[PC-BSD Testing] PC-BSD 8.1 RC1 - thoughts and ideas
Arthur Koziol
A-Koziol at neiu.edu
Wed Jul 7 08:54:38 PDT 2010
On 07/07/2010 10:27 AM, Mike Bybee wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 7:01 AM, Arthur Koziol <A-Koziol at neiu.edu
> <mailto:A-Koziol at neiu.edu>> wrote:
>
> On 07/07/2010 4:25 AM, Johann Kois wrote:
>
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> On 07.07.2010 02:20, Mike Bybee wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 4:19 PM, Johann
> Kois<jkois at freebsd.org <mailto:jkois at freebsd.org>
> <mailto:jkois at freebsd.org <mailto:jkois at freebsd.org>>> wrote:
>
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> On 07.07.2010 01:02, finid at linuxbsdos.com
> <mailto:finid at linuxbsdos.com>
> <mailto:finid at linuxbsdos.com
> <mailto:finid at linuxbsdos.com>> wrote:
> >>>
> >> I actually like the development tab and use it
> regularly - I'd
> vote to
> >> keep it. Realistically very few actual 'end users' use
> PC-BSD,
> but a lot
> > of devs do.
> >
> > Mike, those "end users" are actually waiting,
> desperately waiting for
> > PC-BSD to become a lot more end user-friendly, so that
> they can
> use it.
> >
> > --
> > Fini D.
> > ___________________________
>
> Hm, you want to clarify what makes the system so
> "totally unusable" at
> the moment? So that "the end-users" cannot use it?
>
>
> jkois
>
> - --
> Johann Kois
> jkois(at)FreeBSD.org
> FreeBSD Documentation Project
> FreeBSD German Documentation Project -
> https://doc.bsdgroup.de
>
>
> If you mean that seriously, I can provide notes from my
> most recent
> pilot project. If you're being facetious, then I would
> recommend you go
> find a random business person and ask them to use PC-BSD
> for 2 weeks.
>
>
> I am always serious. No time for joking around on
> mailinglists. But if
> such a statement as above is made (and "cannot use a system"
> for me
> equals "is not usable, therefore unusable") I just want to
> know what
> exactly the encountered problems are.
>
> But that is not the real point here. I agree there are
> several issues
> regarding the usage of PC-BSD which will/can create problems
> especially
> for end-users (by that I mean newer/less experienced users).
>
> But:
>
> - - Are all these problems documented somewhere? And I am not
> talking
> about a post on a mailinglist here, because it is pretty easy
> to miss
> such reports within all the posts on the list. Maybe they are all
> reported on http://trac.pcbsd.org as feature requests/problem
> reports?
> - - If they are all documented/reported. Is there enough
> manpower to
> investigate/implement all these changes? Does the PC-BSD
> Project even
> have the possibility to change/fix all of them? I think we
> know the
> answer to that questions (unfortunately) ...
> - - What is/should be the ultimate goal of PC-BSD? Making
> experiencing
> "BSD on the desktop" easier? Or make it the "perfect desktop
> experience"? In reality it is probably the first one, but
> what many
> people would like to see is the second one (again mostly a
> problem of
> available manpower/ressources).
>
> <two cents>
>
> I've been reading the posts and didn't want to chime in until now
> because the common theme
> I'm seeing running through some of the messages can be translated
> to: BSD to Windows users
> is alien because stuff is not where they're used to seeing it. And
> being a 20+ years Windoze guy,
> I can understand. It's not so much that this or that doesn't work,
> it's more so that the typical Windows
> user, given PC-BSD (or Linux), is coming from a very ingrained and
> conditioned purview and their
> first thought is "Where's Word? Where's IE? Where's the setting to
> change my wallpaper and screen
> saver? How do I do ___?" And so on, and so forth. For us computer
> folks and power users, we can
> make do with alternatives to the typical stuff that's out there
> even if there's a curve to learning it.
