What scares off newbies from Ubuntu?

A very interesting study was carried out by the Canonical Design Team in order to find out what scares off newbies when trying to switch to Linux . Research results inside …

Perhaps I will give the entire text with  LOR :

Canonical design team is engaged not only in adding new functionality to the interface, but also in improving the existing one. As a result of Ubuntu usability testing, the team found that the main problems are:

Compatibility with standards
First of all, compatibility with MS Office. Users are concerned about the question “how suitable is ODF for workflow?” Another version of this question: “When someone receives a document from me, will he see it in the same form as I see this document?” The team will probably start looking for an answer in the near future.
Lack of visualization of the interface
As one of the participants noted: “The system should be able to communicate what it is doing now. Because I have a feeling that she hung or fell, and it’s not clear what I should do at all ”
Slang, jargon, terms
Users admit that they, as novices or untrained users, even at the stage of Ubuntu installation, are faced with questions that they simply cannot answer, because they do not understand what they want from them. One user said that the words “terminal” and “server” discouraged him from installing Ubuntu. The words “Gwibber” and “broadcast” are also included in this list.
There is one more item on the list: installing and configuring printers, the dialog boxes of which users simply do not understand: “Enter device URI”, “Host” “Queue”, “LPD network”, “Samba”, “SMB” – all this seems to be in no way related to setting up the printer at all.
The Ubuntu design team believes that the terminology used is very clear about how the system positions itself, and the set of specific terms does not fit the image of a user-friendly distribution.
Flash
This is how the design team labeled the problem with the format of the packages needed to install external applications. When the user needs to install flash, he sees a lot of packages of different formats and unknown words: YUM, .tar, .gy, .rpm, .deb, APT. Most of the users do not cope with the installation precisely because of this.
Application Installation Center
This is what users liked. No need to tell you how convenient it is to install applications from one place without looking for them on the web yourself. However, there is a problem here as well: the user sees a lot of packages, not knowing, and not understanding from the description, what exactly they are intended for and which one he needs. The user cannot even always determine from the description whether he will receive a large and functional application with one main window and many smaller windows, or a set of console tools. “The descriptions in the application installation center are made for geeks” – the participants made the verdict.
Also, some users do not know where to find the installed application. “Where did my application go? Has it been established at all? ” – users ask, not finding a new icon on the desktop.

Hopefully, the Canonical design team will do what they have in mind, and the Linux interface will become more user-friendly, and that this will help it take a stronger position on the desktop of ordinary home users.

Scroll to top