous Brave Guy (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @12:26PM
              • Re:Innovation != improvement by llefler (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @06:04PM
              • Re:In related new by llefler (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @06:12PM
              • Re:Innovation != improvement by Mysteray (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @07:42PM
              • Re:In related new by Mysteray (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @07:50PM
              • Re:In related new by Minna Kirai (Score:2) Saturday February 28 2004, @04:19PM
              • Re:In related new by Mysteray (Score:1) Saturday February 28 2004, @04:36PM
              • Re:In related new by Minna Kirai (Score:2) Monday March 01 2004, @08:51PM
              • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
          • Re:In related new by mrroach (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:42PM
        • Re:In related news (Score:5, Insightful)

          What are you talking about? Each one of those dialogs are HORRENDOUS!!! For instance, look at this one:
          http://www.linuxjournal.com/modules/NS-artic les/HO WTO/6454f1.png

          "Configurator novice Controls" with a "Save" "Help" "Quit" button underneath? What the HELL does that mean? Why isn't novice capitalized? What am I saving by clicking the Save button? A configurator novice controls? Why arent the buttons at the bottom like every other dialog box in the planet?

          I won't even comment on this one:
          http://www.linuxjournal.com/modules/NS-artic les/HO WTO/6454f3.png
          [ Parent ]
          • Nail, head, hit right on there... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by spoco2 (322835) on Thursday February 26 2004, @11:49PM (#8405316)
            (http://simon.oconnorlamb.com/)
            Absolutely, I can't believe ANYONE was holding them up as a pinnacle of good design. They truly are horrible.
            [ Parent ]
            • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
          • Re:In related news (Score:5, Funny)

            by SewersOfRivendell (646620) on Thursday February 26 2004, @11:53PM (#8405346)
            Maybe I can interest you in Maxis' latest, SarcaSIM?
            [ Parent ]
          • Re:In related news by rixstep (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:56PM
            • I'd volunteer GUI designs... (Score:5, Insightful)

              by bonch (38532) <bonch@nOSPAm.slackersguild.com> on Friday February 27 2004, @01:34AM (#8405856)
              But everytime I point out someone's interface flaws, someone in the OSS community screams at me "it's volunteer work" or "program your own version then."

              Then I realize I don't want to work with a bunch of anti-social programmers.
              [ Parent ]
              • Re:I'd volunteer GUI designs... (Score:5, Informative)

                by warrax_666 (144623) on Friday February 27 2004, @02:39AM (#8406072)
                Maybe it has something to do with the way you point out those flaws...?

                If you're a programmer working on something which scratches your itch, there a good chance that you already know how your own program works. Having someone come and say "Nonono, this interface is crap!" without actually providing suggestions for how to make it better is annoying at best.

                Annoying as it may be, the "program your own version" may also be a valid argument from the programmer's perspective. If changing a UI is a lot of work, then the programmer may not actually have the time (or motivation; remember they've already scratched their own itch) to implement your set of changes. But you can still do it or get someone else to do it if you feel strongly enough about it. Remember, what you're getting is free (probably as in beer and freedom), so the programmer has no moral obligation to do anything for you.

                But I've usually found that if you are polite and above all humble when you suggest fixes (be it UI fixes or regular bug fixes), then people will usually do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Btw, you might check this link:

                How To Report Bugs Effectively [greenend.org.uk]

                Most of it also applies to UI bugs.
                [ Parent ]
              • Re:I'd volunteer GUI designs... by bonch (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @11:33AM
              • No Migration Without Representation (Score:5, Insightful)

                by Ilan Volow (539597) on Friday February 27 2004, @11:51AM (#8408968)
                (http://www.clarux.com/ilan)
                The second the Free Software community started trying to push their stuff on schools, governments, and corporations, every Free Software developer earned a moral obligation to improve the usability of their stuff and they lost the right to say "Quit whining about what you're getting for free". The instant you put your software in areas where people don't have a choice in the software they use, you are no longer "just a volunteer".

                Free Software Developers either need to make their usable or they need to stop their lobbying and go back to the server closet they came from.

                We talk about world domination, but we'll neither have it nor deserve it until we learn to do better than this. A lot better.--ESR
                [ Parent ]
              • Re:I'd volunteer GUI designs... by jc42 (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @01:40PM
              • Re:No Migration Without Representation by warrax_666 (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @03:44PM
              • Re:No Migration Without Representation by Bob Uhl (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @05:32PM
              • Re:I'd volunteer GUI designs... by Dirtside (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @08:38PM
              • Re:No Migration Without Representation by Dirtside (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @08:41PM
              • Re:I'd volunteer GUI designs... by FooBarWidget (Score:2) Saturday February 28 2004, @06:58AM
              • 3 replies beneath your current threshold.
            • Re:In related news by spectecjr (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @12:40PM
            • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
          • Re:In related news by jcast (Score:2) Monday March 01 2004, @07:20PM
        • Windows doesn't even work like ESR says it does by The Monster (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @08:05AM
        • Re:In related news by gnu-generation-one (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @03:58PM
      • Re:In related news by he-sk (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:41PM
      • Re:In related news by ealar dlanvuli (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:44PM
      • Re:In related news by inf0stud (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @02:35AM
      • Re:In related news by nazzdeq (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @10:17AM
      • 4 replies beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:In related news (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ajagci (737734) on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:39PM (#8404896)
      Well, nobody is stopping JWZ from switching to Windows or Macintosh. I think he'll find out that the grass is not greener.

      On Windows, you get media players battling it out for control of your media. You get video playback that fails for no apparent reason. Something as simple as playing a hard disk mirror of a DVD can be nearly impossible (unless you install the same OSS s/w you'd run on Linux as well).

      And on Macintosh, Apple likes to limit what you can and cannot do with video. Want to load clips into iMovie and assemble them? Sorry, no can do--pay a lot more $$$ to get the professional stuff. And "professional" means lots of messy, complex buttons and features that are harder to learn than the OSS command line switches.

      It's simple: use what works best for you. Linux is popular because for many people, it simply works best. Windows is also popular because for many other people it works best. Those are depressing statements about the state of software.

      Rather than ranting, JWZ could try to improve things for a change: he clearly has sufficient technical expertise, but he seems to lack the will and the GUI design skills to actually do anything.
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:In related news by Rotten168 (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:54PM
        • Re:In related news by arkanes (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @03:36AM
        • Re:In related news (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ttsalo (126195) on Friday February 27 2004, @04:41AM (#8406442)
          So what are these mystery Windows video files that don't work?

          Here's one example of Windows video playing annoyances...

          The newest Windows Media Player (that comes with W2k, 7.0) outputs DV video (the kind that comes from almost every digital camcorder, not exactly uncommon) in half size (360x288), which looks like crap. If you try to double the size, it just scales the 360x288 frames and the quality still sucks ass. You have to run "mplayer2", which starts the older version (6.4) (why the hell is it called "mplayer2"?), and there you can configure the DV codec to output the full resolution. It still won't work on the newer player, though. Now, if you want to play an DV encoded AVI, you'll have to remember to select "Open with->Windows Media Player", not "Open with->Microsoft(R) Windows Media Player" (which is the newer player that doesn't work right).

          This was on my laptop. On my desktop, DV audio codec has disappeared somewhere, dvd-compliant MPEG-2 files won't play (WMP goes looking for a suitable codec, doesn't find it), and DV avi files crash the WMP on exit, but this is just on my system, not a general issue. I'd just like to know what the hell broke these, and how to fix them. Currently I have to boot to Linux to play MPEG-2 files with mplayer...

          [ Parent ]
        • Re:In related news by gfxguy (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @07:54AM
        • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
      • Re:In related news by nutznboltz (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:58PM
      • Re:In related news by martingunnarsson (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @07:10AM
      • Re:In related news by dave420-2 (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @07:50AM
      • I don't feel limited in iMovie by OS24Ever (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @09:34AM
      • Re:In related news by Comen (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @10:40AM
      • Re:In related news by poot_rootbeer (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @12:05PM
      • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:In related news by Anonymous Coward (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @12:15AM
    • Re:In related news by Spruce Moose (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @01:18AM
    • Really difficult to relate by mao che minh (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @12:01PM
    • Re:In related news by rinoid (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @02:29PM
    • Re:In related news - Documentation by slivovitz (Score:1) Saturday February 28 2004, @01:39PM
    • Re:In related news (Score:5, Funny)

      by daviddennis (10926) <david@amazing.com> on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:36PM (#8404863)
      (http://amazing.com/)
      I don't think he's a has-been. Judging by his nightclub web site, I'm going to guess he's having a lot of fun, meeting a lot of people, and having some kind of love life, all traditional failings for geeks.

      That being said, I wonder why he doesn't port xemacs himself.

      He surely has the ability, if anyone does.

      Unfortunately, I suppose he doesn't have the free time, considering his dedication to his nightclub -- but maybe if he took the time he was spending trying to get Linux to work and put it into the port, we'd all be a lot better off.

      I know I would. I use MacOS X and sure would love an xemacs port. Sadly I simply don't have the knowledge or ability needed to do it, but I sure would love to have it :-(.

      D
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:In related news by Anonymous Coward (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:47PM
      • Re:In related news (Score:4, Informative)

        by sinistral (80451) on Friday February 27 2004, @02:34AM (#8406055)
        XEmacs compiles with no problem on Mac OS X (assuming you have X11, the Developer Tools, and the X11 SDK). It's also available from DarwinPorts [opendarwin.org].
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:In related news (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 27 2004, @03:42AM (#8406293)
          If you configure emacs with '--with-carbon --without-x' you get a carbonised version of xemacs, which is absalutely the best emacs there is. Doesn't need X11 and looks great. You need to have texinfo installed beforehand. See 'http:/ /members.shaw.ca / akochoi-emacs /'.
          [ Parent ]
    • Re:In related news by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:55PM
    • 3 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • Here's all he actually says (it's at the end):

    So, if you are out there writing GUI apps for Linux or BSD or whatever, here are some questions you need to be asking yourself:

    1. What does my software look like to a non-technical user who has never seen it before?
    2. Is there any screen in my GUI that is a dead end, without giving guidance further into the system?
    3. The requirement that end-users read documentation is a sign of UI design failure. Is my UI design a failure?
    4. For technical tasks that do require documentation, do they fail to mention critical defaults?
    5. And, most importantly of all...do I allow my users the precious luxury of ignorance?
    • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DRue (152413) <.gro.bureht. .ta. .eurd.> on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:10PM (#8404173)
      (http://therub.org/)
      We'll never get to this point if every time two people disagree they split the project. Project forks are good to an extent - but I think that we lose a lot more than we gain because of it. At least MS has a meeting and decides how to continue - we, the OSS community, just get pissed off and branch.
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tc (93768) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:34PM (#8404394)
        Or just split the difference, keep everyone happy, and decide to do both proposals. Hence leading to configuration boxes from hell adorned with approximately seven thousand checkboxes.
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:Here's all he actually says by Alpha27 (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:41PM
        • by hayden (9724) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:46PM (#8404507)
          Meetings: None of us are as dumb as all of us.
          [ Parent ]
        • Re:Here's all he actually says by Xzzy (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:01PM
          • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:38PM (#8404894)
            You know, I get really tired of these broad generalizations about Windows nowadays without providing a single shred of proof to back it up? Even ESR did it in the article (the part about "maybe it blue-screened a lot but....").


            Have any of you actually used Windows lately? I don't see any of this. I've had more RH9 and FBSD 4 & 5 boxes lock up on me lately than I've had XP or 2000 boxes lock up. Xzzy, can you provide an example of something that an end user would use (not any of their server offerings) that has more than 15 controls on the form? Why do you think they pioneered the use of WIZARDS! It's to provide a logical progression to a final software configuration state, rather than most OSS software which most of the time requires you to edit a config file (the equivalent of an essay question on an exam). Sorry, I don't feel like being tested on my reading comprehension today. I just want to get my box playing DVD's.


            Really, it's the interface stupid.

            [ Parent ]
            • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:4, Insightful)

              by DarkSarin (651985) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:00AM (#8405381)
              (http://www.bmo-web.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday August 18 2004, @08:37PM)
              LOL!

              I suspect that I have ben 0wnz3r3d by a tr011, but I'll say it all the same: Windows is not the pinnacle of stability.

              This opinion is likely to be popular here, but the rest of what I say is not.

              Recently, I saw what I think is the best illustration of the difference between linux and windows. I have a box that was unstable in windows. Couldn't burn a CD for jack...loxor3d every time! Under linux I never had a coaster. I had other troubles, but not with that.

