What is user friendliness?

[hazel]

Just thought I'd blow my own trumpet a bit. I've written another little squib - not as long as my "senior citizens" thing and not addressed to any particular audience, more philosophical . You can find it on http://www.hdrussman.uklinux.net/user_friendliness.html. People are always going on about user friendliness but I don't think I've ever seen a definition or even a serious discussion on what is or isn't user friendly. Maybe coffee loungers have their own ideas on the subject; if so, I'd quite like to incorporate them.

[oz]

Friendliness, like beauty, might be in the eye of the beholder!

[likwid]

Depends on who the user is- websurfer, musician, admin, programmer, secretary yadda yadda. As far as Unix users go, I think Linux is uber user friendly. I've used bunches of Unix based systems and Linux is definitely the most intuitive and easy to understand, which to me are two major components of user-friendliness.

[fingal]

I like it Hazel. Very concise and interesting. In fact it helped me view Linux from a different perspective. The bit about not knowing if you're allowing a worm through your firewall is interesting too.

I liked the quote about knowledge lasting forever. I suppose I'd thought of that without really articulating it.

To a certain extent I think the phrase 'user friendly' is very subjective. I've noticed that people use applications very differently, and I've clashed at work over 'how you do this'. My way might be different, but it works as well as your way ... That's how I often feel.

Well done!

[Dark_Stang]

User friendliness sorts people into two groups. The keyboard master vs. The point and clicker. It just depends on who you feel like satisfying that day...

[minthaka]

As Hannibal Lecter said in the Silence of the Lambs: "Simplicity!"

[cousinlucky]

Hazel you just continue to amaze me. I opine, whenever asked, that windows is " Dummy Friendly ". My first computer had windows 95 which just carried me along with its multiple choice prompts. When I first installed Suse 10 with a KDE desktop it was way over my head and made me quake. I also could not view any websites needing acrobat because I could not figure out what KDE's password was to open them.

I switched to a Gnome desktop and here I stayed. I will have to look up the xfce you mentioned to see what that is all about. I suppose most folks would expect Linux users to be aware of how computers and the kernel work. When I mention that I use Linux on the Internet everyone assumes I am a computer whiz and they start asking me questions.

I have to always explain to them that I am a complete computer dummy without much unfried mind left. Linux works without hard-drive reformats is all I need to know at this late stage of life.