Greenies Blog

Over the past few months I tried to get used to Ubuntu. I had some nice experiences, but far more bad ones. To be honest, some of these problems resulted in exotic hardware I use or my desire to use the latest versions of software. Some of the things that did not work right could have been avoided, whould I have been satisfied with Ubuntus’ standard appearance and functionality.

Mind you, I am not talking about the geeky tweaking of Ubuntus’ underlying parts (of which I only scratched the surface upto now). I am talking about Ubuntu in general.

I have been an Apple user for some years now and coming to Ubuntu was a shock to me. Wherever I looked, Ubuntu lacked the usability that OS X provided. It started right with the system-preferences, the first thing a kind-of computer-savy user might want to look at. Not only are Ubuntus’ preferences spread over dozens and dozens of different applications, but they are also spread in two different menus (Preferences and Administration). That [b]might[/b] have been acceptable, would there be any logic behind it. But there isn’t. I can understand that “Disk Utility is in “Administration”, but why “Appearance”, “Users & Groups” or “Printing”? Why “IBus” in Preferences? Is it [b]really[/b] something I have to set preferences for? And what the heck does it do?

Which leads me to the next point: The lack of (proper) information.

People have been stating for years that Linux is “ready for the desktop” (which probably means “for the regular user”). I’m sorry, but given the amount (or the lack of) proper information, I have to strongly disagree. I won’t tell you how many hours, days and weeks I have spent to find information about certain aspects of Ubuntu. Which involved heavy usage of google and IRC.

True, using google isn’t exactly rocket science, but actually finding what you’re looking for is (at least for regular users). I am sure as hell that most regular users would be completely lost with most of the issues that may occur with Ubuntu, just because they don’t know the term they should be looking for. Some may say that users could also ues IRC. And it’s true that once you know where to look, you can find a more or less friendly bunch of helpful people. But: “regular user” (meaning not computer-savy) and IRC? Are you kidding me? The best I can imagine is they are able to open a webchat on firefox. But installing an IRC app and finding out how to actually use it? That’s laughable.

Which leads me to the next issue:

One thing I hear all the time is that Open Source is great because there are lots and lots of applications available. Which is true. Again, the issue is not the available information but how to find it.

Does anybody [b]really[/b] believe that “regular users” would look for something called “Synaptic Package Manager” to find new software? And even if, does anybody [b]really[/b] believe that they would know what to do with it? Would they even [b]get[/b] how to find what they’re looking for? Sorry, but I do not believe that. Not at all.
Just recently Ubuntu seemed to realize that, when they included the “Ubuntu Software Center”, but even this application is not nearly as intuitive as it could and should be.

Now, let’s say the user has found out how to install new software and actually found something that sounded interesting enough (given that the description included enough non-geeky slang, so they could make sense out of it). What would they find after they installed it?

Well, the first thing they would find is:

Nothing.

Absolutely [b]nothing[/b] tells them that anything has changed on their system. There is [b]no[/b] difference on the desktop, no visual clue at all and [b]no[/b] information where an app was installed. If they are clever enough, they may find the application in one of the sub-menus of the “Applications”-menu. Which often seems to be pretty unintuitive decision as well.
Let’s take OpenOffice as an example. I can understand the reason behind putting “Openoffice.org drawing” into the Graphics-section. But: There is also an “Office”-subsection as well. [b]Without[/b] an entry for “Openoffice.org draw”. How about putting an app into a submenu that actually fits (and not only [b]one[/b] but into [b]all[/b] that fit? Or even better: Let the users decide where applications should be put (during the installation-process)? All of that would be better than forcing the users to edit these menus by hand. Which, imho, is just [b]another[/b] example of pretty bad usability. Adding an application to the menus is a pain in the ass, imho. In the worst case it involves re-opening Synaptic, looking for the application and checking which files got installed where.

Why should users be forced to hunt for an application they just installed? This, imho, is a major flaw of all the installation-mechanisms on Ubuntu. The users should be told where exactly an application has been put to and how they can access it. It should be a mandatory part of [b]each[/b] installation.

But on to [b]another[/b] point:

Let’s say, users have finally found the app they just installed, what are they presented with next?

The answer in many cases is: An ugly (geeky) mess. So many of the apps I have tried out seem to compete for the price of “most unintuitive application”. Functions are hidden in obscure sub-sub-menus, sometimes with even more obscure names. If they’re there at all. Sometimes preferences can only be changed by editing some freakingly hard to find preferences-file. Some things can’t be changed at all.

Well, I guess this lack of conformity is the price of “openness”. I have talked about this issue in part in an earlier post, and part of the problem is that far, far too many applications seem to put regularly used functions in different menus. Some do not even provide a regular menu at all. And some (like tomboy) [b]do[/b] provide a menu, but (like in tomboys’ case) it’s “hidden” in the “right-click-menu” on its tiny icon in the upper-panel. And even if the functions are put in the same menu, they may have different names. Like, some apps call their “Quit”-function “exit” or “close”. While this is “technically” correct, it is a bad decision when it comes to usability. Using anything else than “Quit” in that special case doesn’t only make it harder for regular users to find the function. It also makes it ambiguous. What does “Close” mean if I have more than one tab open in an application? Close the tab? Close the window?

My plea to developers is: Use “Quit” for gods’ sake! It’s the established term! The same goes for “preferences” in contrast to “options”. And do not bury such things in an obscure sub-menu, but look how most everyone else does it and do it accordingly!

Even Nautilus, the most important application at least for the regular user, suffers from this problem. Have you ever tried to change the columsn that are displayed in its file-listviews? If you have and didn’t find it: It’s in “System/Preferences/File Management”. Wtf!?! File-management? How about putting it in the “Appearance”-prefs, because, after all, this is what it does!

I guess I will stop now, even though there are a few more issues I have, especially when it comes to the “possibilities” of tweaking the look of Ubuntu (another thing that probably only geeks should even consider to do, at least when it comes to creating own themes).

Goodnight.