              At some point, windows got so bjorked that I decided that it was a HW issue, and replaced my mobo & cpu. Since that time, windows has locked on me exactly zero times. Ditto for linux.

              So what's my point? I find that on good solid hardware, they are about the same for stability (not security, mind you, but stability). However, on faulty hardware with perhaps a few problems, I found linux to be much more stable.

              That, to me, is the difference in terms of the technical side. There are others, but that's the one that sells me.

              On social issues, linux wins, hands down. This is from a convicted capitalist (and sometime republican/libertarian). I only bring this up to avoid some of the flames. M$ is socially irresponsible because they do everything they can to keep prices high, which hurts those who are not as economically stable as others. In the end, though, those who can't afford windows will win if they just use linux instead (free) of pirating winxp (like so many do).

              Any questions?
              [ Parent ]
            • Re:Here's all he actually says by anthonyrcalgary (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @02:55AM
            • Yeah, I have used it lately by mveloso (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @03:40AM
            • Set it up properly... by zoney_ie (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @05:48AM
            • Re:Here's all he actually says by HeghmoH (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @06:15AM
            • Re:Here's all he actually says by rokzy (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @07:40AM
            • Information theory. by jotaeleemeese (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @12:23PM
            • Re:Here's all he actually says by CanSpice (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @08:29PM
            • 3 replies beneath your current threshold.
        • by prockcore (543967) on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:36PM (#8404866)
          Or just split the difference, keep everyone happy, and decide to do both proposals. Hence leading to configuration boxes from hell adorned with approximately seven thousand checkboxes.

          Ah, I see you have discovered KDE's design guidelines.
          [ Parent ]
        • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Jerf (17166) on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:38PM (#8404884)
          (Last Journal: Saturday August 18 2001, @11:04AM)
          We'll see how this goes, but in my open source project, I'm planning on instrumenting the program to allow the users to (voluntarily and anonymously, of course) report to the project server which preferences they are twiddling and which commands (i.e., menu commands) they are actually using.

          I'm hoping this will let me chop at the features and preferences and get away from "I'M A LOUD USER AND WHILE I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO TWIDDLES MY BAZZLES I'LL CRY IF IT'S REMOVED" by virtue of having hard numbers. (I made a Fruedian slip and typed "lout user", which works too.)

          (You shouldn't have bad spoofing problems until the project is much larger, by then I'm hoping to have a better gestalt understanding.)

          Feel free to snarf this idea, I'd love to see it more often.
          [ Parent ]
        • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
      • Re:Here's all he actually says by lavalyn (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:36PM
      • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:4, Insightful)

        by TWX (665546) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:37PM (#8404419)
        "...we, the OSS community, just get pissed off and branch."

        And this is a bad thing how? In this business competition is almost always a good thing, especially when the source code is open. If the fork comes up with something better than the original, the original could incorporate it or mimic it. If either project dies, the stuff is still available for use or continued development.

        I've tried to configure CUPS. I don't feel so bad about the lack of particular success now that I've heard of Eric Raymond's troubles. This is one project that might benefit from someone forking it and developing interface tools that allow it to work without being such a bane.
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:Here's all he actually says by whoever57 (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:54PM
        • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Interesting)

          by sydsavage (453743) on Thursday February 26 2004, @11:04PM (#8405047)
          I've tried to configure CUPS. I don't feel so bad about the lack of particular success now that I've heard of Eric Raymond's troubles. This is one project that might benefit from someone forking it and developing interface tools that allow it to work without being such a bane.

          I too have struggled through a configuration of CUPS, coupled with samba printer sharing for windows users no less. A couple weeks later, when OS X 10.3 came out, I was amazed at what Apple had done for a front end to CUPS. It's extremely intuitive, and a vast improvement to previous OS X printer configuration schemes.

          It would be really nice if Apple's config utilities were released back to the open source community.

          [ Parent ]
          • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Interesting)

            by zangdesign (462534) on Friday February 27 2004, @01:43AM (#8405885)
            (Last Journal: Thursday April 21 2005, @12:15PM)
            It would be really nice if Apple's config utilities were released back to the open source community.

            If they just gave it back, then what would be the point of owning an Apple computer? By creating the extra value, they are able to charge a pretty penny for it and justify their existence. For that part of it, at least, they are fulfilling the promise of open-source: a level playing field for everyone that they add their own particular brand of value to.
            [ Parent ]
          • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Graff (532189) on Friday February 27 2004, @04:38AM (#8406430)
            (http://slashdot.org/)
            I too have struggled through a configuration of CUPS, coupled with samba printer sharing for windows users no less. A couple weeks later, when OS X 10.3 came out, I was amazed at what Apple had done for a front end to CUPS. It's extremely intuitive, and a vast improvement to previous OS X printer configuration schemes.

            And you know what? Apple keeps on doing this over and over again. People wonder why Macintosh users are so loyal, it's because you really can just sit down at the computer and do stuff, you hardly ever have to crack a manual or fiddle with weird configuration stuff.

            I'm just as technically competent as the next geek but I have to work with hard to configure Windows and Unix stuff at work all day. When I sit down at home I don't want to have to fool around with that sort of stuff, I just want to get to work. For me that means a Mac.

            Hey, a Mac might not be right for everyone and I'm always a proponent of using what works for YOU but I know so many people who were diehard Windows or Unix users who finally gave Macintosh an honest try and were blown away at the experience. Yeah, at first they were a bit clumsy because they were used to doing things a certain way but once those habits wore off they were much more productive.
            [ Parent ]
          • Re:Here's all he actually says by cherokee158 (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @07:30AM
            • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
          • Re:Here's all he actually says by RubberJohnny (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @11:26AM
          • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
        • Re:Here's all he actually says by shellbeach (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @12:59AM
      • Re:Here's all he actually says by Spoing (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:44PM
      • Re:Here's all he actually says by gangz (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:52PM
      • Evidence for claim and similar problem with sox. by jbn-o (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @01:28AM
      • Not always right by Safety Cap (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @10:31AM
    • by potpie (706881) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:14PM (#8404209)
      (Last Journal: Sunday November 28 2004, @11:03PM)
      1 What is a non-technical user doing with Linux anyway? They need to crawl before they can walk.
      2 Why not put in endless loops of windows that lead back to the same place over and over again. That would be funny.
      3 Nobody likes documentation... except 4 n00bs
      4 oh yeah... about those... er...
      5 I like to think of Linux as a sort of technical boot camp. I started using it because I wanted to upgrade my status from "windozer coder of ascii art" to "codeNINJ4"

      those are my thoughts.... anyone else?
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Interesting)

        by wibs (696528) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:32PM (#8404372)
        Every year on slashdot people say it'll be Linux's big year. Yes, that means next year people will say it too. It's partly because of this thinking like yours, that you need to be l33t to even touch the machine, that linux's big year hasn't happened yet. You follow "What is a non-technical user doing with Linux anyway?" with "I like to think of Linux as a sort of technical boot camp." So which is it? Is Linux the end-all of nerdom, or is it just an educational experience on the way to... what?

        The point is that a better UI isn't something that should be frowned on. Christ, I feel stupid for even having to say that.
        [ Parent ]
      • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Interesting)

        by uncleFester (29998) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:36PM (#8404403)
        (http://www.fatass.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday December 05 2002, @12:09PM)
        1 What is a non-technical user doing with Linux anyway? They need to crawl before they can walk.

        well, if you LATFA, you see as the second sentence...

        It has proved a textbook lesson in why nontechnical people run screaming from Unix.

        IOW, if you want to even think of competing with the windows world at the desktop level, you actually have to reduce to the brain-dead level of explanation, support or general UI practice.

        Even technical non-unix people struggle (a manager at work, skilled with Novell (stop laughing) is struggling a bit to learn linux.. and deadrat at that). if semi-competent people have some semi-major with what we, the unix-versed, understand (but may still be tasked by on occasion) how can we ever seriously expect Linux to prove its superiority at the joe-schmoe level?

        -'fester (aix/tru64/hpux/linux geek.. that's in paying order, mind you :)
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Insightful)

          by randyest (589159) on Thursday February 26 2004, @11:14PM (#8405104)
          (http://randyrandy.net/)
          Specifically, as the author eloquently states (IMHO):

          The thing to notice here is how far behind we have left Aunt Tillie. Rule 1 of writing software for nontechnical users is this: if they have to read documentation to use it you designed it wrong. The interface of the software should be all the documentation the user needs. You'd have lost the non-techie before the point in this troubleshooting sequence where a hacker like me even got fully engaged.

          It's embarassing, even to me personally, but he's dead right. Not just for Aunt Tillie, but for you and me (can I get a humming of the Star Spangled Banner in the background now please, thanks) -- no one should have to stop to read man pages or html docs unless they are doing the most esoteric things with an app. Obviousness for everyone! We all know the basics -f -r, blah blah "standard" command line interface, and it works because (1) things act like they should and (2) we are experienced enough to know that "should" in the software/tool world expects a little more from us intellectually-wise than "should" in the normal day-to-day buy some bread rent a movie world.

          The valid, relevant, even poignant point of this article, as I see it, is that it's not much work to go from where we are (which is comfy for us; a reasonable tradeoff 50/50 hassle for user/hassle for developer) to where we need to be to eat Microsoft's lunch (most hassle for developer, albeit 1-time hassle, and near-zero user hassle in most cases.)

          We blow this stuff off because we want to make it workable for those smart enough to deserve to enjoy it then quickly move on to the Next Great Thing that Needs to be Made Now. We Peter principle ourselves out of making a real headache for MS, which is something we (ostensibly?) want.

          Hmph. He said it well, and I for one am taking it to heart and thinking about how to make it better (with minimal effort, of course :) )
          [ Parent ]
          • Now there's a good point: (Score:5, Insightful)

            by spoco2 (322835) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:01AM (#8405385)
            (http://simon.oconnorlamb.com/)
            "We blow this stuff off because we want to make it workable for those smart enough to deserve to enjoy it then quickly move on to the Next Great Thing that Needs to be Made Now."

            I think you've hit the nail sharply on the head there... the problem with far, far too many nerds is that they are entirely utalitarian... if it works, well, dang it, that's good enough. I've proved I can get that to work, so I'm bored with it now.

            There kind of needs to be a whole set of other 'design nerds' who come along after the 'worker nerds' have done their bit, and make it all pretty and sensible to use... these 'design nerds' would have a good understanding of what the 'average Joe' is comfortable with in an interface.
            [ Parent ]
            • I'm a design nerd, when can I start? I think the problem is no programmers will like newbie-friendly interfaces. My experience is that programmers think it takes too many clicks and too much extra work. I'm not talking about "Wizard" guides here, but basic interfaces. Programmers want direct control, beginners want user friendly interfaces. The programmers will have to stand back, they can use the command-line interface.
              [ Parent ]
            • Re:Now there's a good point: by bcl (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @11:04AM
            • Design nerds need to hit it first (Score:4, Interesting)

              by Rikardon (116190) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:24PM (#8409363)
              The problem with having the "worker nerds" do their thing first is that the very architecture of their system may preclude (or make difficult) some necessary newbie functionality. To paraphrase Alan Cooper, code is to design like concrete is to architecture: once the concrete is poured, it's REALLY hard to change it, no matter what changes you make on the pretty blue paper.

              Ideally, you let the design nerds do some user research before you start coding at all. Who is the target audience? What design metaphors are the already used to using? How much (usually, how little) experience can we assume?

              Then you prototype. Prototyping isn't much different from coding: prototype your designs (on paper for starters), find out where they crash (i.e. where people get "hung"), debug, rinse, repeat. You won't work all the bugs out with a paper prototype, but you can nail an awful lot of them.

              THEN you start coding. And you test and refine as you go, since some things (scrolling, for example) can be hard to simulate with paper. But you can get so much information if you just take a couple of weeks at the beginning and put some thought into your design, and then find some people who are representative of your target audience, and say "You have a printer attached to a different computer on your home network. You want to be able to print from this computer to the printer on the other machine. Here is the first screen..."

              (Spoken, by the way, as someone with a foot in both worlds -- a design nerd who has also co-written a C compiler).
              [ Parent ]
          • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:4, Interesting)

            by shellbeach (610559) on Friday February 27 2004, @01:14AM (#8405770)
            We blow this stuff off because we want to make it workable for those smart enough to deserve to enjoy it then quickly move on to the Next Great Thing that Needs to be Made Now. We Peter principle ourselves out of making a real headache for MS, which is something we (ostensibly?) want.