> Hey, I've played with everything From Plan9 OS to QNX, nothing
> scares me. *NIX is not Windows and
> you can't ever *make* it like Windows no matter how much we like
> or hate Windows. I oft wonder if the
> biggest Achilles heel to wider *NIX adoption is certain
> communities' partisan aversion to making it act
> or look like Windows. After all, haven't you noticed how Vista
> and, especially, Win 7's GUI looks almost
> *EXACTLY* like KDE 4.x's GUI? Apparently, it hasn't stopped
> Microsoft from cloning KDE's looks.
> Sorry Gnome! :-D I digress.
>
> Working for a big university here in Chicago, I see this phenomena
> when we hire student workers to
> work in our computer labs. Our "hiring station" is a Mac and we
> expect any student we hire to at least
> *know* how to use a Mac. 99% of the time I hear..."Uh, can I use a
> PC to do this test?" That's because
> most of the kids coming in grew up on Windoze. If familiarity
> breeds contempt, unfamiliarity must surely
> breed confusion.
>
> I think of it this way, Windows users (and quite a few *NIX folks)
> make fun of Mac users because Mac OS
> is so "dumbed down" and Mac users aren't exactly the brightest
> bulbs on the Christmas tree. It's this
> easy to use, any-idiot-can-figure-it-out, OS, right? I guess so. I
> have a Mac right next to my office PC
> and I am adept enough to get around it. But the fact of the matter
> is, I am *that* statistic of user who
> grew up on Windows because it's what was dropped in my lap
> wherever I had a job and what I had
> to use to get my job done. My segue is this: Why is it that the
> same Windows people (regular and power
> users) who make fun of Mac folks for being dumb, fumble and
> crumble like a house of cards when you
> drop a *NIX distro in front of them? It's like the reaction of one
> of those fainting goats.
>
> So, I know these gripes of Windows users when I've shown them
> PC-BSD. It's so ingrained in their
> head that what they see on the screen *must* be some new kind of
> skin you slapped on Windows
> but damn you where did you hide all the apps I'm *used* to seeing?
> I piloted PC-BSD 8 with my wife
> at home and within 5 minutes she was cursing me out. To her
> defense, she'd be more comfortable
> on Mac if you catch my drift. Maybe in Bizarro World, everyone
> uses PC-BSD and Windows is the
> foreign OS. :-)
>
> So, to sum it up, it's not BSD, PC-BSD, or Linux's fault. It's not
> a usability problem. It's probably
> not a lack of applications problem. I think it's that there's a
> glass barrier that exists and that the
> population in general has been spoon fed and conditioned to use
> one thing or that there's one
> way of doing something. Change doesn't come with a lot of bumps in
> the road and resistance
> in one form or another. What we can do as enthusiasts of the brand
> (should I copyright that
> phrase?) is to work at making it past the barrier and do what we
> can to introduce it to people
> so it can get wider adoption.
>
> </two cents>
>
> cheers,
> Arthur
>
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>
>
>
> I think you hit some of the issues on the head here - but even with
> open-minded and technical people (like me, who's been on FreeBSD since
> version 2.2.1 at least, and some of our Linux and AIX admins) there
> are some things that are just plain broken. We curse at some of these
> images and releases more than we'd like to admit ;)
>
> Those things at least can be fixed, we can put our fingers on them.
> The other things that you touched on are perception based, and that is
> SO much harder.
>
> On the upside, since my doomed pilot I referred to earlier, I've
> gotten a lot of people to start using F/OSS apps on their Windows
> machines (Chrome, FF, Pidgin to name a few) and that *does* help overall.
Mike,
Yes, winning hearts and minds is tough. It's a bit like teaching stick
shift to a person who's always had an automatic.
I also have implemented the strategy of F/OSS at my university. At
current count, I have no less than 11 F/OSS apps (Firefox, Seamonkey,
WinSCP, FileZilla, Paint.NET, JCreator, 7Zip, Tera Term, DoPDF,
Audacity, ODF Add-in for Office) in our computer labs. They get used
which I am happy about and some of those are in PC-BSD too which is
neat. The more I impart upon the students that these are *normal* apps,
the more they *become* normal apps. Our professors like 'em too which
helps to increase their adoption as well. If people see these apps on
other OS, perhaps a light bulb will go off. It's sometimes better to win
the battle than the war.
Arthur
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