The One With Aldacron

Some Linux advocates long for the day when the OS will be ubiquitous, having replaced Windows on the desktops of the majority of computer users. Some are more realistic, hoping just to increase the Linux market share and decrease that of Windows. Both groups are quite loony. Linux will never make it to the mainstream until it gets an overhaul in usability.

I’m no slouch when it comes to software. I’m a hardcore computer user with several years of experience behind me. I’m the kind of guy who can troubleshoot most problems myself. I only call tech support when a problem is beyond my means to fix. But my years of experience have been built mostly around different flavors of Windows and, before that, DOS (primarily). Linux has always been an alien world to me.

Over the last several years I have tried many times to make Linux a part of my daily routine. I’ve tried a dozen different distributions, even going so far as to follow the Linux From Scratch guide a couple of times. The first few times I tried any distribution, in the late 90s, I couldn’t get a successful installation. There were always major issues — X Windows wouldn’t recognize my display, I couldn’t configure my ethernet card properly, my audio card wasn’t recognized, or, the worst, my main boot record would be corrupt after the installation. Since then, the installation process for most distros has become much more user-friendly. So that’s a big plus. But once you get a working installation, unless you have a strong background in Unix, you aren’t going to be doing much with it.

Every Linux distribution installs a gazillion little utility programs that you will most likely never use. During the installation process, you can take the advanced route and pick and choose which tools get installed. Unfortunately, many tools have a dependency on one or more other tools, which in turn depend on one or more others, which in turn depend on one or more others… The result is that all but the most advanced users will be better off just accepting the default, installing a boatload of programs that they don’t know if they need or not. And when they find that they do need some of them, they have no clue how to use them. The documentation for most tools is not in an easily accessible area, but requires the user to know how to use yet another tool to read the ancient ‘man pages’. Of course, man pages aren’t something a new Linux user would know about, which really defeats the purpose of documentation.

Then there’s configuration. What a friggin’ nightmare! I’ll never understand why Linux users think it’s a good thing to have configuration files spread out all over the operating system. Why, oh why, is it such a problem to put the configuration files in the application directory? For that matter, most applications spread several files all over the place. Config files are over there, shared libraries are over there, documentation over there, include files for development over there, the executable is here but you should really be using the sym link that’s off over there. Gah! And then there’s the fact that the same files may be located in different places, or have different names, on different distributions. For example, the Apache web-server comes with configuration documentation that is useless on Debian systems, because Debian distributions have their own configuration for Apache. That’s not bordering on idiocy, it’s outright ridiculous.

The Red Hat RPMs and Debian Packages were intended to make it easier to install and uninstall Linux apps. That they certainly do. Once you learn your way around the tools to handle them, it’s a piece of cake to use them. The problem is that you have no control over how the packages are installed. If you want to change the directory layout, you have to manually configure, compile and install the software yourself using make. How asinine is that? This is 2007, not 1977. I shouldn’t have to compile software myself just to install it. Sure, if I’m a developer making changes to it, fine. But it’s ridiculous to have to compile something just to configure it the way I want.

Getting all of your hardware operating properly still isn’t always 100% guaranteed. Particularly concerning graphics cards. If you want to take advantage of that spiffy top-of-the-line NVidia or ATI card you just bought, you have to install the drivers for it. Depending on the distribution, that could require you to recompile your kernel. Don’t know what a kernel is? Too bad for you. Don’t know how to compile? You’d better learn. On some distros, all you have to do is download and install a driver package. Oh, and twiddle with your X Windows configuration. But be careful, because if you don’t configure it properly you could bork your display entirely.

It’s very easy for Linux noobs to get lost. The logical thing to do is to find a Linux forum or newsgroup and ask for help. Yeah, right. My experience has been fairly negative on that front, too. There’s a lot of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ mentality in online Linux communities. If you are a Linux noob, you automatically belong to the ‘them’ group. In some communities, you will be expected to understand and have used the archaic and user-antagonistic man pages system. And to have read all of the How-To files concerning your problem. And to have thoroughly searched the forums. In other words, before asking a simple question you should devote hours and hours to researching it for yourself, or be thoroughly flamed for your blatant disregard of protocol. To be fair, some communities are more accommodating, but you will still be expected to have a certain degree of familiarity with Linux innards. Otherwise, the answers you get may as well be written in Martian.

There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of computer users who barely get by with Windows. How many people don’t know to empty the Recycle Bin, or the trash folder in their email program? How many people can’t open up Windows Explorer and navigate the directory tree? How many people think the Desktop is the place to put all of their files? The state of computer literacy is much better than it was twenty years ago, but it is still quite low.

My father is likely an average computer user. He knows enough to do what he needs to do. Me, I know my way around Windows very, very well (though there are quite a few tricks that I’m aware I don’t know). With my programming experience, I can use all sorts of software development tools. I know my way around the command line, too. If I get frustrated by Linux, how far is my father going to get? Not very.

The problem with Linux is that it takes too damn long to learn enough to use it properly. It’s a complete paradigm shift from Windows. I’m quite confident that if I were patient enough and had the time to devote to it that I could eventually be a Linux guru. I know more about it now than I did when I first started, but most of it still makes no sense to me. With such an extensive Windows background, Linux is just too foreign for me to like. If it is going to see widespread desktop adoption, the user-friendliness needs to extend beyond the installation process and into the daily usage. Archaic systems, like those silly man pages, need to be replaced by more modern systems with which people are more familiar. HTML docs, anyone? Joe User doesn’t want to compile anything. He doesn’t care about configuration files. He doesn’t want to spend hours and hours learning how to use all of the gazillion command line utilities. He just wants to boot up and do things. In Windows, he can. In Linux, he can’t. And until he can, Linux will remain the playground of hardcore geeks and wannabe geeks.

I’ve read and heard speculation that Linux will become more popular because of Vista. Well, my prediction is… NOT! If people do shy away from Vista, it will more likely be to Mac. Apple, at least, understands what ‘usability’ means. If Linux is going to appeal to the masses, it needs to be more than just free. It needs a total overhaul.

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