            Speak for yourself. The (open source) code I write is written for first and foremost for myself. I'm open to suggestions and feature requests, and even more so to patches, but I'm not going to go out of my way thinking about how to make it fit to the lowest common denominator of users.

            Note: it's not because I'm trying to specifically exclude stupid users, it's just that it takes a hell of a lot more work to create a dumbed-down interface, and that these type of interfaces often make things slower ... and I'd imagine many other OSS coders feel the same way.

            Mind you, I should also add that I have never had the aim of "making a real headache for MS" when programming, and I think that that is a terrible reason for writing code.
            [ Parent ]
          • Re:Here's all he actually says by tehdaemon (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @01:17AM
          • Alan Cooper's books by Kevan_moran (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @02:41AM
          • Re:Here's all he actually says by Umrick (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @08:26AM
          • Re:Here's all he actually says by Lumpy (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @08:52AM
          • Re:Here's all he actually says by Mr. Piddle (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @07:51PM
          • 3 replies beneath your current threshold.
        • Re:Here's all he actually says by OsamaBinLogin (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @04:41PM
        • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
      • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MinutiaeMan (681498) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:41PM (#8404458)
        (http://www.st-minutiae.com/)
        "What is a non-technical user doing with Linux anyway? They need to crawl before they can walk."
        I hope you're not one of those same people who's predicting that 2004 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop... Face it, most computer users (myself included, sometimes) have no interest in learning the nuts and bolts of the system and every application that comes with it. Until Linux embraces those kinds of people, it's always going to remain a niche OS and never be widely accepted in turn.
        [ Parent ]
      • Re:Here's all he actually says by fitten (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:53PM
      • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Insightful)

        by smchris (464899) on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:10PM (#8404688)
        3 Nobody likes documentation... except 4 n00bs

        For the last couple years, I've been citing that attitude as the #1 reason linux isn't growing like it should as a desktop. Coming from an OS/2 culture in the last half of the '90s where people were supportive and at least one survey found a decidely middle-aged demographic, the "only newbies need documentation" attitude strikes me as juvenile, unproductive, and, unfortunately, really common in linux culture. Look:

        Is price the problem? Duh
        Hardware compatibility? Naw
        Installation difficulty? The major distros are as easy as Windows now.

        No, it's use and maintenance. Where does a person learn how to use and maintain something if not from the documentation? Believe it or not, some people don't enjoy doing a half-hour Google search among various sites each time they need to have this-or-that setup explained competently and professionally.

        Those are my thoughts.

        [ Parent ]
      • Re:Here's all he actually says by Felinoid (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:12PM
      • Re:Here's all he actually says by Anonymous Coward (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @01:39AM
      • Newsflash for ya by RLiegh (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:34PM
      • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SYFer (617415) <(ten.refys) (ta) (refys)> on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:45PM (#8404495)
        (http://slash.syfer.net/)
        This post (and its parent), albeit humorous enough, go straight to the underlying problem with Linux at present: a wilfull disdain for the non-savvy user. "Joe Sixpack" should be embraced rather than disdained (figuratively, of course).

        This is the underlying problem with the interface issue discussed in this thread and it is why M$ continues to prevail in spite of a generally inferior core product.

        When *X finally evolves from an exclusive clique into a user-focused OS for the people (not merely the nerds) it will truly prevail. Currently, IMO, its the percieved pricing ("free" as in beer) and general non-Microsoftness of Linux that drives it at all. The user experience and level of effort required to achieve proficiency is generally thought to be a big negative at ground level.

        [ Parent ]
        • by pbox (146337) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:55PM (#8404576)
          (Last Journal: Wednesday August 25 2004, @05:55PM)
          Here is a wierd thought:

          Maybe Microsoft's usability design benefits from the fact that they have a bunch of pointy haired guys around, while the open-source projects exclusively consist of collections of Dilberts?

          Scary, but it would justify the pointy-haired bosses existence. At absolute minimum all open-source projects should have (pet) lamas assigned to them, and a continuously rotating basis (to prevent tainting them with knowledge) and their whining should be taken as the word of authority...
          [ Parent ]
        • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:4, Interesting)

          by jp10558 (748604) on Thursday February 26 2004, @11:38PM (#8405255)
          Yeah, when you have "computer people" who don't want to take the time to mess with Linux cause it is a bigger pain than windows to get to do anything, then you can understand why the average user won't use it.

          I'm a pretty computer savvy person. I'm in my 4th year of college in CIS, and I have taken Sysadmin classes using Linux exclusevly. I have bulit my own computers and computers for other people. I've done networking with routers in Internetworking Classes. I've even done some programming.

          Compared to the average user, I'm the person they come to when something breaks on their computer.

          I loved Redhat Linux for running DNS servers in class, it was great for a mail server or FTP server. It was great for scripting. It was fast, and stable - the multiple user features were head and showlders above home windows offerings in my experiances.

          I don't use Linux at home. I've tried, multiple times, multiple distros. It is simply TOO MUCH TROUBLE. I don't want to fight through dialog boxes that don't seem to do anything after I hit apply. I don't want to deal with install issues, like how do I install this today? I recently played around with mandrake 9.2 I believe. This time I didn't want to totally dual boot etc, so I was using VMWare. I don't know if this is a VMware problem, or a linux problem, but let me tell you - Windows 98 virtual machine... click on file in VM ware, and install VMware tools... bam standard windows installer in the virtual machine, and bam, done, installed. I still haven't gotten the linux script to work right. I've given up. I've since heard that maybe I don't need to install that anyway cause newer versions have automatic support for VMWare.

          The point of my rant there is that until software vendors and developers come up with a clear consistant UI, with things like install programs that you can double click on in KDE and have work,I don't see linux catching on on the desktop.

          The sad thing is I like to play around with linux - to keep up with what's happening, and to stay in *nix mode for servers.

          But when I need to get some classwork done, like write a paper or do a spreadsheet, or when I want to play online - I use WinXP. It's just easier.
          [ Parent ]
        • Re:Here's all he actually says by mingot (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @12:38AM
        • Re:Here's all he actually says by CAIMLAS (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @12:47AM
        • Honest truth? Here it is... by bonch (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @02:14AM
        • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
      • 3 replies beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:Here's all he actually says by endx7 (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:15PM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:Here's all he actually says by Neo-Rio-101 (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:16PM
    • Re:Here's all he actually says by bersl2 (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:26PM
    • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ratsnapple tea (686697) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:37PM (#8404418)
      Programmers should definitely code with these questions in mind, but I think it's even more important to recruit people who are skilled in UI design so they can knock some sense into the coders every once in a while. Coders can't, and shouldn't, be expected to always focus on usability--for most engineers it's not their area of expertise. Likewise, UI people shouldn't be expected to have to code just to get a feature implemented the Right Way.

      There's plenty of graphic designers and UI experts in the employ of Apple and Microsoft who probably couldn't code their way out of an infinite loop. I don't know that the same can be said of most open source projects.

      yours
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Insightful)

        by yerfatma (666741) on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:18PM (#8404738)
        (http://www.localnine.com/)
        That's the problem. I can't stand the UI requirements we have to meet at work, but I try to accept them anyway, because I know I'm not the end user and my understanding of how a tool I'm building is "supposed to work" has nothing to do with how it will be used. It's like QA'ing an app you've built. You can't do it, at least not well, because it's so natural to stay inside the accept ranges of what you've built.

        I don't know the answer. The only reason I give into UI requirements at work is because I have to to get paid. That incentive isn't there for open source projects, so there is the danger projects will fork off. I know some comments above don't see that as a danger at all, but it is a waste of resources if two teams are building the exact same things instead of moving forward on other pieces.

        [ Parent ]
      • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:43PM (#8404923)
        There's plenty of graphic designers and UI experts....

        mistake one in interface design is thinking its graphic design! Better looking buttons lead to user interface improvement with about the same frequencey that a new paintjob fixes your car's transmission.
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:Here's all he actually says by ratsnapple tea (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:51PM
        • Re:Here's all he actually says (Score:5, Insightful)

          by CornHole (735049) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:19AM (#8405494)

          mistake one in interface design is thinking its graphic design! Better looking buttons lead to user interface improvement with about the same frequencey that a new paintjob fixes your car's transmission.

          You are correct, pretty buttons does not a good UI make, however, UI design -- user-centered UI design (layout, workflow, etc., etc.) is VERY important. To continue with your analogy, your car has power-steering. But, human-interface designers made it so you get some tactile feedback from your car's steering wheel at speed (as opposed to the 60's Caddies which you could steer at 65 with your pinkie).

          It's the "design" process that's important. 1. What is this "thing" supposed to do. 2. What does the user(s) expect/know. 3. How's the user(s) going to act/react based on #2. 4. What's the simplest, most effecient and effective way to get to the desired end result given #1 #2 and #3 for as many cases as possible.

          Photoshop doesn't make you a graphic designer; programming skills don't make you a UI deisigner.

          Do what you do. Engineers engineer, programmers program, and designers design, but just like you wouldn't have a electical engineer engineer a bridge, or a web developer programming embedded system, you shouldn't have a graphic designer designing a UI... IMO.
          [ Parent ]
      • by da5idnetlimit.com (410908) on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:49PM (#8404963)
        (Last Journal: Saturday October 30 2004, @05:54PM)
        Please just remember that part...

        I happen to have recently installed a Laserjet on my gf computer, and it's Win2000, and the whole process took me 5 minutes (1 config failure, 5 seconds of intensive neuronal action and then the right click on the right button)

        I simply used KDE printing tool that came with the nice Knoppix-Cluster cd, and took 5 seconds before hitting buttons.

        Also, please remember :

        COMPUTER WEREN'T MADE FOR PEOPLE !!! Computers were made for experts in companies, the fact that windows is "easy to use" (damn, it hurts !) or even "intuitive" (I actually wrote that ?) has been the main cause of problems, because the configuration was a "One-Size-Fits-All" solution.

        => Most Windows computer are configured almost all the same, default, and so more or less all exposed to the same problems. They work "perfectly" (my hands start shaking) as long as everything is in the "Normal Scope" (everything open and accessible from anywhere, except if you change it, which users don't)

        => Microsoft made 2000 and XP. One is clearly a server Os, where even access to cdwriter for users has to be configured by hand. Many things are accessible, but you have to RTFM a bit and you can get it almost secure (MS notwhistanding)

        XP, on the other hand, is a nice "plug-and-play" thingy with lotsa grease and help so that even Aunt Milly can do it herself (or pester her nephew/son/grandson, as in the 99.99% of real life cases)

        You want an easy to use OS ? get a playstation.
        You want a desktop computer that just works ? get XP.
        You want a hard, rugged and stable server ? get linux.
        You want a nice Linux desktop easily running in no time ? be ready to lose most of your security, or wait some more time... MS had 20 years to learn how an UI should look, and they do extensive usability tests, have specialists, teams, and so on dedicated to the problem.

        It will come in time, but Linux wasn't thought for the desktop, so the transition will take some time. The poor guys making cups did an excellent job as the server works 100% (for me). If you dislike the UI, please follow usual Open source procedure :
        1 / Email the dev and tell him (gently) what's wrong in your opinion and what should be done. If he has the time, he'll fix it. (99% of real life cases ?)
        2 / DO IT YOURSELF AND STOP COMPLAINING FOR CHRIS'SAKE !!! you are a guru Linux wizard, so get emacs runing and do your conf files, or write a better UI.

        Ahh ! No point in this post, but I somehow feel better 8)

        Linux is about choice and RTFMing : always had, server-side, never will, desktop-side...

        If Users knew how to do it, they would be sysadmins...
        [ Parent ]
      • Re:Here's all he actually says by Funksaw (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:43PM
      • Re:Here's all he actually says by k_head (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @12:18AM
      • Re:Here's all he actually says by thockin (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @02:23AM
      • Re:Here's all he actually says by Felonious Ham (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @04:42AM
    • User Interface Design is hard! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:06PM (#8404661)
      Listen up everybody out there in Geek Land! User interface design is hard . Read Landauer's The Trouble With Computers [mit.edu].
      I like "free as in freedom" software, and I fear the society that will be created by proprietary stuff like Windows, but we won't get the freedom we want if we can't deliver the benefits of freedom to the average user. If you can't be bothered to read the book, remember this: test, test and re-test. For really important stuff, borrow the most clueless of your relatives and friends, and have them try to use it while you are watching (keep your damn mouth shut, though). If you do this, you will create easy-to-use software, and if you believe in the political value of F/LOSS, you need to take this seriously.
      [ Parent ]
    • What needs to be done by lawrencekhoo (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:29PM
    • Re:Here's all he actually says by mitherial (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:30PM
    • Re:Here's all he actually says by MattTarr (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:34PM
    • Windows isn't much better (Score:4, Insightful)

      by daviddennis (10926) <david@amazing.com> on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:43PM (#8404924)
      (http://amazing.com/)
      Eric has some excellent points, but just to muddy the waters a bit, Windows often isn't any better.

