Linked by John Collins on Wed 4th Jun 2003 15:23 UTC
There seem to be many reviews on Red Hat 9.0, but all seem to be written by Linux junkies who really know their stuff. What about the MS Windows Convert? They say people like the first thing they use (i.e. if you learn to drive a manual transmission, you prefer it over automatic). If this is true, how does Red Hat 9.0 introduce a novice pc user to the world of computers? I hope to answer some of those questions in this tiny review.
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I gave my dad a linux system (redhat 8), he had no linux experience.
I set it up as dual boot with his old familiar Windows, so he always had something to fall back on. I thaught him the basic stuff (took screenshots of certain applications, and wrote some comments on it). I transfered all his favorites to galeon, put a link in his home folder to his Windows documents, cleaned out the menus a little bit, transfered his e-mail contacts to Evolution, made his mp3 music available and put them in xmms,...
If someone is looking for a good idea for an opensource project: make an application that makes switching easier. (email contacts, bookmarks, documents, music, preferences,..)
He had no problem e-mailing with Evolution, surfing with Galeon, listening to music with Xmms. He was able to burn data cd's and music cd's. He recoreded music from the stereo, to later on burn it on cd. (it was one big long track tough, but still).
He liked the look, and he liked the feel. He liked the main menu better than the windows-start menu. The windows start menu groups the applications by company, and adds another level of indirection with the Programs menu. I noticed he didn't stuff his linux desktop with icons for all the applications, but used the menu instead, or the quicklaunch buttons on the gnome panel.
There were, and still are some problems:
OpenOffice
It uses non-standard controls. There is a toolbar on the left, which can popup menus to reveal more controls. Openoffice is pretty much the only application that does that under Gnome and under the Windows environment he worked on. It was unintuitive and didn't know where to find specific controls.
Generally, Openoffice has a very bloated GUI (in menubar, preferences, controls,..), where MSWord is alot more cleaner.
The icons are not really great, and openoffice lacks integration with the desktop. (e-mail links that don't work as expected)
I'm looking forward to see what Ximian did to openoffice.
X11's copy/paste
My dad does the following on Windows: Search on Google for an image of a bird, mushroom, flower, whatever. He then right-clicks on the image, selects "Copy image". He switches to MS Word, and then does "Edit - Paste". This doesn't work on linux. X11 only support copying text apparently.
Font handling
My dad doesn't have great eyesight, so I wanted to set the fonts a little bit bigger. It was easy to do with a preference application in a Redhat menu. It only worked for GTK2 programs though. I had to write some .gtkrc file to modify the fonts of GTK1 programs. Evolution used another way to set the fonts of the message-pane. Openoffice also has other settings. XMMS was also too small. It has some sort of zoom option, but it looks ugly as hell.
The Gimp
It has some of the same GUI problems as OpenOffice. Non standard controls (right click to get the full menu), and was generally confusing (organisation of the menus). But then my dad doesn't have much experience with photo-editors in general like Photoshop.
Printing
A better and consistent printing panel for Gnome2, Gnome1 and Openoffice would be nice. Set quality of printing, reverse printing, ..
A lack of applications
A good alternative to Corel Draw is missing (he likes to mess arround in it), and a graphical application to create Websites. Openoffice can export to html files, but it lacks website management features. A good kazaa alternative would be nice too. Something better than gthumb to manage and edit scanned photos would be nice too, altough I was able to add some scripts to the nautilus script menu that used imagemagick to rotate and mirror any image. All those applications should be nicely integrated offcourse.
A lack of documentation
There is a serious lack of books that is geared toward normal desktop usage and it's applications. My dad has books on Windows, Office, Corel Draw,.. I just took some screenshots and put comments on them, but that isn't enough. I guess it is pretty hard to write documentation if you have a suse desktop, mandrake desktop, redhat desktop, lycoris, lindows,.. To top it off, it should be translated in the native language of the user :-)