Weekly Edition
Return to the Press page
| |||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||
Study: Linux nears Windows XP usability (ComputerWorld)
ComputerWorld reports
on a German study which concludes that Linux is almost as easy to use
as Windows XP. "Linux users, for example, needed 44.5 minutes to
perform a set of tasks, compared with 41.2 minutes required by the XP
users. Furthermore, 80% of the Linux users believed that they needed only
one week to become as competent with the new system as with their existing
one, compared with 85% of the XP users." (Thanks to Karl Vogel).
(Log in to post comments)
Study: Linux nears Windows XP usability (ComputerWorld) Posted Aug 5, 2003 2:09 UTC (Tue) by blitzmoo (guest, #13662) [Link] What a load of crap. Where is the data. This study is The Suck. Have any of the people ever used another verison of windows? I mean come on! That is like saying, that if there were linux users, they are trying out a new version of the kernal or a different version of KDE. They don't show data about what the computer history of each user. Ahhh incorrigible!
Study: Linux nears Windows XP usability (ComputerWorld) Posted Aug 5, 2003 7:58 UTC (Tue) by pointwood (guest, #2814) [Link] Relax ;)They clearly state that the study will be available for download in a few days. That Linux in general is very close to Windows is actually quite positive IMHO.
Study: Linux nears Windows XP usability (ComputerWorld) Posted Aug 5, 2003 8:34 UTC (Tue) by olleroch (guest, #13670) [Link] I do´t know where you are coming from, but I personally installed a TV card on Linux and Win xp . On Linux I did not configure anything it just worked as opposed to that other system,also bought a HP bubble jet printer, on Linux I just clicked add printer and 2 minutes later it was working fine on windows after about two reboots it was finally working. I also gave my boss who is 75 years old , and he has never ever used a computer , my old computer which is a dual boot system Win98se and Mandrake 9.1, guess what? he prefers Linux as he reckons its easier to navigate (KDE) now stick that in your pipe and smoke it. People like you are just a bunch of sheep who don know any better and follow everythink blindly if it comes from Microsoft. Wally
Study: Linux nears Windows XP usability (ComputerWorld) Posted Aug 5, 2003 14:47 UTC (Tue) by TimCunningham (guest, #10316) [Link] Wow, slow down and read what he's saying.He's not saying the study is wrong, he's saying that they didn't give details that are fairly important to judging if the study is valid or not. Your anticdotal evidence is hardly proof of anything, in any case..
Study: Linux nears Windows XP usability (ComputerWorld) Posted Apr 28, 2004 13:14 UTC (Wed) by dibap (guest, #21225) [Link] Hi Wally,I fully agree!! But now I am posting in order of a common Girlfriend of us. Petra Surm from Bremen in Germany read your Posting and remembers some time she was spending with you ( please tell me more in a confidential meet ). She now likes to contact you. Please send an E-Mail at my Adress. Greetings from Germay Dibap (Dirk Bauer)
Study: Linux nears Windows XP usability (ComputerWorld) Posted Aug 5, 2003 12:32 UTC (Tue) by MathFox (guest, #6104) [Link] I have the full German version of the report and the authors state that for most tasks the differences between KDE/Linux and WindowsXP are "unwesentlich" (insignificant). Even the difference in average time overall is statistically insignificant.There were a few tasks significantly harder under Windows and a few task significantly harder under Linux. Overall conclusions were that WindowsXP mainly looked better. You can read all the information on how they configured the systems, data and remarks per task, etc. in the report. (Available for free, redistribution allowed.)
results not worth reporting Posted Aug 8, 2003 16:15 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] The results as reported are just plain worthless for lack of detail. I'm not saying the study itself is worthless -- with the details of what was studied and what was observed, it probably has useful stuff to say.But the numbers in the article leave out a fact which is crucial to assigning any meaning at all to the results: What are the backgrounds of the study subjects? Are they people who have never used any computer before? People who are upgrading from an earlier version of the same thing? Random people? If someone has found this information in the full report, it would be nice to post it here to complete this article. If someone who has never used Windows or Linux before can learn Linux as easily as Windows, that means Linux is technically as good. But considering that the average person has used Windows and not Linux, that same result doesn't mean Linux is a good alternative to Windows XP.
Study: Linux nears Windows XP usability (ComputerWorld) Posted Aug 5, 2003 7:14 UTC (Tue) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link] Clear win for Linux. I mean, sure they used 45 rather than 41 minutes for the same tasks, but these where users "with computer knowledge, but no experience with XP or Linux".All this prooves is that it's a little bit easier to change from one MS-system to the next than it is to change from MS to Linux. I'm willing to bet that all, or nearly all, of these users have extensive experience with various Windows-systems, and no experience at all with anything else. If they where all say Mac-users, with no experience with any unix or any MS-windows, then the test would've been more fair, but I suppose it's hard to find such users these days.