      For example, I have to set up printing to JetDirect network printers at work under Windows, and it's horribly unintuitive.

      1 Run the printer setup wizard
      2 Say you're setting up a LOCAL printer, not a network printer
      3 Un-click "Detect automatically" and press Next
      4 Say you want to create a new port. Selecct TCP/IP port from the dropdown. A new TCP/IP port wizard pops up. Type in the IP address of your printer
      5 Select the printer make and model.

      It would probably be easier to set up CUPS on a JetDirect printer than Windows, based on the menus Eric cites. Too bad that wasn't what he had.

      D
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Here's all he actually says by VivianC (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:53PM
    • Re:Here's all he actually says by CAIMLAS (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @12:38AM
    • Re:Here's all he actually says by demi (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @12:55AM
    • Re:Here's all he actually says by RussP (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @02:00AM
    • As a sysadmin working with unix servers... by edunbar93 (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @03:59AM
    • Empirical testing by hey! (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @07:18AM
    • Re:Here's all he actually says by gilesjuk (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @09:02AM
    • Re:Here's all he actually says by Moraelin (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @09:09AM
    • Re:Here's all he actually says by Paradise Pete (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @09:48AM
    • Re:Here's all he actually says by schmidt (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @10:20AM
    • Re:Here's all he actually says by DarkOx (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @10:29AM
    • 3 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • Why aren't macs more popular? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mozumder (178398) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:06PM (#8404134)
    Well, if ease-of-use is paramount, why aren't Macs more popular?
  • Well there's yer problem.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by NickABusey (642217) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:06PM (#8404135)
    (http://www.pedalbmx.com/)
    There's your problem right there "I have a desktop machine named 'snark'."
  • Not neccessarily true (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KingOfBLASH (620432) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:07PM (#8404145)
    (Last Journal: Sunday October 10 2004, @02:36PM)
    That's not necessarily true. Mandrake [mandrakelinux.com] set up CUPS and just about everything else I've needed with no problems at all. It's all about what you're doing. For some programs under some distros you need to be a programmer to install and / or set them up. Under other distros, and with other programs, it can be a breeze. (Just look at how well Knoppix does!)
    • Re:Not neccessarily true by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:19PM
    • Re:Not neccessarily true (Score:5, Insightful)

      by s4m7 (519684) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:44PM (#8404487)
      (http://www.samthurston.com/)

      The fact that he mentions using Fedora core kind of discredits his whole argument against the "open source community" and the "CUPS Team" when what he is really denouncing is his linux vendor. It's been kind of an understanding for a long time that it was for the OSS community to build, and for the Commercial distro vendors to "clean up" for Joe and Jane End-User. It's a shame that he never makes that clear, and I'm sure if I were on the CUPS team I would be a little offended at the way ESR is explaining away his^H^H^H aunt tillie's failure to read the dox, search the list, and otherwise be completely "luxuriously" ignorant. Go buy windows. OSS isn't really a fair proposition if you don't have something to contribute.... or at least meet the developer half-way.

      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Not neccessarily true (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:44PM (#8404489)
      It was easy for you because you know what the heck you're doing already. I've got over a dozen years of UNIX printing experience, and every single bozo trap that Eric mentioned is a real flaw in the CUPS design, including the Mandrake installation. I got past them because I'm a flipping expert, but for newbies they're a nightmare.

      In fact, for Mandrake, did the CUPS installation mention that you have to set up xinetd by hand to run the cups-lpd daemon to even *run* the admin interface, or did Mandrake add it to the RPMS by hand themselves? It's most certainly a stage never mentioned in the source tarball nor is it included in the RPM spec file that comes with the tarball.

      I built and tested it last week to try new printer drivers, and no, it's not there. And the addition of new printer drivers is pretty damned secret, too....
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:Not neccessarily true (Score:4, Informative)

        by KingOfBLASH (620432) on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:20PM (#8404748)
        (Last Journal: Sunday October 10 2004, @02:36PM)
        1. xinetd isn't enabled by default on the "normal" settings because it's assumed if you need it you're saavy enough to set it up and edit the config files.
        2. Mandrake comes with webmin, so you don't need to go through the process of editing files by hand if you install the webmin RPM.
        3. If you use the mandrake "printer drake" it is relatively straightforward to set up new printers
        [ Parent ]
      • Re:Not neccessarily true by Lost Dragon (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @11:09AM
    • Re:Not neccessarily true by isdnip (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:01PM
    • Re:Not neccessarily true (Score:4, Interesting)

      by eco2geek (582896) <eco2geek@c o m c a s t .net> on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:40PM (#8404904)
      (Last Journal: Saturday July 19 2003, @12:23PM)
      (Just look at how well Knoppix does!)

      The funny thing to me about ESR's rant is that I tried running Knoppix [knoppix.com] 3.x (it's a version of Debian that runs entirely off of CD) on my computer and my wife's computer at the same time, and, lo and behold, her laser printer showed up in KDE's Printing Manager on my computer automagically. (The two computers are networked through a router.) I didn't have to lift a finger. So either Klaus Knopper, who put Knoppix together, made sure it was configured correctly, or the version of Debian he used was configured correctly.

      Actually, the advent of CUPS made printing on Linux much easier. I remember trying to get LPRng working on an older version of Red Hat with absolutely no success. (There was this nice GUI-based printer setup wizard that evidently did less than was necessary.) Fortunately CUPS had just come out, and it worked with my inkjet.

      (Of course, Aunt Tillie isn't going to know how to download, unarchive, compile, make, and "make install" CUPS.)

      - e2g

      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Not neccessarily true by DrCode (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @02:22AM
    • Exactly! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RoLi (141856) on Friday February 27 2004, @04:53AM (#8406466)
      (http://f1-facts.com/)
      That's the big problem. The bashers (and even though I usually respect ESR, this time it's him, too) try out one server distribution (like Fedora where RedHat's managers even said themselves it wasn't targetted at the desktop!) and conclude that "Linux sucks".

      I agree with ESR's analysis, but not with the conclusion: What he found out was the usability problems in Fedora.

      I've set up network printers in SuSE many times for years and it has never been a problem.

      But what is a problem is that this mindless bashing discourages any improvement. So SuSE and Mandrake solved the issues. Do they get any kudos from ESR? Nope. To the contrary, they are lumped into the same category and it is claimed that they are as unfit as Fedora for the desktop. So those who have worked those usability problems are punished, too and get bad PR for mistakes they didn't make.

      This is really sickening.

      Nobody expects ESR to try out every distribution, but he should be honest enough to make conclusions and claims only about Fedora and not "Linux".

      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Not neccessarily true by Lebooge (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @12:01PM
    • Re:Not neccessarily true by Chuk (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @07:09PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • My experience (Score:4, Insightful)

    by brokencomputer (695672) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:08PM (#8404159)
    (http://www.wrongplanet.net/ | Last Journal: Monday June 07 2004, @09:22AM)
    I had a very hard time configuring cups for the first time, but after I learned how to do it, it proved to be '''much''' easier to administer and manage than it is in windows. It was also easier to change configurations without breaking multiple user's print settings. This is true with a lot of open source things. Hard at first, but once you get the hang of it, there is no going back.
    • Re:My experience (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Brigadoon (520066) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:16PM (#8404231)
      The problem is that not everyone can get it working. I'm a CS major and a Linux geek. Definitely not an advanced Linux user, but I know how to setup and use Gentoo, which I do, but I simply could not get CUPS to work on my system. I'm sure if I spent a good deal more time reading the documentation and playing with it, it would be easier in the future, but I, like most computer users, won't NEED to set it up more than once. I should have an easy time getting it setup and working so that I don't have to dick around with it ever again.
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:My experience (Score:4, Insightful)

        by madcow_ucsb (222054) <[ten.sknas] [ta] [todhsals]> on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:45PM (#8404499)
        Don't feel bad. I've spent a lot of time running linux boxes (started back in 96 or so) and my share of HP-UX and Solaris boxes as well. And I'm a software engineer who does firmware and drivers. I know my Unix pretty well. And I'll be damned if I could ever get CUPS to work with my old USB DeskJet 895CSe in anything but the most horrible, chunky, layered-colors-as-black print quality I've ever seen.

        It was litereally so bad that I wasn't comfortable turning in papers (I was in college then) that were printed with it. No, instead I had to print my output to PDF and take it over to my roommate's Windows machine and print it there.

        The drivers and print settings were just horribly archaic. Fine, keep all the crazy stuff, but hide it in an "advanced" tab. All I want is to select my printer type and then "draft", "medium", and "best" print quality and paper type/size. I always had to fight it to convince it that I also didn't want it to default to A4 paper. I don't have A4 paper, I don't want A4 paper, I've never even *seen* A4 paper. It would've been nice if it had noticed I was on an en-US system and figured I probably would want "US Letter"...

        Maybe things have gotten better recently (this was a couple years ago), but I'm pretty jaded about trying to use an inkjet on Linux now. I haven't even tried since.

        That said, I've never had a problem with a LaserJet. As long as it speaks PostScript I've done ok.
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:My experience (Score:4, Funny)

          by Handpaper (566373) on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:01PM (#8404623)
          I don't have A4 paper, I don't want A4 paper, I've never even *seen* A4 paper.
          Well I've never *seen* 'US Letter' paper. But I now know why it's set as default on my LaserJet 4 Plus and in Konqeror's 'Print Properties' dialog.

          [ Parent ]
        • I know exactly how you feel by martin-boundary (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @01:13AM
      • Re:My experience by tie_guy_matt (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:06PM
      • Re:My experience by cfuse (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:53PM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:My experience by MarcQuadra (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:05PM
    • Re:My experience by DeadSea (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:09PM
    • Re:My experience by Endive4Ever (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:25PM
    • Re:My experience by Curunir_wolf (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @12:19AM
    • Re:My experience by flacco (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @01:32AM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • -1 Troll (Score:5, Funny)

    by nmoog (701216) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:09PM (#8404166)
    (http://mrspeaker.webeisteddfod.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday February 06 2005, @10:56PM)
    What a rant! Im going to send mod points to Eric Raymond's house by mail.
  • Igorance and the double edged sword (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lavalyn (649886) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:09PM (#8404171)
    (http://127.0.0.1/ | Last Journal: Wednesday March 31 2004, @01:41PM)
    Ignorance and the user won't step out of their bounds beyond their Internet Explorer and Outlook. Unfortunately, others like Gator and BetterInternet will do it on their behalf.

    In the end, a computer is more like a car than an oven, capable of great power but requiring a good deal of knowledge to use (and not run over people in the process).
    • by el-spectre (668104) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:17PM (#8404238)
      (Last Journal: Tuesday December 30 2003, @07:21PM)
      True, and a computer takes some skill to use. It's not fair to expect the average user to be an expert just to do some simple configuration.

      Hell, I'm a half decent tech geek, and I struggle to do many config tasks even on user-friendly distros like Fedora.

      Should it require significant skill to update the kernel (and know what you're doing?) ? Sure. But to install simple hardware? Hell no.
      [ Parent ]
    • by Sycraft-fu (314770) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:57PM (#8404592)
      But programs like CUPS are WAY more difficult than a car.

      See, with computers and cars there is both generalized and specialized knowledge. You need a deceant bit of generalized knowledge to operate both.

      In the case of the car you need to know what all the standard wheels, pedals, levels and the like do. You need to know traffic law, you need to understand how vehicles handle, you need to know to have it services regularly, etc. Basically, all the stuff you learn in traffic school and need to pass your test. Computers are similar in respect to general knowledge. You need to understand how UIs work, you need to know not to open random attachments, you need to know to patch your system, etc.

      The problem is that many programs, like CUPS, and many Linux people, think that people should have lots of SPECIFIC and indepth knowledge. That's not good design. Just as I shouldn't need to be able to rebuild my engine to drive a car I shouldn't need to have indepth knowledge of the workings of a computer to operate it.

      Some people choose to gain great knowledge, and that's fine. They are the technicians or mechanics or engineers or programmers that fix/maintain/design/build/etc a car or computer. However the average user should be able to get along with their general knowledge and for the most part never be required to become more of an expert.

