[TriLUG] Mandrake/Redhat usability.

[Bill Vinson]

On Sun, Oct 06, 2002 at 07:46:23PM -0400, Tanner Lovelace wrote:
> Just when was the last time you installed Mandrake?  Obviously it
> wasn't recently, or else you would have known about the star widgets 
> being gone.  If you're going to criticize, please have up to date
> information when you do.  Or, alternatively, label your criticism 
> as opinion, rather than pontificating like an expert.  I personally
> believe Mandrake's usability is much better than that of Redhat, but
> since I haven't used any version of Redhat newer than 7.3, that could
> have changed with RH8.0.  

For what it's worth, all of my discussion so far has been in the realm
of opinion. As far as I know, pretty much everyone on this list is a
novice in the world of human-computer interaction design. A lot of what
Linux distros do is poorly designed from a true usability standard, but
I don't think that is necessarily bad as you can see most of the
installs evolving and improving. One of my issues with Mandrake is I
think their installer and many of their (Mandrake-specific) config apps
have very muddied design. In contrast, I think RH's installer is quite
clean and simplistic (good thing for an installer, Power users should
muck around after the install :) The installer should ALWAYS be designed
to easily work for all possible users, and people who have more
demanding needs can deal with the OS after the install. However, I am
not an expert so take that as a Billism. I do tend to look at the way
Apple does things as they are usually well thought out from a usability
perspective even if the individual doesn't personally care for it. I
like clean minimalistic designs and I think all text should be
anti-aliased, but then that is just me...

RH 8 is very nice and should be considered, but that is why I installed
Mdk 9 first, just to check out the competition and made an informed
decision...

Bill