What makes Linux great?

[Michael Surkan]

I agree that we could do a better job of listening to users. Thanks so
much for your comments.

Michael Surkan
-----Original Message-----
From: KRFinch at dstsystems.com [mailto:KRFinch at dstsystems.com] 
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 3:36 PM
To: Michael Surkan
Cc: kclug at kclug.org
Subject: Re: What makes Linux great?

Presuming this isn't a joke, I'll get on my soapbox.

The real beef that I have had with all Microsoft products is the
disconnect
between the software designers and the user experience.  You guys really
just don't get it.  Even the few really good products that Microsoft
produces have some really glaring problems in their usability that could
probably have been nipped in the bud if the testers actually tried to
get
some work done with the product.  Examples:

- Why does every product in the Office suite assume that I'm an idiot
and
refuse to let me select part of a word with the mouse when I want to?
If
I'm doing proofread and edit work, I commonly want to do this, but I end
up
having to do my text selection with the keyboard.  That's fine for
continuous text but if I am trying to do something to non-continuous
text
strings, it's only possible with the mouse.

- MapPoint is great.  It's one of the best programs of its kind I have
ever
used.  Why can't it do something simple like update through a proxy
server?
Every other Office product can, and the data in MapPoint changes far
more
frequently than anything else in the Office suite.

- Open Active directory users and computers and try to search for a
user.
Why doesn't the cursor automatically go to the "search for" blank like
it
does with every other search tool out there?

- I never use Windows Explorer anymore.  I hate it.  It's clunky and
slow.
To see how it should be, spend a couple of days working inside the
utilitarian elegance of Christian Ghisler's Total Commander.  It's a
fast,
intuitive, configurable file management tool, and it fits on a floppy.
It
has little tools that should already have been there, like a mass file
rename tool, a text file viewer, two completely independent panes, and a
user-configurable toolbar.

Onto a different, related topic.

The big thing with Linux is that initially people wrote the tools to get
work done the way they wanted to do it.  If there were problems, they
rewrote and fixed them.  If later, other people find problems, they can
get
the author to help them fix them, or they can do it themselves.  Things
get
fixed and improved through iterative processes that provide for steady
improvements in quality and improved user interface.  Microsoft doesn't
seem to improve anything through iterative processes.  They try to do
everything at once all of the time, and they often end up causing
problems
as they go.

For example, try writing a macro sometime to update a pivot table in
Excel
using data from a SQL database.  I guarantee you that the programmers
that
wrote the macro-writing features never once asked for input from users
that
have never written macros before.  Unless you have some VB experience
and a
lot of patience, it's just awful.  If Microsoft is ever going to revise
the
macro-writing process, it will be through a brand new Office release
with a
whole slew of new, difficult to comprehend features designed to increase
the commercial success of their products and convince companies that
they
need to spend millions of dollars to upgrade.

That's where Linux is fundamentally different from Microsoft products,
in
my opinion.  It's completely conceivable that a group of Linux
programmers
would do a quick little minor version upgrade of their spreadsheet
product
to do something like making the macro-writing experience easier to
understand (an iterative improvement), and they would probably do it for
free.

Microsoft on the other hand would never release a minor patch to Excel
to
make the macro-writing easier to use, and if they did, it sure as hell
wouldn't be quick, little, or free.  It would be some $149 "Advanced
Office
User Interface Pack" with a bloated installation that chewed up another
135MB of hard drive space and required upgrades to IE and your MDAC to
run
properly, and it would also conveniently make all of your old macros
instantly obsolete.  It would be lauded in the press, it would fix a few
security holes, create a few new ones, and would still basically suck
for
the average user because the programmers would still have never asked an
average user what they wanted.

In conclusion, I would like to thank Microsoft for being so set in their
ways and continuing to make products with features that confound the
average user.  Every time something new comes out of Redmond, it has new
layers of intricate interdependency that require higher and higher
levels
of skill and effort to support.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  If everyone used Macs, I'd
be
out of a job.

- Kevin

PS-  These are my opinions and not necessarily those of my employer,
etc.

 

             "Michael Surkan"

             <msurkan at windows.

             microsoft.com>
To 
             Sent by:                  <kclug at kclug.org>

             owner-kclug at marau
cc 
             der.illiana.net

 
Subject 
                                       What makes Linux great?

             12/19/2003 04:02

             PM

 

 

 

 

I am a program manager at Microsoft doing some research around how we
can
improve our operating systems. My goal is to help us identify
capabilities,
improvements, and features that Microsoft should be focusing on to help
our
customers over the next 5 years or so.

I am particularly interested in hearing from Linux users, and get their
input about what they feel should be the priorities. In particular, I
would
like to better understand what it is that makes Linux and Open Source
solutions so useful for you.

If you would be willing to take a survey I have put together, please
write
me at lnq at microsoft.com.

Thanks,
Michael Surkan

P.S. I did confirm with Jason Clinton that it was ok to post this note.