      As he alludes to, the Windows and Mac worlds are much better at that. Far from perfect, I can list hundreds of problematic Mac and Windows programs. However, on a whole, they do a much better job of helping the user out. They pick acceptable defaults, they walk you through choices, they have intelligent interfaces, etc.

      This is what is needed. Espically since many programs themselves require learning. Like an audio editor. You need to learn how to operate it properly to do what you want with audio or a game where you need to learn the rules and controls to play. Well this is made much more difficult, often to the point normal people will give up, if while you are trying to do that you are also being required to learn new things about your computer.

      Apps really need to do their best to just walk a user through setup and install. Let them get going and using and learning the app, not getting stuck on just trying to get the damn thing to work right in the first place. Geeks can hack it, most non-techie people can't.
      [ Parent ]
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:Igorance and the double edged sword by sean.geek.nz (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:36PM
    • Need to keep things in perspective. by twitter (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @12:21AM
    • 3 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • Goddess? by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:10PM
    • Re:Goddess? by micromoog (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:26PM
    • Re:Goddess? by sbma44 (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:26PM
    • Re:Goddess? by black mariah (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:26PM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:Goddess? by BoneFlower (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:36PM
    • Re:Goddess? by jcast (Score:2) Monday March 01 2004, @08:05PM
    • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • In other news.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by iMMo (61469) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:10PM (#8404180)
    (http://blogs.sun.com/comand)
    ...ESR was found beaten severely, with the names of several CUPS developers found tatoo'd on his forehead....
  • Yeah, a real surprise by contrasutra (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:12PM
    • Re:Yeah, a real surprise by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:24PM
    • Re:Yeah, a real surprise by JVert (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:25PM
    • Re:Yeah, a real surprise (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Spetiam (671180) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:40PM (#8404445)
      (Last Journal: Thursday October 20 2005, @07:58PM)
      submit a patch or shut up. Identifying a problem we all know exists isn't that amazing.

      on the other hand, the "squeaky wheel gets the grease"

      i think the more noise everybody makes about a particular shortcoming, the more the entire community will pay attention to that particular shortcoming. yeah, it might be annoying that people keep harping on this, but in it's own way, it will help get things done

      just a thought
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Yeah, a real surprise (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mytec (686565) * on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:43PM (#8404474)
      (Last Journal: Wednesday April 28 2004, @01:51PM)

      And who are the (l)users? The persons who use a computer as a tool to get their job done? The persons who don't think of their OS as a religion? The persons who given in and try Open Source software only to find that a good deal of software isn't as usable as it could be? When they ask or comment they are thrown to the wolves.

      OMG..imagine a guy who has done a good deal of visible work for the Open Source cause, points out a weakness or simply an area that needs some improvement, and the most visible and shocking comments on /. are the ones knocking the guy. Very little in the way of, "yeah things could be better...How do we fix this? How do we help?"

      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Yeah, a real surprise (Score:5, Insightful)

      by alienw (585907) <alienw.slashdot@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:46PM (#8404506)
      Well, as a matter of fact CUPS is one of the few projects which actually put some effort into making a GUI. It's not that it would have taken significantly more skills/code/time to make a much better GUI. After all, all the auto-detect code is there. It's just that the programmer didn't think too hard about the interface, and -- most problematically -- didn't think with the user in mind. It's not like it would have taken more than 2 extra minutes of programmer time to put in short explanations of what each option does. That's what ESR is really getting at.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Yeah, a real surprise (Score:5, Informative)

      Then why keep saying Linux is ready for the desktop? Why WHY WHY?

      I write code for a living. I can code in Perl, C++, C, VB6, .Net, ASP, Javascript, HTML, VBS, PHP, SQL, VBA. The only commonly used languages (scripting and other) that I haven't write code in that I am aware of are Java and python and I've read a fair bit about java. I write my utilities to manage my computer, for example I coded a quick C++ app to manage my backups recently and I coded a perl utility to find duplicate bookmarks in my mozilla. I'm trying to establish here that I'm pretty technically oriented.

      Guess what? I don't run linux. There are two reasons:
      1. I write code generally for windows and occasionally I take work home.
      2. I don't have hours on end to spare learning how to use Linux effectively.

      I love the idea of Linux and at times have made the attempt to migrate my desktop to Linux, with the plan of starting by dual booting, and migrating my environment across bit by bit. Well guess what: each time the GUIs didn't work and I spent half my time hacking around in RC files. You get *awfully* tired of that after a while (or I did).

      I might think about running Linux for servers, but I want to see a lot more work of the quality of knoppix done before I consider it with making the effort. Unless of course I get fired and have a lot of spare time on my hands.

      If you want linux to achieve market acceptance it must be written to work for the dumb home users and it has a hell of a long way to come.

      PS I'm not interested in being told that Ruby, D, ALGOL, Brainf**k or $favorite_language are commonly used languages.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Yeah, a real surprise by circusnews (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:04PM
    • Eating your own dog food by niittyniemi (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:31PM
    • Re:Yeah, a real surprise by Momomoto (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:40PM
    • Re:Yeah, a real surprise by Hacksaw (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:41PM
    • Re:Yeah, a real surprise by dedazo (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:01PM
    • change the value system by hayne (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:19PM
    • Re:Yeah, a real surprise by 2short (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @01:14AM
    • 4 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • Its really interesting ..... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GNUALMAFUERTE (697061) <almafuerte@nospaM.gmail.com> on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:12PM (#8404201)
    How Important developers of the GNU and Open Source Movement are living the obscure land of kernel hacking and going to write some userland code. Many times, in Free Software, the underlying system, the lower level development is made by the most competent developers, and so is robust, stable, actually the best out there, but the front ends, well, they just don't have the same quality, so, for the unexperienced user, it looks like crap. I think it's time that we change this, and start showing that GNU can also be reliable on the Desktop, not only showing how fast it is, but also good end-user interfaces. It's not that i don't like KDE, GNOME, XFCE, etc,etc, they are ok, but i think that if we put the best people to work on it, they will be even better.
    Linus has been talking about this recently, are we going to start seeing things like Linusorganizer, Linword??, hehe, that would be nice.
  • Not only coders! (Score:4, Interesting)

    It's true that the OSS community needs to beef up many area of the developpement process.

    Software isn't just about the code the same way that a car isn't just about the engine.

    For people to want to use it in the first place, to enjoy it once they've started using it and to stay with it, a "product" needs many qualities.

    This (often) explains why an inferior design can becomes the norm.

    So lets get cracking with artists, GUI/interface designers and and documentation writers!

    I will anticipate the "Well, why don't you do something! Where's the patch?" posts and answer:

    I'm doing what I can with the talents that I have (often amounts to writing suggestions to developpers, bug-reports, spreading the word on new stuff and donations).
  • Fecklessness?!? (Score:5, Funny)

    by crapnutassneck (243159) * on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:14PM (#8404211)
    (http://www.intensified.com/)
    I honestly have not ever heard someone use that term outside of The Clash. I shall use it tomorrow a minimum of twice.
  • Eric, we love you but... by rmassa (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:14PM
    • Re:Eric, we love you but... by duffbeer703 (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:20PM
    • I think you forgot to wear your glasses by djkitsch (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:27PM
    • Typical (Score:5, Insightful)

      by KalvinB (205500) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:30PM (#8404351)
      (http://www.icarusindie.com/)
      With closed source the responsibility lies solely with the company to solve the problems.

      With open souce, problems are just an excuse to try to force people who find problems to "join the cause" or you can just ignore any problems they find.

      Here's a crazy idea members of the Open Source community such as yourself need to get through your thick skull: take responsibility for the crap you write. If you write the code, it's YOUR responsibility to fix the problems. No one else is obligated to fix a line of code and is more than free to point out the flaws.

      He didn't write CUPS so why should he feel obligated to fix it? He's a USER. He didn't write the code. He didn't design the interface. As a USER he's in a position to criticize. It's what users do.

      Whinning he doesn't treat you like a king and kiss your feet for blessing him with what he sees as crap, is not going to do anything to win support for the project.

      This is why I choose what Open Source projects I use very carefully and rarely recommend them and never because they are Open Source.

      Ben
      [ Parent ]
      • indeed (Score:5, Interesting)

        by rebelcool (247749) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:41PM (#8404454)
        And a sure way to guarantee malfunctioning, piss poor quality code is to come in the middle of the project with little knowledge of the surrounding project.

        This is especially true if its a non-trivial piece of software. Several times new programmers have come into software packages I've been working on, don't bother to read the structural documentation or even the useful other code that serves as examples for how to improve and extend upon the existing structure.

        Instead they try and do things their own way, often end up doing things redundantly or breaking something else and just otherwise fouling more than they contribute.

        The best person to improve upon software is the person who designed in the first place! Or someone who's worked on it extensively enough to know the quirks, the reasoning behind non-obvious parts and knows the rest of package throughout.

        Telling a user to fix a poor piece of software is incredibly frustrating and lame to those of us who, god forbid, have other things to do in our lives.

        [ Parent ]
      • Re:Typical by 0racle (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:10PM
      • Re:Typical by IamTheRealMike (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @05:50AM
      • 3 replies beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:Eric, we love you but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ErikTheRed (162431) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:43PM (#8404480)
      (http://www.renaughty.com/)
      You missed the point of the article. He's speaking about Open Source projects in general, and he has a very good point. I only started using Linux and other open-source software about three years ago, and I've gone through the exact same process with at least a dozen different packages. Most of this could and should be fixed on the documentation level - if someone like myself with 20+ years of computer (coding x86 and TMS9900 assembly at age 10) experience gets frustrated, there is a serious problem.

      It's all well and good to put out an excellent piece of software like CUPS, but it's also important to communicate its workings (and CUPS is just an example; we could go down a list if we wanted to). Even though I have extensive coding experience, I think the best way I could contribute to Open Source is on the documentation side... if I can just figure out what I'm doing first :). Even then, the other Eric and myself can't fix everything.

      Beyond that, open source developers need to develop the mindset (pun semi-intended) that their user knows either little-to-nothing for desktop applications, or basic server administration for daemons. Each piece of documentation should begin with something like "In order to comprehend this documentation, we suggest you be knowledgeable about: (shell scripting, OpenSSL CA management, installing CPAN modules, etc)." Pointing to some good references would be a bonus. Listing knowledge dependencies is every bit as important as listing library/package dependencies.

      Once that's out of the way, you have to communicate everything necessary to configure and run the software. Writing documentation from a naive (in terms of program functionality) perspective is difficult and tedious, but it is doable. You just have to ask yourself "If I didn't write this, would I know what the hell I'm talking about?" after eveyr paragraph.

      And that's just to be "reasonably" useable. If we really want to "take over the desktop," then we need perfectly polished wizards and other GUI tools to help those users that are are not inclined to RTFM, spend a few hours with Google, or (shudder) RTFS. The bottom line: it's wonderful to put out a really cool and useful piece of software, but the job isn't done until it's documented (daemons) and / or idiot-proof (end-user software).
      [ Parent ]
    • I hate this answer (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ars-Fartsica (166957) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:45PM (#8404496)
      Come on, are you telling me when something ticks you off about a piece of code you download the tarball or cvs the code and learn the whole thing and dedicate yourself to its betterment??? I hope nothing about the kernel or Mozilla or Mysql tick you off or you are looking at six months of hard study.
      [ Parent ]
    • Because he's a USER (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SuperBanana (662181) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:52PM (#8404546)
      If the user interfaces are so poor, why don't you help fix them? Instead of approaching this in a manner designed to piss people off and create enemies, why don't you say things like

      Why? Because he's a USER. Not a programmer. Developers have a responsibility to listen to their userbase. If you want market-share, then when your users say "I don't understand X", you DO NOT say "well, FINE, fix it yourself!" That is ENTIRELY the wrong attitude. ESR may be confrontational, but you're even more so.

      Why doesn't your approach work? Because they're simply going to walk away. Software is so complex these days that many people, even programmers, couldn't possibly contribute without investing a serious amount of time. Hmm, which is a better use of resources- 12 hours of a user messing around learning your functions, conventions, library calls etc(and probably introducing more bugs than features)- or 15 minutes for you to add the button yourself?

