The latest issue of The GNOME Journal has just been published. This second issue covers some technical articles, including CD/DVD creation, connecting to remote resources, and how to get help from the GNOME community. Also, will GNOME pass the Liberal Arts major test? Developer topic s are also covered, as Seth Nickell takes a look at the “Experimental Culture” surrounding GNOME development and Christian Hammond sheds light on the concept of desktop presence.
The GNOME Journal, January Edition
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
This girl obviously isn’t a typical user. She loves ‘the sims’ and has her own web page. Not only that but she actually knows what spatial nautilus means. This was no ‘grandmother test.’
.. especially if they’re gonna write about it.
I have been using Linux for about 6 years, mainly as a server though and have only made the transition on the desktop (from windows) about six months ago. I started with KDE as I always hated the feel of Gnome. Seriously I am the last person who you would have considered to switch (..or at least I would have thought..), but since the release of gnome 2.6 & 2.8(ubuntu) I have been finding myself spending more and more tim tinkering and exploring the posibilities of this DE.
My curiosity boiled over three days ago, and I decided to make the switch.
Here are the main reasons for my switch – all of which are totally debatable ofcourse:
a) Gnome interface & apps are more “consistent”
b) Gnome interface & apps are “Cleaner”
c) KDE has something called artsd…
d) I don’t know if it’s a good thing or what but QT has too many widgets for it’s own good, some of which are really irratating (side-buttons?)
e) I mostly use GTK apps anyways (Inkscape, Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird, Gaim, Bluefish, beep media player etc…)
f) Increased productivity (Since I don’t spend heeps of time messing around in KDE control panel..)
g) My frustration in waiting for that illusive qt-gecko port..
Despite all of this, I will probably switch back to KDE when 4.0 is released..
The grandmother test is inherently faulty anyway. You can not make generalizations of an entire group of people. Maybe my grandmother is a geek, I’m sure somewhere there are grannies promoting open-source in the seniors home, penguins on their desk and refering to Linus Torvalds as “that nice young Finnish boy”. User-friendly is user-friendly despite any type of technical background.
If you are aiming to create a desktop for “Joe Average” you are aiming at a target you will never hit because there is no such thing, it can’t be defined. Such stark generalizations are better left to evangelists and comic books.
Perhaps an individuals ability to learn new skills and the amount of skill it takes to perform a certain task is a better indicator. I truly don’t have an answer as I have no background in UI design. However I do know if you want to create a desktop “Grandma friendly” you might as well make goals of “being happy” and “world peace” as well since all are generalizations.
However if you do want to measure “Grandmother appeal” I guess you could take 100 grandmothers, sit them in front of a DE, ask them to rate it on a scale 1-10, fix the stuff they don’t like and retest with another 100 grandmothers and see the progress. Of course then you are missing “joe-average”, the “first-time user” and other nonsense terms I see thrown about in here.
The first article there talked about how Gnome went from an “anything goes” environment to a clean, consistent corporate desktop. Although i MUCH prefer the new approach, i guess some people feel Gnome has lost some of that expiriementation that made it exciting in the beginning.
One place Gnome could really bring that element back is in the taskbar applets. There’s lots of cool ones already (Stock Ticker, Weather Report), but there’s a potential there for really off the wall ideas. And the great part about those applets is there’s no set way to use them. Anyone can go into the “Add to Panel” menu and just pick whatever looks interesting.
I am the one who wrote the article. I can verify that she is very typical. When I asked her the Nautilus question, I had to explain what spacial vs. navigational meant.. I just didn’t include that part.
Oh yeah, forgot about the website comment. How many non-techie people do you know who have a website? http://timecube.com is evidence that anyone can make a website, reguardless of technical know-how. As mentioned in the article, she only does the static content herself, I wrote the blog software, and installed the other php apps on her site. I do the apache/dns configuration for her domain. When I say she is a typical casual computer user, I mean it.
Before my swich to GNOME, I was already familiar with the essentials; Gaim, Evolution, and at the time Mozilla.
