My review of the latest release of Ubuntu was picked up by Slashdot this week, releasing a flood of criticism.
Although the article praised Ubuntu, it was also one of the first to mention some of its shortcomings, so it probably provoked more reaction than the average review. Much of the criticism was by people who didn’t know as much about a subject as they think they do, and even more was by people who had either misread the article or not read it at all. But the comments I thought most interesting were those who criticized me for suggesting that in some cases Ubuntu made things too simple, and didn’t provide any means for people to learn more about what they were doing. Didn’t I realize, the commenters asked, that the average person just wanted to get things done? That few people wanted to learn more about their computers?
Well, maybe. But as a former teacher, I can’t help thinking that people deserve the chance to learn if they want. More – if you know more than somebody, as Ubuntu’s developers obviously do, you have an obligation to give them the opportunity. To do otherwise is to dismiss the average person as willfully ignorant. Possibly, I’m naive, but I’m not quite ready to regard others that way.
Anyway, which came first: operating systems like Windows that prevent people from learning about their computers, or users who were fixated on accomplishing immediate tasks? If computer users are task-oriented, at least some of the time, the reason could be that they’re conditioned to be so. Perhaps they’ve learned from Windows that prying into the inner workings of their computer is awkward and difficult. We don’t really know how many users will want to learn more, given the opportunity.
Nor will we, until we design graphical interfaces that give users the chance to learn when they want to. Contrary to one or two commenters, I’m not suggesting that every user will always want to do things the hard way and use the command line – I don’t always want to myself, although I gladly do so when typing commands is the most efficient way to do the task at hand.
But where did so many people get the assumption that there’s such a contradiction between ease of use and complexity, that choosing one means that you forgo the other? It’s mostly a matter of tidying advanced features into a separate tab, or perhaps a pane that opens to reveal features that a basic user doesn’t want.
However, when so many people believe in the contradiction, we’re not likely to see graphical interfaces that are as useful to demanding users as basic ones.
Even more importantly, I suggest that giving users the chance to educate themselves is a corollary of free software principles. If free software is only going to empower users theoretically, then it might as well not do so at all. To help that empowerment along, free software has to provide the opportunity for users to learn, even though few may take the opportunity. Yet, so long as the chance exists that any users want the opportunity, it needs to be offered.
Moreover, I believe that, given the chance, many people will eventually embrace that opportunity. The first time that they use a free software interface, they may be focusing mainly on adjusting to so much that’s new.
However, eventually, many of them will learn that they can do things their own way and take more control. And eventually, surrounded by such choice, many may take advantage of it. If they don’t know the choices are available because their desktop has been simplified until the choices are obscured, then the developers are doing them a dis-service.
Some might say that simplification is needed to attract people to GNU/Linux. Personally, though, I doubt that exactly the same thing they can get on Windows is likely to attract anyone. If free operating systems are going to get a larger market share, then it will most likely be by providing a new perspective on computing. I like to think that new perspective should be attempting to accommodate everyone, not just beginners.
Off the Wall 