      I know -exactly- how he feels. Countless times I've found software that has a super-spiffy web page, touts how damn good it is to anyone who's reading- but you unpack the source and Jeeeeesuschriiiiiist you can't figure out which way is up- and I've been building and compiling unix packages for almost 10 years(when i was yer age, we had to edit makefile library paths ourselves! None of this automake...) Then, if you get it built, you run it and menus have confusing names, there's no help file, there are secret options nobody mentions that are in the ~/.myprogram directory, and so on.

      The mldonkey p2p client was an excellent example. The developers continuously worked on all sorts of weird theoretical schemes for this and that, while the userbase clamored for a manual(there was none), a description of what each setting did(ditto- the developers would cheerfully add some oddly-named option and not explain to ANYONE what it did), or for features that were common in other clients. Such as the ability to share a file without having to restart the client(shocking!) But hey, you got three different algorithms to pick from for how it managed sources for files. Yaaaay!

      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Eric, we love you but... by OzRoy (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:54PM
    • Re:Eric, we love you but... by dcam (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:00PM
    • Re:Eric, we love you but... by 1u3hr (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:03PM
    • Remove head from ass by bonch (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @02:51AM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • OS X by Anonymous Coward (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:16PM
  • This one time (Score:4, Funny)

    by savagedome (742194) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:17PM (#8404242)
    Talk about luxury of ignorance. I pitch open source software to family/friends/bosses every chance I get. Now this one time, I was telling my boss about OpenOffice when MSOffice bailed out on him.

    Boss: Damn. This MSWord thingy sucks.
    Me: You should try using Open Office once. Its a good sub and its free!
    Boss: Free? I am telling you one more time. Stop downloading things off of KaZaA damnit
    Me: No. No. No. You got me all wrong. Its free as in 'free as a beer' free.
    Boss: Does it have Clippy?
    Me: What?
    Boss: I looovvvvee Clippy. He is so cute
    Me: Well, it doesn't really have a Clippy per se but...
    Boss: Oh common. How do you expect me to use it if it doesn't have Clippy. I am a PHB
    Me: What?
    Boss: I am a pointy handed boss
    Me: Handed? Ohhh well. Nevermind.

    At that point I just walked away defeated by clippy and luxury of ignorance.
  • difficulty of OSS by chrisopherpace (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:18PM
  • Having battled with NetBIOS... by tcopeland (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:18PM
  • Uh Oh by LittleLebowskiUrbanA (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:19PM
  • Thats fedora, not CUPS (Score:5, Informative)

    by bluGill (862) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:20PM (#8404269)

    The problem is in Fedora, not Cups. Cups works just fine, and more or less like he wants it to, if that is all you ever use. Fedora, using whatever configuration system it uses placed some unuseable stuff there.

    Granted Cups could use a lot of help, but he wasn't using a Cups configurator, he was using some other configurator that can work with not only Cups, but also SMB, LPR, and a bunch of other stuff. I don't know the solution, but bashing the Cups guys won't get you any closer to it.

  • Flame??? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stephanruby (542433) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:22PM (#8404278)
    Initially, I was about to flame this guy and then I remembered. I still can't get my Linux box to print on a printer (through Samba).

    Either I can take his side and be called an idiot because I'm sure someone will claim to have an easy solution to my problem. That's what someone claimed the last time I mentioned I couldn't get MPlayer working and then of course the suggested solution didn't work. Or, I can stay out of the discussion entirely. I think I'll do the latter instead.

  • First of all, as a self-taught Linux user I am delighted that someone as talented as ESR can have a hair-pulling session doing something like setting up CUPS. I have had many an evening like this. Excruciatingly close to getting something done, something that should be simple, and instead spending hours feeling stupid and incompetent. He's right, and he's right about the fact that this is why there are countless unused Linux install discs littering desk drawers under Windows machines, tried and abandoned by people who hate Micorosft, hate Windows, who would LOVE to support an alternative, but can't make it work.

    The user is the loser. There's a clubby, exclusive, snotty attitude among user's groups. The online resources are hopelessly disorganized or relentlessly dinged with ads. The vision that Stallman has of software as knowledge, rather than product, is lost among the throng of sociopaths that spout RTFM at users that ask the same questions over and over.

    Well, you know why people have the same questions over and over? Because the software is obscure and the documentation is unhelpful. GNU is based on people solving their own problems and then giving other people an opportunity to use thier solutions. Documentation, at best, is an afterthought. Once you have solved a problem, there's no need to go back and explain it to yourself, any documentation that does exist arises purely from the virture of developers, not because they need it themselves.

    The fact that the most useful thing you can have with this enormously powerful gem of human progress (the computer) when trying to use Linux is a printed-out HOW-TO, probably downloaded and printed from a Windows box, is more than ironic, it is shameful. The tools for providing context-sensitive help are there, they just are unused. The developers don't care about the user, they've solved thier problem by this time.

    If OSS developers needed robust documentation in order to distribute their product, they would either develop it or not distribute their code. But they don't. There's no reward for the developer.

    This brings me around again to the notion of licensing software developers and then making them accountable for the usability of the product. Not as an avenue for exclusion, but to build a community of developers devoted to the user, a Mr. Goodwrench sort of certification standards, that tests it's releases against naive and novice users. How you make this work I have no idea.

    Red Hat should be doing this already, but they've clearly left the home user at the altar.
  • He's right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blincoln (592401) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:22PM (#8404290)
    (Last Journal: Sunday March 21 2004, @11:14PM)
    I always try and get an open source-coding friend of mine to understand this, and it never seems to sink in.

    Interface design is an incredibly important part of any software project - it's like the clothes you wear to a job interview. Sure, you *might* get the job if you wear your regular jeans and t-shirt, but if you take the time to dress up, you will create a much more favourable impression on the potential employer you are meeting.

    Similarly, taking the time to make your user interface polished and intuitive is one of the best ways to end up with happy end users who tell other people how great your software is. It lets them know that you care enough about the software you create to spend a few extra hours making it look nice instead of shoving it out the door as fast as possible.
    • Re:He's right by ElderKorean (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:06PM
    • Re:He's right by Jeff DeMaagd (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @10:16AM
    • Re:He's right by Dirtside (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @08:28PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • but he's right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:23PM (#8404297)
    You're all missing the point. Trying to configure CUPS does suck if you're on your own trying to figure it out. Anything with Linux is this way. I'm not a college-aged dork sitting in a dorm not getting laid with 20 other dorks playing EQ. I'm trying to figure out how to use this powerful tool, and if I have to spend 3 days studying dusty man pages to set up a frickin' printer - forget it. Takes me 10 minutes to write a script to install a queued novell printer when I click on a NAL - and then leverage that against 10,000 machines that I don't have to touch. Will Linux do this one day? I hope so.
  • Yep (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The Bungi (221687) <thebungi@gmail.com> on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:25PM (#8404310)
    (http://members.cox.net/bungi/)
    And then when you (humbly) send an email or post a suggestion about how to (possibly) make [insert technology] a bit more friendly, the responses tend to go like this:

    • [no response. evar]
    • This is different from Windoze - I know that! I don't want "Windoze" (how cute, BTW) I want to tell you that your fucking design sucks rocks!
    • If you want stupid, use Windoze instead - Again, very cute. Also arrogant and stupid.
    • This is how it's done in Linux - Well shiieet, of course it is. That doesn't mean it's correct.
    • Did you RTFM|Google? - Well of course, for the last fucking 4 hours, just.
    • The next version will have... - That's great except that if I Google for what you said about this version I see the same thing. Wow, Usenet is great, eh?
    • We're not going to add that, that's stupid - Of course!
    • Use [x] instead - Yeah, except that [x] has been in alpha for the past nine years.
    • Check out [this page] - Fantastic. If that's not a 404 I guess I'll have to learn Japanese! Weee!
    • You're welcome to ask for a refund - Wahahaha!!!
    It takes a rant from ESR (who despite his pretensions doesn't know much about human interaction) to get people to do things right? Wow.

    I always get a chuckle when people compare Linux to OS X or Windows in usability terms. KDE looks absolutely fantastic after I log in, but the fun stops there. If I actually want to do anything else I have to fire up vi and edit 1,000 conf files. Give me a break.

    And yes, ESR is right. This is one of the things that keep Windows users in Windows and perpetuate what you folks call "monoculture". Whining about it and blaming everything on "M$" won't fix anything. Great software ultimately sucks if I can't use it.

  • Network Printing != Aunt Tillie (Score:3, Informative)

    by Riktov (632) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:26PM (#8404325)
    (Last Journal: Tuesday September 21 2004, @03:21AM)

    The configuration problem is simple. I have a desktop machine named 'snark'. It is connected, via the house Ethernet, to my wife Cathy's machine, which is named 'minx'. Minx has a LaserJet 6MP attached to it via parallel port. Both machines are running Fedora Core 1, and Cathy can print locally from minx. I can ssh minx from snark, so the network is known good.

    (my emphasis)

    He's given up his right to claim newbie ignorance right there. Aunt Tillie couldn't even conceive printing through a network.

  • Damn... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mephie (582671) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:27PM (#8404332)
    (http://www.mephie.ws/)
    So, let's review. In order for the nice, user-friendly autoconfiguration stuff to work, you have to first edit an /etc file. On a different machine than the one you're trying to s set up. You have to read the comments in configuration file to know that you need to do this ubn the first place.

    He got so pissed he couldn't type straight!

  • Insightful article, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by salimma (115327) * on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:27PM (#8404338)
    (http://hircus.wordpress.com/ | Last Journal: Monday October 30 2006, @09:12AM)
    The article was insightful, and it contains some things I still did not know after wrestling with integrating CUPS, Turboprint (crappy Canon printer) and Samba, but to be fair to the CUPS developer, they did not write redhat-config-printer; Red Hat did.

    CUPS and Turboprint works well, as it turns out, the problem is that printing from OOo (Linux), printing from OOo (Win) using CUPS' postscript driver, and printing from OOo (Win) to a Windows printer results in different page margins being used. Bummer. At least the fonts look identical if the same fonts are used on both ends.

    And for those people with new Winprinters wondering why raw printing from Samba does not work anymore, you need to add the Windows user as a printer admin. Not documented *anywhere*.
  • by gelfling (6534) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:28PM (#8404340)
    (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Monday October 29, @07:20AM)
    Perhaps Mr. Raymonds' problem is that he EXPECTS all open source stuff to work flawlessly first time out of the box instantly just BECAUSE it's open source.

    In the Windows world it's always a little like being a landmine tester by hitting it with a hammer. So we expect that the configuration dialog for the printer device will just hang or crash for no obvious reason. We expect that MS common UI design isn't and most of the critical functions are never in the same place.

    Predictable Failure. We hope for a minimal effort, at best. But in the OS world we think sheer brilliance will save us all no matter how obscure. So when it doesn't we experience a level of frustration and disappointment we're not accustomed to.
  • Yeah Yeah (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Greyfox (87712) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:29PM (#8404345)
    (http://www.flying-rhenquest.net/)
    Designing a user interface to your application, especially if it's just configuration of a back-end server is boring. Most of us are quite happy just to rattle out a simple parser for a simple config file whose sole jobs is to allow us as small a measure of flexibility as we absolutely need in order to get on with the interesting problem of the itch we're trying to scratch today.

    Why does Microsoft do GUI design better? Because if you pay a programmer a lot of money, he'll do whatever boring work you want him to. They may even have some folks who find GUI layout and design interesting.

    There's the problem. Anyone know how to make GUI programming more interesting?

    • Re:Yeah Yeah by silentbozo (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:20PM
    • Re:Yeah Yeah by LMCBoy (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:35PM
    • Re:Yeah Yeah by pHDNgell (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:45PM
    • Re:Yeah Yeah by 110010001000 (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:04PM
    • WRONG (a bit) by SmallFurryCreature (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:15PM
    • I have at least a suggestion... by cagle_.25 (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:16PM
    • Re:Yeah Yeah by djmurdoch (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:27PM
    • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • It's a valid point (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Versalis (29051) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:29PM (#8404347)
    Far too many open source apps are designed by geeks for geeks. Maybe every one here on ./ can make sense of them but I flatter myself/ourselves that we are somewhat special. Every one in the open source community dreams of the day when open source over throws the evil empire of Lord Gates, but that won't happen until open source apps are as easy to use as the competition.

    My mom and dad have a computer (but 10 years ago they wouldn't touch mine) and there's no way in hell they'd figure out how to configure Linux to print, or network or even change the display resolution. The number of people with personal computers today is astronomically higher than it was 10 years ago and one of the core reasons for that is that they are no longer intimidating to the uninitiated; if you take all those people and throw them back to the usability of ten years ago they'll just give up on computers like they did back then.