That isn’t a typical Windows user.
Spatial nautilus makes sense to me.
I’m glad it makes sense for someone, because it irritates me like nothing else on a computer (/usr/share/doc/clanlib-doc/html does not mean I want 5 separate windows open). Since you can turn it off there’s no real problem though.
Does windows/any_other_os have a similar API? It sounds very interesting since it allows apps to communicate together so well. Presently you only expect apps from the same vendors to do this sort of thing.
Spatial nautilus needs tuning. I really like the one window representing a folder, I hate the window spam. All they need is an option that will close the last window once you click to open a new folder, currently you have to click shift or use your middle button. It’s silly they don’t have an option for nautilus to behave this way by default.
With the spatial view… If you use the middle button on your mouse (most typically the wheel).. It will open the directory in the same window (much like you can set in windows explorer).. You wont have to open a new window with each directory openned.
Did you try double-clicking with central button instead of left one?
I still chuckle when people say that GNOME apps have consistent UIs. What really is a GNOME app? My opinion is that GNOME is a desktop with a bunch of GTK apps that are being slowly pulled into being GNOME apps (Evolution, XChat etc.), although they all have subtle interface differences and don’t all seem to use the GNOME libraries fully. Take my opinion with a large grain of salt!
That’s a valid point (and the non-standardized menus between many applications really annoy me). On the other hand, the similarity of look and feel between applications goes a long way. Even if the GUI isn’t actually consistent, it mostly feels consistent. That reduces headaches (for me at least); the different windows I have open on one desktop don’t immediately and obviously clash with one another. For me, the best GUI is the one that annoys me the least (and then maybe has some cool features I can use). Most of the time, I’m least annoyed by GNOME.
When I was reading the column of Seth Nickell I realised that he’s the author of:
http://www.gnome.org/~seth/storage/
That sounded like a realy good idea! Unfortunately, their isn’t much activity shown so my question is (not a flame): Seth, is your project actually dead?
see above
I’m glad it makes sense for someone, because it irritates me like nothing else on a computer (/usr/share/doc/clanlib-doc/html does not mean I want 5 separate windows open). Since you can turn it off there’s no real problem though.
—-
press control+L and type the location if you want to
>> Before my swich to GNOME, I was already familiar with the >> essentials; Gaim, Evolution, and at the time Mozilla.
> That isn’t a typical Windows user.
The only reason that she was familiar with these apps is because she used them on my Linux box, which is partly why she was amiable to installing Linux on her box.
“Even typical users learn especially if they’re gonna write about it”
No. They learn, but they don’t learn about terms of art like “spatial browsing.” And she responded to the author’s questions, it wasn’t her who was doing the real writing. It’s quite clear that she was exposed to his ideas beyond just using the software.
The ideal grandmother test would be to have someone who knew very little about computers and not tell them what they’re using or anything and just say, “try this.” If this had been done, such a user would never have learned what “spatial browsing” means.
why is it that everytime desktop linux is mentioned.
somone has to complain that a normal user wouldnt be able to compile a driver for a kernel etc (which it is never necessary to do with most distros anyways). as if the windows user is doing the installation to begin with.
they ask the neighborhood kid to do it. the average user doesnt have to be able to do most admin stuff because they will never ever do it.
I’ve been a regular Gnome user for a while now and you’re exactly right.
Even to this day, Gnome is basically a bunch of random apps that happen to use Gtk+ – mostly because Bonobo has been a failure.
Gnome needs a component system. D-Bus is a start in the right direction.
KDE probably would have relegated Gnome to the status of what Enlightnement is today if not for the cluttered UI and use of QT as it’s toolkit.
Is I already said, The term “spatial” was explained extensively to the interviewee, but this was not included in the article.
Did you try double-clicking with central button instead of left one?
press control+L and type the location if you want to
Handy to know. Maybe I’ll take it out of browser mode, although I use the command line for most things anyway.
The only reason that she was familiar with these apps is because she used them on my Linux box…
Fair enough, it just seemed to clash with this line in the introduction:
She had a casual familiarity with DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 9x.
