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Free software scares normal people

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Re: Free software scares normal people

#271

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

soraminazuki wrote: post #97
andreldm wrote: post #11

If handbrake scares them, don’t you dare to demonstrate how to use ffmpeg. I remember when I used handbrake for the first time and thought “wow, it’s much more convenient than struggling with ffmpeg”.

If you only care about converting media without tweaking anything, ffmpeg offers the simplest UI ever. ffmpeg -i input.avi output.mp4

This is an interesting position because that's only simple if you already know it. From the perspective of discoverability, it's literally the worst possible UI, because a string of that length has, say, 30^30 possible combinations, among which only one will produce the desired effect, and a bash prompt gives you no indication of how to arrive at that string.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#272

Post by bugsliker »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #265
bugsliker wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i mean i don’t know that the green button does what i want either so what’s your point?

Right, you don't know if either program is the right thing just by looking at it. The reason you're uncertain isn't all those options handbrake shows. You have that uncertainty no matter what. You need the same confidence with or without options. So that problem, while real, isn't an argument against showing options. And as far as time goes, it only takes a few seconds in either scenario. You hit go, you see the prog…

if the UI is forcing me to look at these options before pressing Go, it is a signal that someone thought these were important to consider before i pressed Go. this is the gricean maxims of quantity and relation.

the decision to ignore this signal is a learned behavior that you and i have, is all i’m saying

Re: Free software scares normal people

#273

Post by StrauXX »

sublinear wrote: post #266
dhosek wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 90s I did a tech writing gig documenting some custom software a company had built for them by one of the big consultancy agencies. It was a bit of a nightmare as the functionality was arranged in a way that reflected the underlying architecture of the program rather than the users’ workflows. Although I suppose if they’d written the software well, I wouldn’t have had as many billable hours writing documentatio…

> reflected the underlying architecture of the program rather than the users’ workflows Is this an inherently bad thing if the software architecture is closely aligned with the problem it solves? Maybe it's the architecture that was bad. Of course there are implementation details the user shouldn't care about and it's only sane to hide those. I'm curious how/why a user workflow would not be obviously composed of arch…

If you ever spens time with the low level SAP GUIs, then yes, you will find out why that's definetly a bad thing. Software should reflect users processes. The code below is just an implementation detail and should never impact the design of the interfaces.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#274

Post by megous »

My Pinebook Pro with i3wm is really simple to use. You power it on, all it does is it asks for one of the LUKS passwords. If you miss, it will ask again. Then it's on.

You can't do anything wrong with it. There's no UI to fiddle with WiFi. It's all pre-configured to work automatically in the local WLAN (only; outside, all that's needed is to borrow someone's phone to look for the list of wifi nets in the area and type the name of selected network to /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf). But there's rarely any need to go out anyway, so this is almost never an issue.

There are no buttons to click, ANYWHERE. Windows don't have confusing colorful buttons in the header. You open the web browser by pressing Alt + [. It shows up immediately after about 5 seconds of loading time. So the user action feedback loop is rather quick. You close it with Alt + Backspace (like deleting the last character when writing text, simple, everyone's first instinct when you want to revert last action)

The other shortcut that closes the UI picture is Alt + ]. That one opens the terminal window. You can type to the computer there, to tell it what you want. Which is usually poweroff, reboot, reboot -f (as in reboot faster). It's very simple and relatable. You don't click on your grandma to turn it off, after all. You tell it to turn off. Same here.

All in all, Alt + [ opens your day. Alt + ] gives you a way to end it. Closing the lid sometimes even suspends the notebook, so it discharges slightly slowerly in between.

It's glorious. My gf uses it this way and has no issues with it (anymore). I just don't understand why she doesn't want to migrate to Linux on her own notebook. Sad.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#275

Post by le-mark »

gspencley wrote: post #98

A lot of this type of stuff boils down to what you're used to. My wife is not particularly tech savvy. She is a Linux user, however. When we started a new business, we needed certain applications that only run on Windows and since she would be at the brick and mortar location full time, I figured we could multi-purpose a new laptop for her and have her switch to Windows. She hated it and begged for us to get a dedica…

> When I was forced to use a Mac for work, I honestly considered looking for a different position because it was just that painful for me.

I share this aversion. I have a Mac book work sent me, sitting next to me right now, that I never use. Luckily I’m able to access the vpn via Linux and all the apps I need have web interfaces (office 365).