    You can shout RTFM all you want, Joe Blow doesn't want to read it. So if you want Joe Blow to use your wares make them as easy to use as the competition.

  • Good Article but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pavera (320634) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:30PM (#8404356)
    (Last Journal: Tuesday December 31 2002, @08:24AM)
    All in all a pretty decent article.
    I agree with many of his points, if there is one thing I dislike in the *nix culture it is the elitism, and holier than thou attitude that many people in said culture have towards users. This is just one more sign of that elitism, we spend hours and hours making very good stable, well designed software, and then we demand that you read a 1500 page book to be able to use it... That's stupid, now you can say "if they don't want to learn they shouldn't be using this software" but that's dumb too... my dad is an attorney, he wants to work on cases, and do legal research and the like, thats what he's interested in, he doesn't want to spend an hour a day figuring out how to share printers/files and send emails, and he doesn't want to have to pay someone $150/hr every time he needs to add a printer to his network. My wife is a psychologist, she wants to care for her patients, and work on her book, she doesn't want to be bothered with figuring out how to configure her computer, and she shouldn't have to be... That said, the author shouldn't have been bashing the CUPS guys, the configurator in question is an inhouse product by redhat/fedora, no other distribution uses it, and the default setting of having the broadcast turned off was also a decision by redhat/fedora not the CUPS programmers (well it might have been made by the CUPS devs, but redhat/fedora had every opportunity to change that default behavior). I appreciate the article though because he is right on in critisizing the community for their lack of vision in this regard. (btw, I admin a 7000 node network, and the entire thing is controlled by linux and unix servers, there are windows nodes, but I would never run windows on the server side, and I rarely use it on the desktop either so don't count me as some MS apologist)
  • OSS Fanboys Can't Take Criticism (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Commykilla (107585) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:33PM (#8404380)
    (http://www.inseattle.org/)
    It's really easy to jump on the Anti-Microsoft bandwagon when it's time, and say "Linux is ready for the desktop, it's high-quality and easy to use, why doesn't it overtake that crap from Redmond". But, when push comes to shove and sombody points out the things that scare off non-technical users from using Linux, OSS "advocates" really seem to have a hard time accepting constructive criticism.
    Look -- if it's just a hobby OS, fine, this criticism is totally baseless and cruel. But, if you all want to see your labor of love have a real shot at the desktop market, you're going to have to take criticism like that and work with it -- if it seems angry, it's because end-users get frustrated when they're promised an easy-to-use system, and they have to spend more time wrestling with configuration than actually doing what they need the OS to do.
    Either take the criticism as advice and use it to add value to your software so it can be accessible to a larger audience, or accept that your OSS project is just a hobby.
  • It seems to me that at least one major locus of the problem is being missed here. ESR says:

    I'm reading the manual, and I find a reference to "BrowseAddress" and /etc/cups/cupsd.conf which begins to unfold for me the mystery of how the autoconfiguration is supposed to work. It seems that CUPS instances periodically send broadcast packets advertising their status and available printers to a broadcast address to be picked up by other CUPS instances. Smart design! But...bugger me with a chainsaw, the broadcast facility is turned off by default and the documentation doesn't tell you that!

    One of the autoconfiguration features that CUPS provides to make life easier for the user was disabled! Now, maybe off should be the default, as a security measure, but from the point of view of ease of use, either the default should be on, or the user should be provided the opportunity to enable it during installation. I don't know whether the default was set by the CUPS people or the people who put together the distribution, but it seems to me that handling this kind of thing is exactly the role of the people who create distributions.

  • MS network printer setup worse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rduke15 (721841) <rduke15@gmaiMOSCOWl.com minus city> on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:35PM (#8404402)
    Well, in fact, setting up a network printer in Windows is certainly not better.

    You have the choice between "Local printer" and "Network printer". If you do have a network printer like an HP with a JetDirect card, the correct choice is NOT "Network printer". It is "Local printer", and later you have to add a "Standard TCP/IP port". ("Network printer" is only to add a printer shared over SMB by another computer)

    So while he has a good point on a bad interface, and while it is true that for some things Windows may have a better interface, it certainly doesn't for networked printers.
  • ok who from the CUPS team... by whowho (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:36PM
  • So true (Score:5, Funny)

    by bunhed (208100) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:36PM (#8404405)
    I remember trying to get fetchmail to work. What a nightmare.
    • Re:So true by twitter (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @12:32AM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:So true by DoctorMO (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @10:11AM
  • What good software should be like by TCM (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:36PM
  • On the other hand... by Beolach (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:39PM
  • Remember CML2? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Goonie (8651) * <robert DOT merkel AT benambra DOT org> on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:40PM (#8404444)
    (http://benambra.org/)
    For those suggesting ESR should fix this himself, those of you with long memories might remember CML2, Eric's attempt to fix kernel configuration (for the purposes of compiling a kernel from source).

    The kernel configuration system back in 2.4 was crufty and not very user-friendly. So Eric decided to build a new system, CML2. It ended up not going in for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was probably a lot of people don't like him all that much. However, in that case he was practising exactly he is preaching here - making software easier for non-gurus to use.

    • Re:Remember CML2? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Stormie (708) on Thursday February 26 2004, @11:00PM (#8405025)
      (http://www.eldergoth.com/)

      CML2 didn't go in because it added a mountain of new requirements to the kernel, not because "a lot of people don't like him all that much".

      Although, it is true that a lot of people don't like him all that much. With good reason.

      [ Parent ]
      • Remember fetchmail, then? (Score:4, Informative)

        by 0x0d0a (568518) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:57AM (#8405706)
        (Last Journal: Sunday October 03 2004, @04:03AM)
        ESR also did fetchmail. Fetchmail has an *excellent* configuration interface.

        * First, the config file is simple and small. A typical configuration should be simple and small. Take a look at the difference between the size of a basic sendmail and a basic postfix installation, and you'll notice an astonishing size difference -- thousands and thousands of lines.

        * Second, fetchmail enjoys good defaults. If you enter the minimal set of options in the config file, it generally works properly.

        * Third, and this is the biggie, fetchmailconf is an excellent GUI config tool. It can autodetect most of the configuration, and if there are multiple supported protocols/auth methods, it uses the "best", which is really better than most commercial email clients can do. Note that one *still* has full access to the simple, readable output that it produces. It doesn't hide anything from you at all, so it doesn't hurt power users that know exactly what they want the software to do, but it makes things much easier for new users.
        [ Parent ]
  • OSS developers often miss the point (Score:5, Insightful)

    by djkitsch (576853) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:40PM (#8404449)
    (http://www.visualcore.co.uk/)
    It's fine to say RTFM to a spotty student who spends his entire free time in front of his Linux box, but ESR is making a valid point that no-one seems to pick up on:

    Most of us don't have the time

    I work from 9am to 3am every day, including weekends. I would love to run Linux, purely because Microsoft's pricing and attitudes bother me, but the last time I tried to set up Red Hat, it took me 4 days to get the system to even recognise my video card.

    We're not just talking about Aunt Tillie, we're talking about Joe B. Power User, who may have the skills to work it out eventually but simply does not have the time.

    Wheras, I plug my Windows XP machine (and yes, I know this is only a recent thing) into the network and Universal Plug and Play makes network printers accessible without my having to so much as touch the PC. Now that's what we want from a Linux distro, and it's not even hard to implement. Why should I have to wade through a dozen .conf files to get Linux working, only to attract abuse from the same people who encouraged me to use it in the first place?
  • Forget the UI! by TechnologyX (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:41PM
  • for every designer an interface (Score:3, Interesting)

    by levl289 (72277) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:41PM (#8404456)
    (http://www.sonous.com/)
    I've held a fairly obvious view for a long time with regards to interface design (be it computer or otherwise):

    Unless you're working under a predefined framework, chances are, your design is going to differ from someone elses when you both attempt an identical solution.
    This isn't an answer on how to deal with this issue, as the answer(s) are everywhere, it's more of a thought process that keeps me from going crazy.
    How many times have you worked with a piece of software or hardware only to move on to another one that was similar in concept, but totally different in execution? It's gotten to the point that I've stopped trying to become an expert at everything, and simply want things to work (maybe I'm just getting older, and have less time and/or memory).
    Maybe that's why companies like Apple have a strong following, with a mantra of "it just works".

    The next time that Joe Administrator is getting cocky with "oh, you didn't know how to configure file XYZ for ABC", remember, they're just being programmed to use an arbitrary interface, thought up arbitarily by some designer.

    And that folks is why I'm working to get out of System Administration, and into programming ;)
    [end rant]
  • No menus! by necdeus (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:42PM
  • Windows printer setup is just as bad (Score:3, Informative)

    by Geordie Korper (451257) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:45PM (#8404497)
    Last I checked to print to a network printer under Windows using IPP or LPR you don't choose Network, but instead choose Local. Network printing really means print server printing under Windows, but esr somehow holds that up as an example of a standard to live up to? No thanks. CUPS may be a little rough, but at least when I connect to a printer using ethernet I don't have to choose non-network as the printer type. Of course really it is a print device under windows since according to Microsoft Introduction to Network Printing [microsoft.com] "The printer is the software interface between a print device and the print clients". Yeah right.
  • Interface Design 101 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zcipher (756241) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:46PM (#8404508)

    I notice that most of the comments thus far seem to be along the lines of "We don't need to improve the interface, the users need to get better because they're too dumb to use it right, and they should just learn cause then they'll realize how much better it is!"

    This is a common mistake made by programmers. The problem is that not that users are actually all that stupid. The problem is that we tend to think of things in terms of how they're doing something, whereas users want to think of them in terms of what they're doing. For example, I want to set up DHCP to distribute IPs to my OSX box so I can use SMB to pull MP3s off my XP box. This is not the way a user thinks; the average user wants to hook his Compaq to his Mac so he can move around his music. He doesn't want to know what any of those acronyms stand for. He just wants to accomplish a simple task.

    Bottom line: the best way to write a good interface is not to think in terms of "what is my software doing" but rather in terms of "what is my user doing." Like my human interface design professor used to say, if people can't use your software, it's not because they're stupid, it's because you designed it poorly. Users prefer usable software to powerful software, when given the choice.

    Another point to consider is that, in the eyes of the Managers of potential corporate users of your system, any time employees spent learning all the details of your software is time taken away from getting actual work done. Not to mention that sloppy interfaces that haven't been properly checked often actually COST most companies money, since their employees actually often take longer than it would have otherwise. Good interface design is not a luxury, it is a mandate.

  • I just went through this... by Mojo Geek (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:47PM
  • For Once ESR is Dead On The Money (Score:5, Insightful)

    by _Hellfire_ (170113) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:48PM (#8404517)
    (http://www.cr0n.net/)
    I generally take ESR's rantings with a pinch of salt. I understand where he is coming from but I think sometimes he has a tendency to go over the top. However in this piece he is right on.

    I am a geek. Not only do I know a shitload about computers I actually work in the industry as a field troubleshooter technician. I have to say though, that although I use Linux on a daily basis on my work PC as my main OS, it still throws me for a loop sometimes when I go through what ESR went through with whatever piece of technologically advanced, functional but ultimately borked UI software I happen to be trying to set up at the time.

    He is right - this IS keeping Microsoft in business. Case in point - I get customers constantly asking me if there is a better alternative to Windows. There is of course, but I would NEVER recommend Linux to an end user who just needs to get on with the business of running a business simply because of the lack of intuitive UI's for Linux apps.

    There are great, shining examples - K3B, Firefox, Thunderbird, Mozilla, Openoffice, Evolution, KDE control centre etc. Let these apps serve as an example to UI designers for other projects.

    It's one thing to have all the functionality in the world, but that amounts to sweet FA in the eyes of a gumby user that would rather give money to Microsoft than learn what /etc/rc0.d is for.
  • Plan: by ainsoph (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:48PM
  • UI Engineers? by anachron (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:49PM
  • by adamruck (638131) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:51PM (#8404542)
    Seriously.

    Try having your grandma setting up a printer with gnome or kde. Better yet try a usb printer.

    Send grandma a small video and watch her try and figure out how to play it on linux.

    Or best yet watch grandma try and use xcdroast.

    Try reading through man pages for stuff like ssh keygen, or X, or any other sort of technical software. Is it really that hard to give human readable description of how to use the shit?

    this is what will do, here is an example, here is another example, dont try and use it to do instead should be used.

    instead of stuff like this

    -e Convert OpenSSH to IETF SECSH key file

    ?????

    seriously documentation is so damn important, and so easy to make. If you write some software, you know what you wrote, so just write a paragraph for each feature, it only takes like 5 minuets and then your software might acually get used.

