Perhaps this is off subject and I certainly would not
want to start a "linux is bad, very very bad" war,but
it seems to me that in my few short weeks apart of
this list, I have seen more questions around things,
like fonts, sound cards and video cards. Now, I know
hardware support is not Mandrakes fault, but the font
thing does sort of blow my mind. Althought it does not
*seem* like a usability issue, it has certainly
hindered my abilility to solve my own problems.
For instance...I want to download the reference manual
off of mandrakes website. I visit the page and can't
read a thing. Fonts are messed up. So I join a mailing
list that gives me advice on how to fix my fonts.
(xfree86 file) Great, that helps, but I still can't
see windows fonts. (or mandrakes webpage) Mailing list
advice: Import windows fonts. But I can't do that, I
don't have windows installed on the same machine.
Mailing list advice: I get links to websites to
download Font files. Can you guess what happenes next?
They files are all executable or in "windows format"
And don't tell me to run WiNE! I can't even download a
manual to tell me what WINE is!!!
My fonts are still not perfect. Ans what really gets
me is that the Mandrake web-developers created half
their site in the "unreadable-by-linux-Arial font
face"
I did finally find instructions on the mandrake
website on how to rememdy this problem. But I had to
copy the text from the unreadable arial-font-faced
webpage and copy it into Star-office.And the
instructions are timeconsuming...at least for someone
who justs want to surf the web after this whole
ordeal.
All this hassle just to be able to read information
from the manufacturers website.
By no means take this as Linux-bashing. I love the
system and enjoy learning all it quirks. The moral of
my story is: Sometimes pretty colors and good-looking
fonts make computing a whole lot easier.
<smiles>
And don't call me Judy!
--- civileme <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Mandrake is already rejected by many who like to
> think of themselves as l33t,
> but I don't believe we have lost that much of the
> power of linux. The point
> is this; we believe that a system can be powerful,
> flexible, and
> user-friendly. The power and flexibility are
> built-in for linux so much of
> our work is on user-friendliness.
>
> We therefore welcome input on it.
>
> We don't happen to believe that Microsoft has
> necessarily found the best
> solution to any one problem associated with use.
> (Who would intuit that you
> press the "Start" key to shut down?) It is a major
> force because many people
> are familiar with it, but the style it provides is
> not necessarily the best.
>
> We may have no better idea what is intuitive and
> what is not than they do, so
> that is where the folks here can help us. Think
> carefully, when confused,
> and note the steps you take to do things with your
> computer.
>
> We know we're producing a counter-intuitive
> interface when a lot of folks are
> reporting errors we cannot reproduce. This happens
> frequently with software
> manager right now.
>
> If people would take notes of a session they had
> with software manager, we
> would be able to see where their intuition leads
> them (we are spoiled by
> being close to its design and implementation, so
> what we do [wihout thinking
> much about it] is already trained to a certain
> procedure) and we would be
> able to make the software more truly intuitive in
> its user interface.
>
> I hope you get the idea. help us help you, by taking
> a few notes on your
> steps, either as you make them (preferable) or when
> something goes wrong.
>
> Microsoft would like you to think theirs is
> intuitive, and Apple would like
> you to think it is them instead. But the fact is,
> no one to my knowledge has
> done the interfaces with lots of user feedback where
> the users consciously
> participated and statistics were used routinely to
> study the data and come up
> with something that is close to what people want.
>
> The next question of course, is does such a solution
> exist? Or do we have
> many that will be considered roughly equally
> intuitive? I know one way to
> discover that answer. :-)
>
> Civileme
>
=====
Jennifer
Registered Linux User #221463
Yahoo IM: jlynn2k
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