Re: Free software scares normal people

#276

Post by Dylan16807 »

bugsliker wrote: post #272
Dylan16807 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, you don't know if either program is the right thing just by looking at it. The reason you're uncertain isn't all those options handbrake shows. You have that uncertainty no matter what. You need the same confidence with or without options. So that problem, while real, isn't an argument against showing options. And as far as time goes, it only takes a few seconds in either scenario. You hit go, you see the prog…

if the UI is forcing me to look at these options before pressing Go, it is a signal that someone thought these were important to consider before i pressed Go. this is the gricean maxims of quantity and relation. the decision to ignore this signal is a learned behavior that you and i have, is all i’m saying

The average person doesn't even read error messages. They know how to ignore things and hit the button that goes forward just fine. If they choose not to try the program, that's different. They don't lack the skill. (A child might lack this skill but a child is curious enough to push on so it works out anyway.)

Re: Free software scares normal people

#277

Post by array_key_first »

zeroq wrote: post #32
dayvid wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The contributors of free software tend to be power users who want to ensure their use case works. I don't think they're investing a lot of thought into the 80/20 use case for normal/majority or users or would risk hurting their workflow to make it easier for others

> contributors of free software tend to be power users or, simply put, nerds it takes both a different background, approach and skillset to design ux and interface if anything FOSS should figure out how to attract skilled artists so majority of designs and logos doesn't look so blatantly amateurish.

They're not just nerds, they're power users. These are different things.

Pretty much everyone is a power user of SOME software. That might be Excel, that might be their payroll processor, that might be their employee data platform. Because you have to be if you work a normal desk job.

If Excel was simpler and had an intuitive UI, it would be worthless. Because simple UI works for the first 100 hours, maybe. Then it's actively an obstacle because you need to do eccentric shit as fast as possible and you can't.

Then, that's where the keyboard shortcuts and 100 buttons shoved on a page somewhere come in. That's where the lack of whitespace comes in. Those aren't downsides anymore.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#278

Post by rkunal »

graybeardhacker wrote: post #194
duxup wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always amazes me how even just regular every day users will come to me with something like this: Overly simplified example: "Can you make this button do X?" where the existing button in so many ways is only distantly connected to X. And then they get stuck on the idea that THAT button has to be where the thing happens, and they stick with it even if you explain that the usual function of that button is Y. I simpli…

I always tell clients (or users): "If you bring your car to the mechanic because it's making a noise and tell them to replace the belt, they will replace the belt and you car will still make the noise. Ask them to fix the noise." In other words, if you need expert help, trust the expert. Ask for what you need, not how to do it.

It is a common misconception that the "expert" knows the best. Expert can be a trainee, or may be motivated to make more for its organisation or have yet to encounter your problem.

On the other hand, if you are using your car for a decade and feel it needs a new belt - then get a new belt. Worst case scenario- you will lose some money but learn a bit more about an item you use everyday.

Experts don't have your instincts as a user.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#279

Post by array_key_first »

Qem wrote: post #208
galagawinkle489 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why exactly should free software prioritise someone's first five minutes (or first 100 hours, even) over the rest of the thousands of hours they might spend with it? I see people using DAWs, even "pro" ones made by companies presumably interested in their bottom lines. In all cases I have no idea how to use it. Do I complain about intuitiveness etc? Of course not. I don't know how to do something. That's my probl…

> And why exactly should free software prioritise someone's first five minutes (or first 100 hours, even) over the rest of the thousands of hours they might spend with it? Well, if people fail at that first five minutes, the subsequent thousand hours most often never happens.

The inverse is also true. If you prioritize the first five minutes, your software is worthless in any industry that matters.

And that's why designers are using Photoshop and not Microsoft paint.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#280

Post by array_key_first »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #102
gspencley wrote: post #98

A lot of this type of stuff boils down to what you're used to. My wife is not particularly tech savvy. She is a Linux user, however. When we started a new business, we needed certain applications that only run on Windows and since she would be at the brick and mortar location full time, I figured we could multi-purpose a new laptop for her and have her switch to Windows. She hated it and begged for us to get a dedica…

Familiarity is massively undersold in the Linux desktop adoption discussion. Having desktop environments that are near 1:1 clones of the commercial platforms (preferably paired with a distribution that's designed to be bulletproof and practically never requires its user to fire up a terminal window) would go so far for making Linux viable for users sitting in the middle of the bell curve of technical capability. It's…

The main problem with this is that the commercial offerings are pretty much just bad.

Windows isn't the way it is because of some purposeful design or anything. No, it's decades of poor decisions after poor decisions. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, is intuitive on Windows. It's familiar! But it is not intuitive.

If you conform to what these commercial offerings do, you are actively making your software worse. On purpose. You're actively programming in baggage from 25 years ago... in your greenfield project.

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