The Difficulty Divide Redux: Linux vs. Windows
I really appreciated the comments that were left on the previous article, both the nit-pickers and hole-pokers and the people who rebutted them on my behalf. Two-way discourse like that is the best way to refine models like this, especially when they are based primarily on intuition and in the field experiences rather than formal study. Based on those comments, I realized that I failed to make one very important aspect of the Difficulty Divide concept clear.
The representation that I presented is meant to be a visualization rendered from the point of view of a “typical” Windows user, on the verge of starting out in using Linux. Several readers pointed out that as a user’s skill in Linux increases, or if they have no Windows-centric habits, the relative position of the curves would be different, giving Linux a larger advantage. In essence, as one’s knowledge of Linux increases (or knowledge of Windows decreases?) the whole curve for Linux slides down, making the divide smaller. This is almost certainly true. I seem to recall Novell sponsoring some usability studies that support this argument, but I am unable to find a link to the studies now. If any of you can find one, please leave it in the comments below! This is interesting in part because it implies that in most cases, the “floor” of the cost of Linux is defined almost exclusively by one’s own skills. That in turn implies that given enough skill, the hard cost of using Linux day-to-day can begin to approach zero, even as more tools are required to complete new tasks. Under proprietary systems, particularly ones with predominantly proprietary tools and recurring costs, this is unachievable.
This then is related to the tendency of people to make leaps up the difficulty axis, which prevents the natural “shrink” of the divide. Making a jump to a task that really is more difficult than their knowledge level would permit is often what gets them caught in the divide. They are used to having enough foundational knowledge that they are able to complete “Task X”, and when they cannot, they blame the software rather than their lack of foundational knowledge. This is becoming more and more common as the idea that computers should always be easy and never require any sort of effort to use becomes more commonplace. In Windows this is compensated for by years of informal learning, and exacerbated by the “Dummies” books and their imitators.
By providing explicit lists of steps for various tasks, these books allow people to complete work that should be over their heads by “removing” the need for foundational skills. Of course, this is ultimately a disservice to the users because it makes them dependent upon their lists to continue working at the level they expect to, but it is sound marketing and makes the perceived cost of the platform lower. I must concede too that it buys the users time, allowing them to become productive without the up-front investment required to gain foundational skills. However, most users never make that investment, and they spend all their time limited to the tasks laid out in their lists, constantly attempting to be productive with expectations that are beyond their actual skill. This is somewhat equivalent to how many people manage their money. Rather than building a foundation of capital, they live paycheck to paycheck and manage to get by ok for the most part. However, if something unexpected happens, they lack the means to handle it. They will often require quite a lot of assistance to get back on their feet. I really see the “Dummies” books as the computer skill equivalent of a pay-day loan. Does that mean mean we need “Dummies” books for Linux or should they be avoided? I’m sorry, I’m getting off-topic…
There are three major differences between this graph and the one presented previously. The initial slope for Linux is flatter, the relative position of Linux and Windows is shifted, and we have a third line that represents Windows Vista.
Thanks to all of the effort that has been put into improving the desktop Linux experience in recent years, particularly as embodied by Ubuntu, getting started in Linux is easier than ever. GUI tools are more complete, and “typical” entry level tasks are simpler and more discoverable. Thanks also to the rise of computers that come pre-loaded with Linux, one of the historically most difficult tasks associated with using Linux, installing it, has potentially become a non-issue. This progress is represented by the “Inverse Difficulty Divide” at the far left of the graph, where the cost of Linux is lower than Windows, and by the proportionately smaller Difficulty Divide. It is to the point where many tasks are less costly to complete in Linux than in Windows. This is largely a function of the similar or better level of discoverability or “intuitiveness” of the software and the lower hard costs. One example of this is burning an ISO cd image. In Ubuntu, this requires exactly three clicks of a mouse and no software beyond what is available out of the box. With Windows, this is impossible without third-party tools. In some cases those tools come pre-installed, but that does not necessarily mean they are free of cost. Often they are demo versions or are ill-conceived custom applications. Sony is particularly guilty of creating poor-quality bundled software rather than licensing something that is well done. Even though there is at least one quality free tool available that will complete this task (Infrarecorder) one still must invest the time required to discover and locate it to be able to use it. All of that creates a cost level higher than that in Linux. And even with the tools available, I have yet to find any that match the ease of the Nautilus “Write to Disc…” context-menu. There are still some cases where “typical” tasks are less costly on Windows than on Linux, but I believe they have gotten to be the exception rather than the rule, and they generally fall in the middle-ground of complexity where there is some expectation of cost, regardless of the platform being used.