TBH though having her switch after being familiar with the apps, and having you around to provide user support doesn’t really prove much. How would she fair if trying to go from Windows on her own? Would she even contemplate it?
I’m not trying to pick holes in the article (Which I enjoyed), just trying to point out that the OS needs to allow people to convert by themselves, without being encouraged or having their hands held by “geeky” friends/relatives. IMHO it’s not quite there yet (Maybe Windows/OSX aren’t either).
KDE probably would have relegated Gnome to the status of what Enlightnement is today if not for the cluttered UI and use of QT as it’s toolkit.
Enlightenment is a window manager, not a desktop like Gnome or KDE, so there’s no point in comparing them.
And what’s exactly wrong with Qt as a toolkit ?
Does windows/any_other_os have a similar API?
KDE does. It’s called KIMProxy and is used currently by KMail, Kopete and Konversation.
TBH though having her switch after being familiar with the apps, and having you around to provide user support doesn’t really prove much. How would she fair if trying to go from Windows on her own? Would she even contemplate it?
I wasn’t trying to demonstrate how easy it is to run Linux, I was trying to demonstrate how easy to use GNOME is.. a subtle difference, but a difference none-the-less. I was trying to show that a non-techie, but computer familiar person can operate in a GNOME environment. I’m not trying to claim that they can administrate a Linux box, or do any of this without some initial instruction, in fact it’s very obvious from the interview that she had initial instruction. I’m not “cheating” in some way by using someone who has already used a couple of Linux apps.
nautilus-cd-burner doesn’t seem to have much luck with large DVD writing, though. I think it’s got something to do with the 2GB file limit and the fact it writes a temporary ISO file before burning the disc. Anything above 2GB just doesn’t seem to work, so I have to use k3b. Sigh.
A GNOME app is an app hosted in GNOME CVS and / or shipped with the official GNOME releases. That’s how I see it; gaim ain’t a GNOME app, neither is xchat.
GNOME app is an app hosted in GNOME CVS and / or shipped with the official GNOME releases.
—-
merely being in cvs does NOT qualify. being a part of the desktop or platform release does
gtk app – something that uses the gtk toolkit
gnome app – something that uses gtk and conforms to the HIG
official gnome app/part of gnome – something that ships with the de
anyways, those are the terms i use. corrections would be welcome if nessicary 😉
Yeah. I’m eager to get GNoppix with the latest improvements and try that out tomorrow. 🙂
Method 1)
Go to a nautilus window
select ‘Open location’
type ‘sftp://user@host:/folder‘
enter authentication
watch window pop up. think ‘hey thats cool’
drag folder from remote location to local desktop.
Watch nautilus crash.
Method 2)
Open a nautilus window
Select Places -> Network
Watch nautilus crash.
Yeah, GNOME is really great with this remote resource stuff.
What version of GNOME are you using? There have been gnome-vfs stability issues in the past, but 2.8 is pretty rock solid. You may have an bug that needs addressing, send in a bug report.
Bug 150169: crash while browsing sftp urls
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=150169
Bug 153066: crash during transferts with ssh:// method
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=150366
Bug 153679: sftp symlink support is broken
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153679
And the ~40 other bugs people have reported using ‘sftp’ as a keyword.
Try searching gnome bugzilla with ‘smb’ to see how many people are having trouble with this as well.
‘pretty rock solid’ is certainly not a phrase I would use to describe GNOME 2.8 w/regard to these issues.
It’s way stable for me. But I’m just a common user. 🙂
‘pretty rock solid’ is certainly not a phrase I would use to describe GNOME 2.8 w/regard to these issues.
—
bugzilla reports mean nothing unless the bugs can be reproduced. there is a whole lot of duplicate and non reproducible stuff there
anyone who works or uses these projects and does bug triaging is well aware that number of bugs report may or may not corelate to stability
the above steps you have asked to reproduce the crash are certainly not doing anything unexpected for me. that says something. doesnt it?