Liked Windows more?? Posted Aug 5, 2003 14:46 UTC (Tue) by hazelsct (guest, #3659) [Link] If this was about the look of the desktop, I agree that XP looks a bit nicer than the default GNOME/KDE desktops. But for years the variety of pixmap themes for both have been enormously better than Windows old or new!Perhaps it's time to make a pixmap theme the default, to put the "best foot" of the free desktops forward, and let those with old hardware manually switch? (Even so, GNOME 1.4/pixmap is quite fast on my 160 MHz PPC 603e -- even faster than XP on my wife's 2 GHz P4! :-)
Liked Windows more?? Posted Aug 5, 2003 15:10 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] Perhaps it's time to make a pixmap theme the default, to put the "best foot" of the free desktops forward, and let those with old hardware manually switch?There's very little concensus on what really is the "best" desktop theme. If you look at the rankings on the freshmeat themes page, the "aqua" themes do quite well as a group, but it's not hard to find a significant number of people that just hate that look. I personally think that Windows XP is not all that great: the titlebar is to big, the borders are to small, and the whole thing is just to blue. I'm currently writing a window manager, and one of my goals is to be fair and provide a default theme that everyone hates. ;-)
Study: Linux nears Windows XP usability (ComputerWorld) Posted Aug 5, 2003 17:22 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] Yes usability is very good, and the linux kernel is better at trying to detect hardware than windows, but...The "look" can be as good as any top theme at "wincostumize.com":- Stardock i belive, was the company that licenced the code to M$ to make the XP interface (windblinds), and the next, full in house made, replacement for win32, AVALON, aint gonna be nothing really superb as OSX was,... more 3D, more animations, and translucency (kde has already that for long), and a side taskbar that resembles Enlightment 0.17 windows manager.(link at) What is really missing is support for every piece of hardware that is out there!!.. " WHY ? ", because that is the very essence of the M$ monopoly, to the point, that it can deliver an OS with the BIOS and nothing much else, that in 6 months it will have the "double" hardware support than Linux... WHAT IS NEEDED IS A DRIVER MODEL THAT SUPPORTS GENERAL HARDWARE INDUSTRY; AND NOT HIDES BEHIND MODVERSIONS,... I.E. API/ABI FOR HARDWARE.
Study: Linux nears Windows XP usability (ComputerWorld) Posted Aug 5, 2003 23:37 UTC (Tue) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link] WHAT IS NEEDED IS A DRIVER MODEL THAT SUPPORTS GENERAL HARDWARE INDUSTRY; AND NOT HIDES BEHIND MODVERSIONS,... I.E. API/ABI FOR HARDWARE. There are several fixed interfaces for hardware. Some have succeeded, some haven't. Some examples of popular hardware with a more or less fixed hardware / software interface:
and a few interface cards whose OS interface was standardised:
So it's not like "hardware with no need for a custom driver" doesn't exist. Au contraire, it's quite common. If you wonder why high-end hardware usually requires custom drivers, ponder it for awhile. It's not like hardware companies enjoy writing drivers - if they could get out of it they probably would. Now, if you actually meant API/ABI FOR DRIVERS rather than API/ABI FOR HARDWARE ... sorry, not gonna happen, google up on UDI, been there done that nobody wanted it except Intel, SCO (yes, that SCO) and david parsons.