Vista introduces an interesting new variable to this model. By making so many seemingly arbitrary and misguided UI changes, breaking compatibility with many tools, and delivering such poor performance on all but the most high-end hardware, Microsoft has made the perceived cost of Vista much higher than that of XP. This arguably negates whatever architectural or security improvements it may contain and also makes the harder tasks even more costly because whole new sets of support software and skills are likely to be needed. This presents a golden opportunity for Linux. For someone looking to upgrade from Windows XP, regardless of the reason, the total initial cost of moving to Linux is likely to be smaller than moving to Vista. This is the first time that I know of where the opportunity cost of moving to Linux is potentially lower than that of sticking with Windows. This opens the door to realizing the long-term savings offered by working within an open and enabling platform to a group of people who were unlikely to have even considered it previously. Of course, there will be some people whose definition of usability includes tasks for which no quality tool exists in Linux. There will always be corner cases where one platform or another will be at a disadvantage, but for the common case of a “normal” Windows XP user, there is a strong argument for making the switch.
After the clarifications and modifications above, does the Difficulty Divide still hold up? Is it more or less valid? What further tweaks does it need? I enjoyed watching the discussion unfold last time, and I made a conscious decision to stay out of it so as not to show my cards, but now I plan to be fully involved!
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There ARE “Linux for Dummies” books!! My guess is that these will be very useful for new users.
http://www.google.com/search?q=linux+dummies&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Jack: I think the point on the “Linux for Dummies” was that just teaching people how to perform one function without the foundational knowledge really isn’t helpful. Because yes they can do the one function but after that what to do or what to do when there is a problem. Most people even though they may not realize it have some form, even though in many cases limited, foundational knowledge of Windows.
But, if it is a simple way to introduce someone to the basics that would be great.
I am a completely devoted linux user, and very happy with that decision. Even so, I will point out one problem with linux (including Ubuntu, which I use) that, while it exists in Windows, is so far in the background that it disappears for most users. With linux, there is a feeling that only two groups exist: the rank beginners, and experts. There is no serious attempt to address the “in-between” user community.
When I was in grade school, I studied low-level stuff. In high school, and later in college, and still later in post-graduate work, and still later in post-doctoral studies, I was always building on what had come before.
In linux, I can be a first-grader (point A), using only the most elementary tools, or I can be an expert (point Z); but how do I get from A to Z? There is relatively little assistance with B, C, D, ….).
When linux learns to take us from grade school to high school and on up the ladder, THEN Windows will be severely threatened!
I have purchased “Beginning Ubuntu Linux”, from Amazon … there are portions available for review. it looks like a reasonable bridge between really elementary stuff, like you might find in the “Dummies” books, and more advanced works. Will let all know how it works out.
One [perhaps] elementary question already answered in this book, is the ability of a dual-boot Linux system to access Windows files. Apparently the Windows file system must be changed from NTFS to FAT, to have read-write access. But with a Wubi installation of Linux, that’s not needed. not must one deal with the partitioning issue. Using Wubi, my Linux OS can access Windows files for r/w, and accesses the network printer, and WiFi. Nice! And painless!
I agree for the most part with your improvements to the graph but I don’t necessarily agree that using Linux is initially any easier than starting with Windows (installation aside). I think for your graph, to actually be accurate (and i’m being a stickler here) It needs to have some key points and say an example or two of specific tasks. When I see the Increasing Complexity x-axis, I think that XP and Linux would be on par.
Here’s my reasoning, recently I introduced my mother and one of my aunts to Linux, they both have never used a computer before but wanted to get into it because some of their other sisters are fairly computer literate. I setup a cheap Ubuntu box for both of them. Through my work we offer seniors classes introducing 55+ individuals to Computers and XP. Both groups were completely new to computers, but what I was surprised with, after hardware issues were out of the way (like the fact that the mouse could be lifted when they ran out of mouse pad) was that I encountered essentially the same general questions like “what is the internet”, “what are these icons”, “how do i send email”, “how do I turn it off”, “what is messenger”, “how can i type up things”, “how do i save” etc. All of these are essentially identical in both XP and Linux. In Vista some of these basic questions actually do get a bit harder so I would leave it above both XP and Linux still (I have a vista machine at work I play with and it took me a good hour to get messenger working because of the router i was behind, I ended up having to turn off UAC, go into cmd and turn off tunneling even though I had no issue with it on XP. Also the fact that shutdown isn’t by default Start Menu>Shut Down, it’s Start Menu>Little Nondescript Arrow>Shut Down).
