Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on March 01, 2006 07:26 AM
Here's an experiment: Take two "trained monkey" types, who have no prior computer experience at all, and start one of them out using windows, and the other one out using linux. See which one does better.
My guess is they will come out nearly the same. The point is, most things are easily done using windows, once you know how to. Most things are also easily done using linux, once you know how to. The difference is that the world at large has learned how to do things in windows, and retraining monkeys is much much harder than training new monkeys.
So, if all things were fair (which of course they are not), Linux shouldn't have to become easier to use (assuming that I am right about the relative difficulty to a truly new user). In that regard, I would say that you are wrong. However, things are not fair. There is a massive base of windows using trained monkeys, who have to be retrained, and furthermore, have to like being retrained, in order to see a massive conversion to using Linux from Windows. In that regard, I say you are right.
In short, the usability threshold for user-friendliness is quite a bit lower than the conversion threshold for user-friendliness. People would be perfectly happy using Linux (or any other major OS today) as it is, but they would not be happy switching from any major OS to any other major OS.
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Retraining monkeys
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on March 01, 2006 07:26 AMMy guess is they will come out nearly the same. The point is, most things are easily done using windows, once you know how to. Most things are also easily done using linux, once you know how to. The difference is that the world at large has learned how to do things in windows, and retraining monkeys is much much harder than training new monkeys.
So, if all things were fair (which of course they are not), Linux shouldn't have to become easier to use (assuming that I am right about the relative difficulty to a truly new user). In that regard, I would say that you are wrong. However, things are not fair. There is a massive base of windows using trained monkeys, who have to be retrained, and furthermore, have to like being retrained, in order to see a massive conversion to using Linux from Windows. In that regard, I say you are right.
In short, the usability threshold for user-friendliness is quite a bit lower than the conversion threshold for user-friendliness. People would be perfectly happy using Linux (or any other major OS today) as it is, but they would not be happy switching from any major OS to any other major OS.
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