[TriLUG] User Friendliness

[Jeff Tickle]

We need to show some good designers the awesome power of The Gimp to
entice them over to Linux, and get them to pump out interfaces for us. 
;-)

On Fri, 2004-06-04 at 07:20, Magnus Hedemark wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Jun 2004, Jeff Tickle wrote:
> 
> > Call me crazy, but I'm convinced that we seriously have a chance to make
> > a specifically user-friendly distribution of Linux. 
> 
> These have been around for years.  Corel Linux was, IMO, the first.  These 
> days I think Novell SuSE Linux 9.1 takes the prize.  Put a complete newb 
> in front of SuSE 9.1 (after it is already installed, as this is what most 
> Windows users would experience also).  Then put the same person in front 
> of XP.  See if they think one is particularly easier to use than the 
> other.
> 
> The OS itself has gotten pretty slick.  Linux is hurting badly on the 
> application front.  We have a zillion apps but many of these are half 
> finished (or feel that way, anyway), and few are as easy to use out of the 
> box as your average commercial Windoze or Mac app.  I think that the KDE 
> guys are making it easier to make applications friendly by abstracting a 
> lot of the user interface into the API so applications have a consistent 
> look & feel within KDE.
> 
> Part of the problem, IMHO, is that FOSS is usually lead by programmers, 
> who are more often than not lousy at UI design.  There is a natural 
> resistance to non-programmers giving any sort of direction in application 
> design.  This is one of the major downsides to the Open Source development 
> model.
-- 
Jeff Tickle <jtickle at jtsoft.net>
JTSoft.net