Anyway, not to ramble but I think your start point should be straight out of box usability, and XP and Linux should be roughly equal, then maybe a little later installing common things (where linux shines imo), then installing less common things, setting up configuration files and installing tarballs instead of using a package manager (where linux over takes windows in terms of simplicity) and so on. That’s really my only beef except maybe the drastic exponential increase of Windows, i’m not sure what happens right after your divide but again, this is why I think you maybe should site a key set of actions the end user would be trying to accomplish for that point just to give it some validity.
Antho:
Thanks for the thoughtful response, and I agree with your core points. If the comparison were strictly between base usability, XP and Linux would be on more equal footing for the beginner. However, this model is not based on “Ease Vs. Complexity”, it is “Cost Vs. Complexity”. Ease of completing a task is one component of cost, but so is location and acquisition of tools, maintenance, and availability of documentation, training, and assistance.
Does that explanation help explain the dramatic increase on the right side? That area of the graph represents tasks which on Windows require complex or expensive tools and large amounts of labor to complete. The best examples of these tasks are out of the realm of a typical desktop user.
One recent example of this that I have faced is periodically synchronizing two database servers. At my office, we have several applications that have databases in the back-end. On the Linux (mysql) servers, I wrote a 5-line shell script that automatically does the synchronization on the schedule I set. Done. About 10 minutes of labor, and zero hard cost. On the Windows (MS SQL) servers I had to research, purchase, learn, and script around a $1300 dollar piece of software to get it done, and even that didn’t completely solve the problem. I still had to update it’s settings periodically and add the new databases to it’s config, because it can’t just pull “everything”, each individual database has to be specifically flagged. All told, that amounted to weeks of work on top of the hard cost, and I then had to spend about half an hour every week updating the settings. Even after all that labor though, the solution didn’t really solve the problem we were trying to solve. Thanks to inscrutable and undocumented “black-box” behavior of the database application itself, all that effort was ultimately wasted and we have decided to live with manually synchronizing only the data we need for a given project on the Windows servers, and only when we specifically need it. Ultimately, all that money and labor was wasted.
A more mundane situation is anti-virus and anti-spyware software. On a Linux machines, you just don’t have to worry about it. This may be because of better security or because the platform isn’t targeted. For our purposes, the “why” doesn’t matter, it is simply a fact that on Linux it is a non-issue. On Windows, the expectation is that you have buy AV software (~$40 per computer?) and then maintain a subscription to the updates (~$20 a year?) and then live with the degraded performance and obnoxious alerts that most of those products imply. There are a few that are free for personal use (AVG comes to mind) and some that a Free as well (ClamWin) but the mere fact you have to consider them increases the soft cost of the platform, even if the hard cost does not go up.
Gene Cavenaugh:
“With linux, there is a feeling that only two groups exist: the rank beginners, and experts. There is no serious attempt to address the “in-between” user community.”
I don’t think I agree with this assertion. The Ubuntu Forums are full of help and howto’s aimed at mid-range users. Christer Edwards maintains a great blog of tutorials at http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/ which contains items aimed at all level of users. As Jack Fuller pointed out above, a number of books hit into that mid range of skill. Another is the “Official Ubuntu Book”. While it hasn’t been updated to reflect the most recent release yet. it is still a valuable resource for people whose feet are already wet, but need a hand wading in deeper.
What experiences have you had that make you feel this way? I’d love to hear specific examples. Perhaps that’s a niche that Works With U can help fill!
Ubuntu hasn’t actually made desktop Linux easier to use.
Desktop Linux has been as easy to use as it is today since at least 2000, when I first started to make forays into using Linux. Back then I tried Lycoris (since defunct, and mostly integrated into Mandriva), Red Hat, SuSE and Mandrake.
It was Mandrake, now Mandriva that made the transition for me easy - to be sure I had to unlearn many Windows things, but that unlearning is no different with Ubuntu.
When I sit down and compare usage of both Mandriva and Ubuntu today (this has not always been so, as earlier versions of Ubuntu did not have the tools that made true ease of use a reality, in spite of the claims made of it) there is very little difference in usability, they are different but equally easy, Ubuntu has come a long way in a short period of time.
