oceandrop wrote:
Well you make it sound easy, and from the looks of it this kind of thing actually would be easy once you get the hang of it.
But it
is easy.
Quote:
there's still some way to go before the user friendliness catches up with other OS's.
Ah, but you have to bear in mind that you're likely
much more familiar with one or more of those, so even the simple stuff in another OS would look a bit bizarre and over-complicated.
Here's a typical example from a Lightroom (Win32) upgrade:
1: right-click and save the upgrade zip file from the Adobe site
2: double-click the zip file
3: create/choose a directory in which to save the extracted contents
4: navigate to that directory and find "setup.exe"
5: double-click on that
6: click-through a couple of "do you agree?" type screens
7: remember to tidy up and delete the temporary directory once setup is finished
Rinse and repeat for
all subsequent updates to this release.
To put that into some sort of perspective:
1: at some point in the past I learned about right-clicking and saving files from websites -
after I'd learned what a file is and specifically, a
zip file and what I'm supposed to do with it. Oh (not nowadays since the functionality is built-in) - learned to install WinZip and how to use
that.2: double-clicking to run an application had to be learned and I understand that the current versions of Windows pop up further dialogs which must be read and understood before you can continue. (except of course a zip file isn't an application, and so an understanding of file associations
also had to be learned)
3: directories and what they're for/how they're navigated had to be learned - and where it's appropriate (or even possible) to create them
4: foreground/background windowing principles, window navigation & movement, use of scroll bars etc. all had to be learned too
5: (as 2)
6: yeah well no-one reads those things anyway
7: deleting files and directories had to be learned, along with what's not a good idea to delete - and what to do about it when Windows claims a file is open (when it's invariably not
); also the concept of a temporary directory which the installation process insisted on throwing at me - without explanation of
why, I may add. Some idea of the Recycle Bin is useful too.
Yet it's not complex - we all do it without much thought.
But at least with something installed through an Ubuntu repository (or similar mechanism from another distro) the
most I'd need to do in future is tell it to go ahead when an update is announced as being available. And that's clicking on one GUI button or typing about 20 characters at a shell prompt. I don't need to do anything else at all.
Now, remind me again - which method is more 'user-friendly'?
So...
It's more a case of familiarity with what's already learned, and what's unknown always looks difficult at first.
Just like Windows or a Mac does for anyone the first time they get to use them and Linux is no more difficult - it's just
not any of the others.Quote:
Don't get me wrong, I LIKE coding and I like the terminal, but not for installing software
I don't differentiate between a GUI and a shell - they're both highly effective means to an end, depending on the task at hand, and there is sometimes overlap.
A mouse
is nice - but fingers are faster!
Oh and BTW, I'm not knocking anything you said - I'm just trying to show how much we take for granted about what we've had to
learn to do that's simply become a semi-automatic
part of what we do.
Or something...
_________________
Giraffe: a ruminant with a view.