    The same principals go for graphical interface as well as command line interface. Think of a gui as just a extention of cli. This doesn't apply for all software, obviously things like openoffice dont have a cli. But these apps are pretty rare, and the few that exist work pretty good, browsers and office and stuff.

    Bottom line, this guy is right. We need better quality apps and configuration utilities for linux.

    Adam
    • Re:god damnit this guy is 100 percent right by Strych9 (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:52PM
    • by djmurdoch (306849) on Thursday February 26 2004, @11:11PM (#8405088)
      seriously documentation is so damn important, and so easy to make. If you write some software, you know what you wrote, so just write a paragraph for each feature, it only takes like 5 minuets and then your software might acually get used.

      That's the sort of documentation you see in man pages, not the

      this is what will do, here is an example, here is another example, dont try and use it to do instead should be used.


      kind that is actually useful. Writing good documentation is hard. It is so easy to just give a list of a hundred things --- who wants to read that? You need to be a good writer to figure out what the user will want to know, and make it easy to find that.

      Writing good documentation is just as hard as other parts of UI design.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:what I'd really like... by Sentry21 (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:53PM
    • Not true (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SmallFurryCreature (593017) on Friday February 27 2004, @12:02AM (#8405388)
      (Last Journal: Friday August 17, @05:34AM)
      seriously documentation is so damn important, and so easy to make.

      Either you are one of the few technical writers or you never developed a software project.

      Writing a good manual is damned hard. In many ways even harder then coding itself. Why?

      Compare it with being an expert in your field and being an expert teacher in your field. Wich would you say is harder? The latter really needs to be good at three things. A good coder, a good writer and able to imagine how someone not intimatly familiar with the subject would look at it.

      Maybe you are a natural at this but most are not.

      For a laugh ask say a doctor to explain a complex medical condition in layman terms or a lawyer to explain SCO vs IBM in english. Now why should coders be any better?

      [ Parent ]
    • Re:god damnit this guy is 100 percent right by AstynaxX (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @12:05AM
    • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • great example of a big problem by jwhamilton (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:51PM
  • Democracy? by composer777 (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:51PM
  • foomatic by Saint Stephen (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:56PM
    • Re:foomatic (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Smidge204 (605297) on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:26PM (#8404801)
      Okay, so let's play a game. You tell me what you have to do to install a printer on any flavor of Linux you want, and I'll tell you what you need to do to install the same printer on WinXP.

      Let's use a HP Photosmartt 7350 (semi-random printer make and model I happen to be familiar with, since I just set one up for my mother. It's also USB, which is getting more and more common nowadays)

      I'll go first:

      1) Plug in printer power
      2) Connect printer to computer
      3) Turn printer on
      4) Wait about 30 seconds for Windows to detect the printer
      5) Click "Okay" a few times (about 4 times I think...)

      Sure, you won't have the super-duper software (which you'ld have to install seperately), but you can hit "print" and it'll print. For fairness I'll exclude the software because there's no Linux version anyway.

      Okay, your turn!
      =Smidge=
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:foomatic by Saint Stephen (Score:3) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:59PM
        • Re:foomatic by Microlith (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @01:46AM
          • Re:foomatic by Saint Stephen (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @02:36AM
            • Re:foomatic by 110010001000 (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @12:31PM
              • Re:foomatic by Saint Stephen (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @10:45PM
        • Re:foomatic by bonch (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @03:20AM
          • Re:foomatic by Smidge204 (Score:3) Friday February 27 2004, @07:41AM
        • Noob perspective here: by Kiyooka (Score:1) Friday February 27 2004, @03:43PM
          • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
        • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
      • Re:foomatic by FooBarWidget (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @07:45PM
      • downloads and XP by midgley (Score:1) Monday March 01 2004, @06:25AM
      • Re:foomatic by Smidge204 (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @07:35AM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Something about printing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The Pim (140414) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:56PM (#8404583)
    I think there's just something about printing that turns the minds of otherwise competent developers into applesauce. Printing on unix has been a quagmire for, what, decades? And yet what is it besides 1) converting a document from a standard format to a printer-specific format, 2) sending the document to the device, and 3) (which is really gravy) getting a bit of status back. As ESR says, it's not rocket science.

    My recent experience was trying to print to an inkjet connected to a windows machine. Since it was remote, I decided I didn't need a spooler, so I didn't install cups. Instead, I found foomatic, which is supposed to cut through the many layers of drivers in one slice. Through no efforts (reading several confusing and inconsistent tutorials) could I get foomatic to produce a file in my printer's format. Nor did it give me intelligible error messages. I finally posted to the main list at linuxprinting.org (lp.general); but in the weeks I've been subscribed, I've not seen a single useful reply to anyone's question!

    Oh, I finally got the printer working. I just have to run gs -DSAFER -sDEVICE=ijs -sIjsServer=ijsgimpprint -sDeviceManufacturer=EPSON -sDeviceModel='escp2-c82' -sOutputFile=out -DNOPAUSE -- file.ps , and send the result with smbclient.

  • This is the bazaar by ignavusincognitus (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:57PM
  • criticizm by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @09:58PM
  • CUPS is only decent... (Score:5, Interesting)

    ... a decent try at best. At first glance it alienates me a _LOT_ less than lprng, which is fully managed with an arcane /etc file that lists configuration directives in no particular order.

    But that doesn't mean that CUPS is all peaches and roses. I had to discover what `foomatic' was in order to figure out how to extract a driver for my Epson Stylus C42UX from a large xml file. Its wizard to create the printers was rather friendly, although a belaguering dropdown box full of stuff I didn't have asked me where my printer was. Luckily it identified itself as USB PRINTER #1 (EPSON C42) so I could choose that - but most wouldn't have the slightest idea of what to choose and just stare at the screen glaze-eyed...

    Really, all I wanted to do was print a school assignment. I fully agree with esr on this issue. This whole CUPS ordeal should have taken me 10 minutes, not 10 hours (on and off) to get working. And it still doesn't fully work, for example with printing to a SAMBA host.

    But CUPS is the best we've got for Unix now. Isn't that sad?
  • by Uggy (99326) on Thursday February 26 2004, @09:59PM (#8404606)
    (http://jim.casablog.com/)
    It takes a real man-geek to admit "issues" when installing new software or configuring devices. He loses points for his longish rant though.

    However, I found myself nodding in affirmative at EVERY single step he took during his trouble shooting. I made a lot of the same assumptions (wrongly). The funniest was when he finally figured out he had to configure the server machine to broadcast, and then he couldn't connect to it. HAHA, it took at least 15 minutes of loud swearing for me to figure out how to configure the &*#&#((#&$&^ /etc/cups/cupsd.conf file.

    You know you're in trouble when the first like in the man page is RTFM.

    I swear, if I have to configure another CUPS network, I'll go postal. It works... ssssh, don't touch it, and speak in hushed tones when in the vicinity.
  • HAHAHAHA by the goddess by slubberdegullion (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:04PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Thanks Eric by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:05PM
  • Submit a patch (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sabalon (1684) on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:05PM (#8404651)
    The biggest problem I've seen with open source programs is that when you do get end-users to test things out, be it a UI issue, or some other functional issue, is giving feedback.

    Most of the times it seems that they don't want to look into issues or fix items. The advice is always "what does the debug output say?" or "submit a patch for it". Neither is something that the end user, who we are trying to convice that Linux is so much better than windows, is going to be able to do.
  • Fedora (Red Hat) is more to blame then CUPS by nicfit (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:05PM
  • Raymond said it himself (Score:5, Insightful)

    by querencia (625880) on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:07PM (#8404666)
    Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch.


    The developers of CUPS have scratched their itch. I personally have no desire to scratch Aunt Tillie's itch. She isn't paying me. Neither is Raymond.

    My printer works. If Aunt Tillie wants hers to work, she can pay me to set it up for her, or she can pay me to write software that makes it easier.

    Why the hell is it CUPS's (or anyone else's) responsiblity to do this? If IBM and Red Hat are going to profit from easy printer sharing, let them write good config utilities. The CUPS team got the reward they were after. Their printers work.

    When someone gives you a gift, try not to kick them in the nuts and ask for more. They have every right to stop giving.
    • Re:Raymond said it himself by EvilTwinSkippy (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @11:19PM
    • 100% correct and nicely said. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SmallFurryCreature (593017) on Thursday February 26 2004, @11:55PM (#8405353)
      (Last Journal: Friday August 17, @05:34AM)
      Opensource is written by geeks for geeks. What people forget this is NOT "by geeks for OTHER geeks" but more "by Joe the geek for Joe the geek and if anyone else finds it helpfull then that is nice". Read the original usenet post on the linux kernel for the perfect example.

      But of course that doesn't sit well with those who have an agenda to get Linux to fight their crusade. Or even worse to get them to not to have to pay Microsoft anymore.

      But it is a sign of the time we life in. Give someone dying of a heart attack in the street CPR and they will sue you if you break a rib. Write an excellent printer sharing protocol and people will only bitch about how they need to read the manual.

      Opensource doesn't just work with developers on one side and users on the other. If it is going to work then we need manual writers, forum guru's, gui designers, beta testers, patch submittrs.

      Users are like customers. MS loves customers because they pay. Opensource is free. What do we care how many customers we have? 1 * $0 is the same as 1000 * $0 but it costs a hell of a lot more to have 1000 people asking stupid questions.

      Rant: Old saying is there are no stupid questions only stupid answers. This was true before the invention of the net. Read any forum and you will see time and time again the same question being asked because the asker can't be bothered to first look. Then they will bitch that noone helps them. Obviously their time is more important then everyone elses. Recently saw the worst of all. 9 pages down a ***** said "I am not going to read all those pages give me the answer". ARGH!

      End rant.

      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Raymond said it himself by justins (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @02:30AM
    • Re:Raymond said it himself by Tyrell Hawthorne (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @03:15AM
    • Fine, then... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bonch (38532) <bonch@nOSPAm.slackersguild.com> on Friday February 27 2004, @03:27AM (#8406256)
      Fine, then don't bitch about "M$" being the dominant monoculture when you're to lazy to bother making your software usable for other people. If you only want to scratch YOUR itch, keep your software on your private network and don't let major distros pick it up. Understood, Mr. I'm-the-poor-unpaid-volunteer-developer?

      Guess what? Users don't care either. They'll drop your shit like a bad habit and go back to what works.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Raymond said it himself by RoLi (Score:2) Friday February 27 2004, @05:21AM
    • 4 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • An example of how to do it right. . . by Zobeid (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:08PM
  • Take Your Lumps, People by mchappee (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:09PM
  • Windows easier to set up? Not at my house... by johnlcallaway (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:09PM
  • MythTV by carlcory (Score:1) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:15PM
  • Yeah right. by blair1q (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:18PM
  • Look at Apple (Score:5, Funny)

    by SJ (13711) on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:18PM (#8404739)
    Here is my quick account of setting up a Mac (10.3.2) to print to a Brother MFC-8820D.

    I plugged one end of there ethernet cable into the printer and the other into my laptop. So far so good.

    Being a highly competent user, I then went straight to the Printer Setup Menu and click add printer. I chose IPP printing. Then I turned to the sales guy and asked for the default IP address of the printer. He didn't know. I didn't know. It wasn't in the manual either.

    I cursed. I yelled. I was annoyed. I sent two people off the go and find out the default IP of the network card.

    While sitting there quietly spouting profanity I looked in my list of currently configured printers. Well buff my nuts and serve me a milkshake! There, in the list was the Brother printer all configured and ready to go. I didn't have to do anything.

    I selected it and pressed the "Configure" button. It launched a web browser and brought up the configuration page.

    I fell off my chair.

    I later learned that the printer supports ZeroConf [zeroconf.org] network discovery. Apple takes that further by selecting the correct driver automatically. It work just as well via USB, only if I think want to share it to other Macs I then have to follow the very complex task of clicking the "Share Printer" box in the System Prefs.
  • Printer manager in KDE 3.2 by trtmrt (Score:2) Thursday February 26 2004, @10:21PM
  • by Animats (122034) on Thursday February 26 2004, @10:25PM (#8404788)
    (http://www.animats.com)
    Much to my surprise, ESR is exactly right, as others have pointed out. Here's how to fix it.

    First, if you have't read the original Macintosh user interface guide, do so. There are some strict rules, which today even Apple forgets, but which all competent programmers must know.

    One of the basic rules in that manual is this