What has changed is that brilliant marketing by Canonical (Mark Shuttlewoth actually) has made the name Ubuntu much more readily known than any other Linux. What has not changed is the ease of use of Desktop Linux.
tracyanne
“There is no serious attempt to address the “in-between” user community.” I think the only lack of attempt is users themselves who don’t want to help themselves. I think the best way to bridge the “in-between” gap is to become an expert at what you already know. Lurk on forums to answer questions you already know the answer to. Read the answers that others are providing (especially on topics you don’t understand yourself) to build your own knowledge base. You not only help someone else out, but improve your own ability and confidence.
I completely agree with your assessments.
Something I have found while converting people to Linux over the past two years (I’ve been using it for 3+ now), is that it is important to emphasize that Linux is not a replacement for Windows, but an _alternative_ to Windows. I often use the comparison that the learning curve for switching from XP to Ubuntu (what I use) is similar to that of switching from XP to Mac, which is often considered the easiest OS to use. I’ve always had problems with people when I forget to emphasize that point.
Regarding the “dummies” books, I often use the analogy of “driving directions” vs. “roadmap” learning. The idea is that you move to a new city, and you want to know how to get places. You can do this by keeping lists of driving directions from your house to various places, or you can just get a roadmap and start studying it for major streets, cross-streets, landmarks, etc. If you take the first approach, you can only ever get to anywhere starting at your house, and you can’t adapt your route if there is an accident or closure. If you take the second approach, not only can you get anywhere you want, you can get there from anywhere and adapt your route if necessary.
If you take the roadmap approach to learning, Linux is quite a bit easier than Windows, because in general it is simpler from a design perspective and fairly consistent (to say nothing of open). Windows is quite complex under the hood, and only getting more so with Vista. Things are fairly obfuscated too (compare your typical registry entry to anything under /etc), and because it combines so many acquired technologies, it seems to lack consistency in its metaphors and approaches. It’s harder to learn the roadmap.
We gotta stop fussin’ ’bout which distro is best … it’s obvious that everyone has their favorite. THE issue in getting Windows users to consider Linux is compatibility. For the average Windows user
1. Linux needs to be easily installed [less and less a problem, it seems, except that the average Windows user
won't either know about, or consider doing, a partitioning of his C drive, for fear of data loss [Wubi is a huge help here!!]]
2. Will be put off if Linux can’t connect to the same hardware that Windows will connect to.
3. Information must be easily made available about Windows application counterparts in Linux.
Squaring away these items seems much more important than whether the desktop if KDE or Gnome [what's all that about?, asks the Wondows user?]. I mean, most users do Applications, not gaze at the Desktop!
I think this still comes down to a bottom line. I’m a sysadmin for a medium sized company, and rolling out linux for our users is really not an option. I personally _much_ prefer UNIX systems. I use Linux nearly exclusively on my work system, and we lean strongly towards UNIX on our servers. The trick is, windows has been, and continues to be, easier to learn for most people. They aren’t interested in what is “better”, they are interested in getting their job done. They know how to do it in Windows. They’ll (reasonably) be able to figure it out in Vista (despite its warts). Until we get Linux (or UNIX OSs in general) to this level of useability, MS will own the desktop. That simple.
This is one of the most interesting talks on the web at present. Good on you Q for persevering
I give 3-4 users a fortnight, a 20-40 minute newbies course. They have never had or used a Linux computer before. After they have grasped the basics they either sit down and practice or shutdown and take their new system away.
They have a contact email in case they need help. The only time they use it is if they have a hardware fault, about two users a year out of 400.
The 30 minute hands on experience is so quick, easy and extremely effective for users from 10 to 90 using a modern distro. A book would confuse and in my experience be out of date within 3 months.
Computing is a hands on experience. How would readers like to learn how to drive or fly via a book. No way. But give them the controls and a good visual simulation environment and that’s much more effective.
Maybe a special newbie interface that switches to experienced as each task is learned. Like the buttons are relabeled, with Applications saying “Click Me for Applications” until the user has launched 3 applications, Places saying “Click me for document places”, “Click me for changing the system” and so forth. I reckon that would work better than a book.
Screen movies are no good either. It all happens on screen and there is no room to practice on the real application and its gone before you have time to remember.
Actually a web page and two desktop work spaces, switching back and forth between them has worked best for my refurbishing trainees, who are generally informed users.
The style needs to be primarily pictorial with succinct explanations and explicit examples.
A book is not the way. Books are for using with horizontal desk media like pens and paints, i.e. at the same eye level, with one hand flipping pages and the other writing, drawing or painting.
Linux with XWindows work spaces keeps the eye at the same level and the primary key board and mouse tools work for both spaces. I’m lucky enough to have two screens side by side, so its just an eye flick, but work spaces are probably better health wise as the eye gets a rest refocusing on the next space.
