Report: KDE at Comdex [LWN.net]

Report: KDE at Comdex

Posted Nov 24, 2003 22:14 UTC (Mon) by crouchet (guest, #1084) [Link]

From the report:

>>It seems as though there is a list of important features that people need for
accepting KDE (or even just Linux) on the desktop:

Office Suite - OpenOffice is the only choice presently

Groupware Client - Kontact looks promising, perhaps better than Evolution

Browser - Mozilla is there, but I don't see anyone having problems using
Konqueror instead

Easy Updates - Right now we leave this up to the distro. Perhaps a bad idea,
perhaps not

Remote Administration - We're getting there

Kiosk Operation - Here, KDE is king in infrastructure. We just need a UI

Basic Accessibility, Usability - We're as usable as other desktops, but we need
better accessibility

<<

I guess it is just a lack of detail, but much of this makes no sense to me. They
want an office suite. Well there IS an office suite so what specifically do they
need it to do?

They want a Browser. Again, what won't Mozilla do, other than run MS's
broken version of Java?

Remote Admin and Usability? Again, without details we don't really know what
they are asking for. I don't think of Linux as inferior to Windoze in either of
those areas.

OTOH, I think most of this is just a smoke screen anyway. I've seen this plenty
of times in other areas from RC models to martial arts. Some people will
express interest, hang around and talk about getting into it. And they always
have a reason why they can't yet. Too busy. Too broke. Need to get in better
shape first. But many of them show up one day, ready to go. Not because
they have more time, more money or more muscles but because they made a
decision.

Even if we could "fix" all these things tomorrow, Linux would not suddenly
explode into the mainstream. People would not make their decisions any
faster.

JC

Report: KDE at Comdex

Posted Nov 24, 2003 23:01 UTC (Mon) by pblanco (guest, #16087) [Link]

Glad to see someone else felt the same way. What exactly does he mean by "Basic Accessibility, Usability"? Just too vague...

Report: KDE at Comdex

Posted Nov 25, 2003 10:48 UTC (Tue) by james (subscriber, #1325) [Link]

Accessibility

Does it work with "assisted technology": stuff like screen readers and voice input? Does it work without a mouse where appropriate? Can "large print, high clarity" themes be applied across the desktop environment?

The subtext is "can it be used by disabled people?" If the answer is no, and KDE is put into a place where people are expected to use it, you're discriminating against the disabled.

Usability

This is usually measured by "grab a bunch of potential users and see how long it takes them to do certain tasks", and potentially how enjoyable they found it (which, of course, is subjective, and harder to measure).

Often these users will be new users: sometimes they'll be users who have used the product for a while.

For example, most new users don't know that Konqueror is a web browser, so they can't complete the "open a web site" task unless the install actually has "Konqueror web browser" as a description somewhere. Or they take too long to add a horizontal rule in Open Office because they find the icons confusing.

More experienced users can alert you to places where the metaphor is inconsistent: "why can't I just drag this here?" Unfortunately, users with Windows exposure will expect KDE to work the same way, even if there is a better and different KDE way.

A while back, Sun did a usability study on Gnome, which shows a lot of these points.

Obviously, better usability for new users seriously cuts down the cost of cross-training existing business users and training new ones, and it gets them productive faster. For a large business rolling out Linux, this represents a lot of money.

By comparison, this is the Gnome accessibility checklist.

Sorry both these examples are Gnome, but they were the two closest examples to hand. The Gnome project has spent a lot of time and thought on these issues.

James.

Report: KDE at Comdex

Posted Nov 25, 2003 0:07 UTC (Tue) by vblum (subscriber, #1151) [Link]

I think there is some formal and well-defined "accessibility" requirement which if not fulfilled prevents use e.g. by governments.

Other stuff:
- Despite claims to the contrary, Mozilla's Java on Linux is still somewhat consistently broken for me (18 months old distribution so there's a problem)
- The remote admin stuff is at least not standardized. What he's probably saying is that a corporate help desk guy will want an easy GUI to remote admin some user's computer, instead of hacking a config file and rebooting ...

The interesting bit in the report is about Microsoft. He claims that Microsoft is starting to visibly fear Linux, and that certainly I have heard from other sources, too. I doubt that M$ is all a-trembling and a-shivering, they are a too string company for that. But they face some real competition again, and they know it :-)

Report: KDE at Comdex

Posted Nov 25, 2003 16:18 UTC (Tue) by djabsolut (guest, #12799) [Link]

We had regular visits from Microsoft employees! They wanted demos of KDE, to see how it works and what we have. What an interesting situation. I soon discovered that this was not the only place that Microsoft people were doing investigations.

Oh dear, what's next? Dealing with Microsoft is like dealing with the devil - you can't trust it. I wouldn't be surprised if the information they gleaned about KDE will be used in some new FUD campaign against KDE and open source in general.