> Everyone assumes that "the masses" must have a GUI, because the > command-line is "too scary" in some way. > > But if the command-line was intuitively understandable, *would these > users still be scared of it*? Would they continue to avoid Linux, just > because text is not as "pretty" as icons, even when the text was just as > "easy to use" as the icons, and the system as a whole had many other > benefits? > > Maybe, maybe not, but the only way to find out is to *actually try it*-- > and that starts with asking real people who experience problems just > what those problems were and attempting to determine the problem's root > cause, so we can find out just what needs to be adjusted to help future > users cross the gap. > > I'm flatly sick of assuming that the only choices are to turn Linux into > a Windows clone as a "bridge", or leave the user stranded on the shore > strewn with "brain-dead junk". Can the gap be forded? Can we teach the > user to swim? Can we provide a raft-- or wings?
First and most importantly you're ignoring the research that has been done on user interfaces over the past few years. It has already been shown that simplifying the interface to a point and click system is much less error prone than the free style typing a console interface provides. For example, to open a file a user can double click on an icon, three steps (point click click). Under the command line a user must type the name of the editor followed by the filename, and hopefully they get the spelling of each correct. The mainframe is entirely text based, and you won't hear more complaints from a user community than you would from this group of users. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally on your side about things. I'd love to say that linux is ready for the desktop and that the general users are ready for the command line. And on a small scale maybe it is. I'm sure you could convert a handful of users from windows to linux without too much difficulty. But if you're in a large organization (i.e. 100K employees) or an organization with limited resources (support and training), the cost of conversion is significant. The hiring requirements change when either asking for folks with experience or expecting that a newhire would not be available right off because they need training on the new system. So the only way linux would make an inroads into these types of organizations would be if it did migrate into a windows clone/bridge, full of the brain-dead junk we as linux advocates would never like to see come to fruition. So maybe you can chalk me up as a pessimist in regards to linux desktop readiness. I'm a linux advocate and use it exclusively; you won't take away my linux until you can tear it out of my cold dead fingers. Realistically, however, I cannot see organizations sinking the kinds of significant costs and efforts it would take to bring them onboard at the current state of things. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
