Things That Just Don't Make Sense

[claydoh]

Re: Things That Just Don't Make Sense

actually in Unity, Ubuntu does something a little like this by having both installed and 'recommended' software listed on the thing it on its menu page (whatever it is called) which I think is also on its Software Center. It is a start. But Kubuntu isn't Ubuntu

As to pre-populating the menu with stuff, well that has the good and the bad. A Kubuntu dude created the firefox installer as both a nod to the pervasiveness and familiarity of FF as well as to accommodate both the need to keep to a 700 mb iso size and to stick to KDE's default settings as much as possible. We already have a decent default set of applications already installed. Labels could be changed, but that may involve convincing KDE or whomever to change what they call things.

"Personal Information manager" should be called what? it is a crapy label, bu what else do you call it? The menu structure is, i believe, determined by the xdg menu specifications - not specific to any one distro or DE.

What I do think might be a good idea is a simple and short First Run dialog that quickly highlights the very basics. Perhaps as part of the installer slideshow even. space limitations again.......

But I don't think that assuming everyone is dumb by default is the way to go, let Unity do that for people. Re-engineering the distro is also way out of the time and resource capabilities of our distro.

This may all be moot if and when *buntu moves to a larger iso size by default, as this would allow for things such as more language packs on the disk, a different default browser, etc and etc

[notyourbuddy]

Re: Things That Just Don't Make Sense

I'll give a shout out to a new friend of mine here who accidentally borked permissions on his home directory downloading and installing chromium from the shell instead of just snagging the copy that's in the repos, which is pretty much a pointy-clicky operation.

shoutout! w00t! *high five*

Below is my short Linux horror stories/experiences after only 4-5 days or so (excluding all the hardware woes.. networks, usb mice, etc). They seem appropriate for this discussion:

[rant]
Regarding Chromium interesting thing is I actually DID get Chromium off the repository... and yep it was a pain free very enjoyable pointy-clicky. More enjoyable than Windows even. Browsing the repository and finding apps you never heard of and trying them out with easy "install"/"uninstall" is quite relaxing I must say. Very noob friendly. The problem is every browser I grabbed off the repository (what the casual user will be using the most) were pretty bare bones and didn't work out of the box. Chromium for instance had no pre-installed flash or java etc resulting in a lot of mainstream websites not working... and while I looked I couldn't find a simple pointy-clicky way to get these plugins installed. I had to literally download .tars .bins etc and manually figure out how to install them... a lengthy process of Googling where to find the browser plugin directories, figuring out which shared libraries to copy over, and the commands required to do the copying via command console without breaking things. Very trial and error. Don't even get me started on Firefox or the default Rekonq (best looking browser I ever used but *&#$ the bugs were intolerable. Not exactly giving newbies a good first impression of Linux)

Meanwhile under Windows you often get a popup prompt and the ability via one click for them to install or at worst download a .exe that requires a very straightforward double-click and a few "i agree" check boxes then good to go.

Regarding sticking to the repository (which would have been my preferred choice. Its a very nice feature) I quickly noticed problems. Most notably... the apps on the repository were outdated. Blender was outdated badly. NetBeans better but still outdated etc. I don't even trust or use the repository anymore . I just go directly to the site, download whatever, and hopefully.. if lucky.... get an easy install. Some even had very nice GUI installs that makes me wonder... why don't they all have easy GUI installers?

And... god forbid someone has to compile source to get something he wants... I'm a very experienced programmer (Win32 API, DirectX, OpenGL, etc) so I don't particularly mind it... in fact open source is pretty cool, but...even I've run into problems compiling things due to all the dependencies that are conveniently not mentioned during installation let alone the sheer number of so-so documented dependencies in the repository. Half the time I don't know whats in the dependency I'm downloading... is there a Linux SDK equivalent to the Window's SDk that I haven't noticed? That would be nice. Anyways... I literally spent an hour compiling, recompiling, cleaning, moving, deleting trying to figure out what the deal was. The terminal never threw a relevant error... heck it was even hard to notice that it threw an error at all... most ambiguous polite error message I've seen in some time. Only after more Googling (that website is getting worn out since I've moved to Linux) did I even discover Linux was missing some obscure source dependency. Very doubtful a casual user would have a chance in hell of troubleshooting such things as they don't know what source code is, what a compiler is, let alone know what in the world to do with them.
[/rant]

That said... Linux is definitely getting easier... but getting past that initial hurdle takes a great deal of patience that I doubt many casual users are willing to put up with. I can pretty much guarantee my entire family wouldn't survive two days and they all use computers every day. First sight of a terminal would probably make them cry uncontrollably.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Things That Just Don't Make Sense

.....
The problem with this approach is that folks are used to being able to, under Windows, freely download a wide range of software anywhere on the net and install it with ease using MSI.

And THAT is the reason why, last month, they discovered a 4,500,000 Windows botfarm, and that 95% of all Windows are or have been infected, even with active AV, because of Zero-Day exploits, and those exploits which Microsoft knows about but chooses not to patch.

Linux, at this point, cannot offer this because....
1. Files that are considered dependencies are not included with the package and if the version of the installed dependency is not the one the program needs, then the install stops right there. Occasionally, it is possible to install or upgrade a older dependency. However, I have rarely have been able to achieve success using this method. Please see here, although be assured that this in no way compares to the real hell located in the center of the Earth.

"Dependency Hell" is a fading phenomena that was mainly a curse of the RPM package system. The reliability of the Debian packaging system is one reason why Debian based distros have become the most popular, Fedora and SUSE not withstanding. In the two years I've been on this forum, IIRC, I've seen only a couple examples reported, and those were not with repository apps.

2. There is no singular installer like MSI that can install the various files in Linux with ease.

That's because Windows is a monoculture, under the control of a single company, which determines its future directions, and Linux is not. The constants in Linux are the kernel and the libc library. The /etc directory and its contents are not treated uniformly across all distros. It used to be that /etc/inittab was the startup configuration file which controlled run levels, ttys, etc..., but now inittab doesn't exist and /etc/init/*.conf are the configurations files because Upstart uses that method. Serial settings are put in /etc/default/grub.cfg and update-grub is run to set them.

In the final analysis, the USER, not some corporation using proprietary lock-in, will determine which distro is the most popular and that distro's approach to how a Linux desktop or server should behave will become the defacto standard.

I do feel Linux has a reasonable chance of competing with Microsoft if user friendliness issues such as these were addressed along with the many bugs and glitches that seem to plague the OS, particularly with upgrades.
...

With a desktop market share over 12% in the US and higher in other countries, and taking into account the Apple market share, the reign of Microsoft is coming to an end, unless they tilt the field even more by forcing PC OEMs to install Windows in firmware to prevent dual booting or replacing a windows installation, Linux is doing very well. Unity appears to be a hit among Windows users trying Ubuntu, which then leads them to Kubuntu, where they find a familiar home, but one with good locks on doors and "windows". 8)