Desktop Linux

[Sankarshan Mukhopadhay]

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Rahul Sundaram wrote:

> Aza dotzler presentation on requirements for Desktop Linux is a relevant
> article for what is appealing to the target audience
> 
> http://piercedotzler.com/asa/linux%20%96%20in%20search%20of%20the%20desktop.pdf

Rahul, thanks for the link.

Unfortunately, we seem to be moving in the same loop of *Why can't my
desktop be like Windows ?* Very wrong and not the right way to a good
and proper Linux Desktop.

Both in this presentation and the blog, the issues mentioned relate
mostly to Usability on the Linux Desktop Environments vis-a-vis the
Windows UI. The assumption for this hypothesis is that the Windows UI is
picture perfect - not true at all. Assuming that there is no real need
to clone a Windows UI to make a usable Linux desktop, the real challenge
is to enhance learnability.

The few deployments of Fedora based LTSP setups that I have been
involved with have resulted in one conclusion - given no prior
experience of a desktop, the FC/Linux desktop is easily learnt by the
end users. On the other hand, anything above Windows98 (and by that one
includes a majority of the Government offices in India) causes usability
issues in terms of terminal usage/command-line interface, print-tool
usage, browser usage (inexperience with tabs) and mail client feature
requests.

A W2L migration without putting in place a proper study of functional
usage normally leads to cribbing (pardon this term, could not find a
better word) about the *learning curve*.

Regards
Sankarshan

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