Ubuntu Wiki

It's so obvious to you...

What is obvious to a Linux veteran is not always obvious to the absolute beginner. This page is meant to provide examples of the ways the absolute beginner's experience was not all that it could have been.

This is a page for interesting examples of usability issues in Ubuntu. The forums provide many such examples on a daily basis. I am sure there are other sources like the mailing lists and IRC.

Ubuntu usability case studies

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=148317 and http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=803688&postcount=13

"I think i installed ndiswrapper, but the error when trying to run it was that it couldn't find 'ndisgkt' or something"


"Does the ubuntu install disc have ndiswrapper in it already?"
Perhaps there should be a graphical tool to prompt the user to use ndiswrapper, if their wireless hardware is properly installed, but not detected or configured by ubuntu.

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=851684&postcount=16

"There is no 'modules' in /etc ... I am attaching a screenshot ..."
The screenshot shows the gnome open file browser which is listing the directories in /etc, but /etc/modules is a file so the user must scroll down quite a bit to find this out (which is not intuitive since eve3ryting show is alphabetical and there is no "modules" folderé  What is intuative is to assume there is nothing there by that name.  
I think people are expecting for files and directories to be mixed, especially in a case where they don't know whether they are looking for a file or a directory.

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=867419&postcount=46

"you did not de-activate eth0 (ethernet connection), which may be cause of connection problems (I bolded output that shows both are connected). deactivate eth0 first (using "Network Settings maybe?), than activate wlan0.."

"I did this, and that is when it began to work... It kept coming up as default because I didn't save when I logged off..."

It seems there is not a straightforward way to set which network device to use.  Maybe ask the user if they wish to use the last-configured interface as the default route?  Maybe there is another problem here, I dunno?

EmpathyVsPidginUsability

Add new case studies here.

CategoryCleanup