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Freedom to Choose—Or Not to Choose According to most open-source advocates, having multiple available GUIs translates into a desirable user choice. For example, http://www.uselinuxathome.com/ENgui.htm says that the "choice of GUI has been made possible by the open source nature of Linux," and that "The idea is...to find the one that's right for you..." That's all well and good in a hobbyist world, where users are enthusiasts who are more than happy to handle manual configurations and endure inconveniences in order to maintain an open system where application developers target the GUI(s) of their choice. It's also fine in a locked-down, IT-mandated business situation where administrators and business needs dictate UI and application choices for users. But that approach isn't going to work for the general public. The average user doesn't know—or care—about the underlying operating system, the idea of GUI interfaces, the various types of file systems, or about any other "technical" aspect of using a computer. (Jono Bacon tells an interesting story about how users perceive GUIs.) Many—perhaps most—home and small business users never alter their Windows system defaults, other than to perhaps download a different screen saver, add a peripheral, or install their preferred applications. Giving them choices isn't going to make them happy—they want something that works out of the box! And they want that single setup to work for all their programs. Most of the major distributions aren't addressing this problem directly. For example, Mandrake ships with three different X-Window GUIs: KDE, Gnome, and IceWM. How much time should users spend exploring these different GUIs before they find the one that's "right"—and works with all their applications? One month? Five months? Are there more productive ways for users to spend their time than trying different GUIs? Developers, hobbyists, and large IT shops gain value from the ability to try and test a multiplicity of interface choices, but the average home or business user will not. Even the act of trying different GUIs is fraught with pitfalls for average users. For example, here's a short excerpt from the IceWM site's FAQ, titled "How to make IceWM my default window manager." From the outset, the average Windows user will be lost. What's a window manager? Why would I need one? That question will arise quickly—as soon as their new Linux installation boots to a shell (a command prompt). I suspect most Windows users will stop there, thinking that the machine is broken. But let's take a look at an excerpt from the instructions in the FAQ: "In order to run IceWM, you must assure that the executable (called icewm) is in your path. You should then add IceWM to your X start-up script (which could be .xinitrc, .xsession or .Xclients). Note: Supplying the full path to IceWM isn't sufficient - if IceWM isn't in your path, restarting it will fail (even if you don't this by hand it is done automatically on changing the theme). [PREV] [NEXT] "LinDUX"? Linux + Windows = Lindows - Windux - Lindux - Whatever sounds good to you! |