Study: Linux nears Windows XP usability (ComputerWorld) Posted Aug 6, 2003 0:42 UTC (Wed) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] >...sorry, not gonna happen, google up on UDI, been there done that >nobody wanted it except Intel, SCO (yes, that SCO) and david parsonsYou forgot to mention Linus himself, in the beginning,... the problem with UDI was, as you said it, WHO controls it and HOW that control happened. With kobjescts, udev, sysfs and sub systems structures, to wich you can join DKMS and the "hardening patches" that circulated at the feature freeze, you miss very litle to present a consistent Standardised interface allover, in the very footsteps of the USB structure, and why not say it, of I2O that has a split driver model. Better than the M$ unified view, i belive that multiple specialized hardware abstraction layers(API/ABI), is very possible inside Linux/FLOSS in a all open form like LSB,... essencial it only takes to get, ALSA, SCSI, ATAPI, DRM(direct rending), par example," hardware device drivers" out of respective structures and out of the kernel, and interface them by DKMS... This attacks at the very heart of M$ monopoly, wich could release a OS whit BIOS interface a nothing much else, that 6 months later it would have double the hardware support of Linux,... and could be a "BOOM" for all those that are payed and not payed to right drivers for Linux now, because JOB OFFERS MULTIPLY BY HUNDREDS
Study: Linux nears Windows XP usability (ComputerWorld) Posted Aug 6, 2003 17:15 UTC (Wed) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link] You forgot to mention Linus himself, in the beginning,... the problem with UDI was, as you said it, WHO controls it and HOW that control happened. No, the real problem with UDI was that it was a fixed ABI. From what I remember, Linus has never been in favor of those, UDI or otherwise. If you disagree I'd very much like to see a cite. Basically, nobody in the Linux kernel development camp wants the burden of supporting a fixed ABI. Have you read LWN's 2.5 Driver Porting series? In the last couple of years, all kinds of things have changed that some or all device drivers must adapt to. If Linux had an officially supported layer like UDI, each one of those changes would either (a) not have happened at all, or (b) left behind a UDI compatibility interface. And, over time, those UDI compatibility interfaces would get more and more crufty, and less and less efficient compared to "native" code. There is a reason Linux kernels are something like 1/4 the size of AIX kernels, and I for one would like them to stay that way. There's also the small matter of not wanting to encourage vendors to produce proprietary drivers. There are all kinds of disadvantages to these. Just ask Microsoft if you don't believe me: every time Windows crashes, it's because of a poorly written third-party driver. You laugh, but there's more than a little truth to it. Besides the code quality problems, the simple fact is that vendors who produce binary-only drivers never do so for any respectible subset of architectures Linux supports. Usually it is i386-only, sometimes even narrower: ask any Windows gaming hardware freak about using the latest and greatest hardware with a Cyrix CPU, circa 1998. Ah well, I don't know why I'm even posting. Anyone who argues for a module ABI either does not understand, or does not agree with, such core Linux kernel goals as speed, elegance, portability and not making arbitrary compromises just to support vendors who refuse to participate.
Study: Linux nears Windows XP usability (ComputerWorld) Posted Aug 6, 2003 19:31 UTC (Wed) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] To the heart of the matter.FIXED ABI What is the law that states that an ABI has to stay fixed for ever?...that is the problem with M$, that makes nobody really code to WDM. I "can imagine" an ABI is a burden to maintain and it can limit severely "wilderness" above that layer,... hey but isnt Linux now all about compatibility and stability?,... and isnt that also why there is in kernel modules so that we can have a compartment of diferent codes mechanisms ?... So cant we have, example, ALSA be made a "super-module", that is, a module that has none dependency to other equal "super-module" and at the same time is an ABI to all lower level "AUDIO hardware device drivers", that are outside of kernel and interfacing via DKMS ?? We can have also, a in kernel D-BUS mechanism so that a "AUDIO hardware device driver" for the ALSA API/ABI can communicate whit a "TVcapture hardware device driver for the V4L API/ABI without engaging in strange dependencys!... When ALSA API/ABI CHANGE that DOSENT mean V4L API/ABI HAS TO CHANGE to. I dont know about AIX an it UDI implementation, but i belive the problem is that it try to be an unified vision allover,... but whit diferent ,example, API/ABI for ALSA and V4L most of code remain inside the ALSA or V4l structures, inside the kernel as modules, and as native code as it is possible. For all propose this is a "Multiple" abstration layers "Split" driver model The actual paradigma is to continue, now that 2.6 is about to burst, to try to fix 1 to 2 years old "hardware device drivers" because hardware industry dont disclose technical data for the brand new stuff... and in the end is not hard to imagine, isnt it, a kernel that has equal hardware support than windows but wich sources are about 1 Giga, and toke 4,5 or 6 years to get to the stable version... IT COULD BE THE COLAPSE OF LINUX!
"Linux" wasn't tested, but customized KDE 3.1.2 Posted Aug 6, 2003 13:07 UTC (Wed) by ber (subscriber, #2142) [Link] The study itself is missleading towards what was actually subject of the study. I hope the journalists stay critical towards it and say so.A customized version of KDE 3.1.2 running on a proprietary GNU/Linux distribution was tested against Windows XP. That KDE was running on top of a GNU system with that famous kernel, did not have a major effect on the study. Running KDE on other operating system like FreeBSD or a proprietary unix-like system would probably have given the same results.
KDE vs Windows XP usability study downloadable (in German) Posted Aug 6, 2003 13:10 UTC (Wed) by ber (subscriber, #2142) [Link] The full study can be downloaded from http://www.relevantive.de/Linux.html.
|
|
||||||||||||