If there was a Linux howto central library that only hosted or linked to pages like I described, with inbuilt googling of course, I and all my students and clients would love to use it.
I’ve got a few (hundred) pages at cool solutions I can donate.
This may be a bit nit-picking, but I bristle a little at your use of the general term “for dummies” books. There may be step by step books out there that meet your description, but I am not sure _Linux for Dummies_ is one of them, even if the title sounds like it should be.
Yes, I may be biased because that is where I got my Linux start. That is because I found this book at the library when I was looking for something else. And it had disks from which I installed RH7.0. So, OK, this was a few editions ago. I fault the book for its orginization and some ommisions, but I don’t really fault it for being step-by-step w/o getting the bigger picture.
Now maybe I can’t really objectively evulate this because my use of computers started with punch cards and from there went to a mini and a number of microprocessor based systems. Fortunately I had used multiple operating systems for small systems before I encountered Microsoft. And before I got out of the `80s I was fairly familiar with VMS from a user perspective. (Never delved into its inards.) So rather than needing to learn about computers, all I needed to know was what made *nix different from all the other systems I had used. And the _Linux for Dummies_ book did a plausable job of starting me in that direction. Including discussing permissions, runlevels, and startup scripts.
Maybe you could start referring to the books you wish to criticise (or at least question) as the “10 step books” or some such.
Sorry for the rant.
I am a Linux newbie, but have been supporting open source projects on windows for about a year. I felt and many others do too that it’s time to make the switch to Linux. Many people don’t like the direction Vista is pulling them towards, which is why there is such a big outcry for XP to continue.
This is the perfect opportunity to education and inform the public that Linux is a viable alternative. And exactly why I am making an effort to switch all our pc’s at home and friends to Unbuntu, Mint, SUSE, Fedora etc.
But unfortunately I am finding that there is always one sticking point for established Windows users from making the move over at home and the office, And it’s almost always 3rd party apps or they don’t know anything about where Linux is today. Not how complex the system is.
In my case at work we have to run Autodesk 2D/3D design software. Can’t run it in Linux with out still having Windows through VMware. Same at home, my son wants to play his favorite games or I need to run my Sony Vegas 8.0 but they are buggy in Wine or won’t run at all. My wife’s webcam won’t port the sound through correctly which she uses all the time so she won’t use it. So we still are dependant on Windows until those issues are resolved with a simple solution.
And for many of those that have no 3rd party app hangups they are still unaware that Linux is even out there, and if they have heard of Linux, they don’t know how user friendly it can be.
For many windows users they don’t know the few simple commands they can execute in “run”, or DOS let alone more complex tasks in a terminal on Linux. Which I have already had to do on numerous occasions to fix things. Many with agree that the Linux community doesn’t think the way 95% of Windows users do in regards of computing. Much more don’t mind having to do a little or a lot of work, finding that work around or solution to accomplish tasks that 10-20% of the time it’s needed. Windows users don’t want to deal with that at all.
There are two other factors.
One is open source software that run in both Windows and Linux. Anyone already running Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice can switch to Linux and be able to do 90% of what they do now with no difficulty.
Two is don’t forget the web, web 2.0, ajax, air and such. Google apps like Google Maps, Gmail and Google Docs run right in the web browser. These apps are cross platform, retain the exact same look and feel and lower the cost of the digital divide.
This of course is why Microsoft fears the web browser and spent from 2001 to 2006 NOT improving it. To help keep the cost of leaving windows high.
This is also why Google is creating these apps. Microsoft has vowed to destroy Google. Anything that lowers the bar for the cost of leaving windows AND can rob Microsoft of it’s two cash cows Windows OS and Office. Is a good thing for Google.
Those usability studies you were looking for
http://www.relevantive.de/Linux-Usabilitystudy_e.html
spec for ibex:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NewUserEducation
getting started and tutorials
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/index
I fully agree with Jason Bly. Most of us linux users (or at least those who care to read to the bottom of an article like this) actually find it thrilling and feel a sence of accomplishment when they have solved some or other problem. The general public who we are trying to convince of using linux has no such asperations - they just want to do their jobs without any hassles with their tools (OS in this case). They’l say: If it’s not broken, don’t fix it - and stay with Windows. If such a Windows user encounters one problem in their new linux environment they’l dump it and say the experiment wasn’t worth the effort. I think until most compatibility issues are out of the way we will have a hard time to convert the mayority of the non-adventurous Windows users, who are by far the largest group. But I do agree that Windows Vista has opened up a back door for us.