Apples & Oranges
I’m still giggling after reading this very insightful article. Ryan Cartwright makes some great points about trying to compare GNU/Linux with Windows or Mac OS. The main point? They’re not the same! It’s like comparing apples to oranges.
Ryan talks about the a post by Erna Mahyuni where she explains why Linux cannot compete in the “consumer desktop market.” Ryan goes point by point showing, not only that you can’t compare Linux to Windows with the same criteria - but that Erna makes some silly arguments.
On of which is:
The average consumer just wants to be able to pop a CD into his optical drive, wait 10-15mins and have a working operating system.
to which Ryan replies:
The average consumer wants what? And in how many minutes? Has this blogger ever tried to install Windows? Sorry but this is just a ridiculous claim. Show me this average consumer who wants to install their OS? Show me any modern OS that installs in 15 minutes (best I’ve achieved is 18 and I’ll assume live CDs are not allowed here). Most of the average users I know would rather buy a new PC than upgrade Windows. No, users wanting to install an OS in 15 minutes is a pure straw-man argument.
One of the best arguments that Ryan makes is:
“Dummy-proof” is a moving target. It’s one of those circle-of-life things (as Disney like to say). If you make something simple to use, there will soon come along another set of users too lazy, stubborn, or apathetic (but rarely too “stupid”) to learn how to use it properly. The answer is not (always) to make it easier to use —by which most people seem to mean “hide half the functions”— but to make learning it more interesting. The quality of a user experience should not be judged by the cuteness of the help avatar or the number of steps in a wizard (or even by calling it a wizard). It should also be about how much it enhances your life/work, widens your perspective and awakens the child-like hunger to learn in you. It should make you want to show off what you can do to your friends. Well it is if you ask me but I’m not sure any software, free or proprietary, has achieved that yet. Still it’s a good target.
You really should read the entire article if you get a chance - it’s very enlightening.