OK, so I’m a liberal arts (and sciences) major, and I don’t like the pejorative connotation of having GNOME pass the liberal arts major test.
This liberal arts major has been using GNOME for a year and a half now, and I love it. I also am studying CS as a related area of study in computational linguistics, so… how about we be less offensive to potential readers of this site and go back to the old standby:
The grandma test
Simple. Try Ubuntu, or at least look at the patches they’ve applied / config magic they’ve worked.
I experienced some instability with smb through nautilus in gnome 2.8 on slackware. Nothing compared to the problems under 2.6 might I add – some excellent work done by the nautilus crew inbetween releases.
With ubuntu, I have not had one problem with any gnome-vfs related work whatsoever. I guess its just down to the distro QA.
Bug 159730: UBUNTU crash after right click on smb share
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=159730
Wow, so somebody reported a bug in the gnome development release running on the ubuntu devlopment release.
Thanks for bringing that up…
John, I for one appreciate your article. However, I think a more interesting test would be to take someone from an Arts background who is of similar experience with a Mac background and put them on GNOME. Many Arts students prefer Macs and not all of these are fanatical zealots. Certainly GNOME has shortcomings at the moment but this will be one of the best ways to learn what these are.
TBH though having her switch after being familiar with the apps, and having you around to provide user support doesn’t really prove much. How would she fair if trying to go from Windows on her own? Would she even contemplate it?
Whilst the study is not about Linux (distribution) usability, the test is still trying to cover too little, with too less details, while trying to reach a major conclusion. Who is the test person, what are her hobbies, what is she good at, whats her daily job? Those are details i’d like to know because those influence how she (the test person) relates to GNOME (the DE; not really Linux). This was partly done, but ‘DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95’ experience is broad (if not non-standard given most people jumped on the Windows bandwagon from Windows 98). Besides that, it could also be of interest how fast she grokked GNOME, or what problems she faced. She’d have written such in her daily (b)log concerning her experiences, for example. It all depends on what you exactly want to research and you have to define that. If you don’t, it gets too broad, and receives harsh criticism for that reason.
In that light i very much enjoyed the 2 following usability studies by Jonathan Turner if not also especially for the detailed logs provided. His website also contains some interesting articles.
GNOME 2.6 Usability Study and Review
Posted 18-July-2004 18:30 -0400 by Jonathan Turner
http://www.userinstinct.com/viewpost.php?postid=gnome26review
KDE 3.3 Usability Study and Review
Posted 19-September-2004 18:30 -0400 by Jonathan Turner
http://www.userinstinct.com/viewpost.php?postid=kde33review
In short if i have to say what could have been easily done better: 1) more details about the test person 2) multiple test persons (for example from same background, or perhaps rather from multiple, depending on what you’d like to proof) and 3) be more clear, in depth about what has been learned, what went right, what went wrong, what she liked, what she disliked. Basically more in depth about the experiences with GNOME rather than the overal experience which apparently worked out, thats what i missed.
I’m glad it makes sense for someone, because it irritates me like nothing else on a computer (/usr/share/doc/clanlib-doc/html does not mean I want 5 separate windows open). Since you can turn it off there’s no real problem though.
Playing around in /usr is not what spatial excels at. It’s good for managing your personal files, in your home directory, not for browing through to arcane directories.
Having to browse /usr/share/doc with your file manager only indicates that the help system has failed you miserably. And we’re pretty much all aware of that.
OK, so I’m a liberal arts (and sciences) major, and I don’t like the pejorative connotation of having GNOME pass the liberal arts major test.
I agree. Not all liberal arts majors are casual computer users. (i.e. graphic designers)
Maybe a better test would be business majors…
Maybe a better test would be business majors…
A better test is testing people from multiple market segments, professions, countries and search for similarities. Not an easy task though.
And a better method is also not drawing too fast to conclusions or doing the test to reach a conclusion (the obvious one Linux fans want to make
, but rather, just see whatever the conclusion is in a more broad spectrum. By doing so, you’re able to use the data for more (fine-grained) purposes.