MS-Windows UI Failures [LWN.net]

MS-Windows UI Failures

Posted Jan 9, 2006 16:20 UTC (Mon) by tony.taylor (guest, #35063)
In reply to: Winning the Linux Wars (MCP) by CyberDog
Parent article: Winning the Linux Wars (MCP)

I've yet to see a Linux desktop environment that is more user friendly to the common public than the Windows interface (or Mac, also a corporate entity).

It's interesting you should mention the "user-friendly" nature of the MS-Windows UI. First and foremost, the UI on MS-Windows sucks. Consider the start button: how are programs organized? Not by function, but by vendor. This simple little detail belies the major problem with the MS-Windows platform-- it is vendor-oriented, not user-oriented.

That same misdesign philosophy can be seen in applications, from the document format incompatibilities of various MS-Office products to the difficulty in removing Outlook Express from an MS-Windows installation (it's not in the add/remove software control), to deep product branding for all MS-Windows software from any vendor.

The MS-Windows interface is user-friendly to those who already know the MS-Windows interface. My family has been using Linux for years. They despise using MS-Windows machines; as much as I get complaints about both the Mac and Linux interfaces, at least I don't deal regularly with the disgust they express when stuck with MS-Windows. The Mac interface is superior to most Linux desktops; but most Linux desktops beat MS-Windows for ease-of-use and user-friendliness.

Applications may be a different matter. Application consistency within the same platform varies dramatically, so a true study would be difficult, but as another post pointed out, MS-Windows applications are hardly consistent.

The administration of MS-Windows isn't even easier anymore. Once a Linux box is configured, there's nothing more to do, except the occassional update. With MS-Windows, there's the regular updates, as well as anti-spyware and anti-virus protection updates, and the occassional re-install when nothing else seems to fix the system.

Of course, that's just my experience with relatives' machines. Since they are just regular users and don't have all the rules and constraints of a typical business machine, I guess I could just blame them.

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