Open Source at Home
Weaknesses
Usability
When you look for commentary about open source usability, some open source defenders do a lot of pointing to, and exclaming about, the latest improvements to the KDE and Gnome desktop environments, often leaving their arguments at that. It’s true that both are developing and maturing at an astonishing rate and many of the features found in commercial interfaces have been reproduced.
But it is important to note that the design of a desktop environment contributes only partially to the end-user’s experience; users spend relatively little time interacting directly with the desktop. Rather it is the applications that mostly influence usability, if only because that is where users spend most of their computing time.
There are some known problems with the usability of open source software, including:
- user interfaces are usually better when designed before coding commences, but this doesn’t tend to happen in open source projects
- open source hackers self-select their tasks, and for many interface design would be a low-prestige choice
- many hackers want their part of the code to have a visible presence, giving rise to a cluttered interface or an array of confusing options
- proprietary software companies do not always produce well designed interfaces, so to reproduce those features is to repeat those mistakes
It is sad, but apparently true, that interface improvements in open source applications tend to happen more by accident or afterthought than by planning. I would hasten to add that this tendency doesn’t seem to be limited to open source projects; most programmers don’t tend to give interface design due consideration, often leaving interface implementation to the end of the development phase or just throwing it together as the program evolves.
It would be wrong to conclude from this that open source software is inherently less usable than proprietary software, in fact many open source applications compare favourably. Rather this objection is about underlying development processes: that in open source projects less attention is given to end user experience than in major proprietary products.
Documentation
As with usability, many programmers consider documentation to be non-essential or a chore (or both). Anyway programmers do not always make good writers. Proprietary products are usually well documented simply because the software companies can hire technical writers to do it. Open source projects, reliant on volunteers, rarely have this luxury. As a result the quality of documentation tends to be variable, with some more commercially focussed projects (such as Evolution) having good user manuals and online help, where some of the smaller projects have practically nothing.
The open source community recognises the problem and addresses it with projects like the FreeBSD Documentation Server and the Linux Documentation Project, a repository of online “how-to” manuals that are usually distributed with the major GNU/Linux distributions.
Confusion
When looking at open source software there can be too much choice. For starters there are the multiple flavours of Unix-like operating systems, including GNU/Linux and three versions of BSD. Then there are countless distributions of the GNU/Linux operating system, and each distribution packages up several email clients, web browsers, live chat clients, music players, and office suites. Some may find such an extensive smorgasbord exciting, but most users who just want to get on with it probably find the choice overwhelming.
As a guideline, users who want to try GNU/Linux should look at the mainstream distributions like Mandrake or Red Hat as suitable starting points. Other distributions like Debian and Gentoo are likely to remain the platform of choice for more experienced GNU/Linux devotees.
Some assembly required
Critics and friends of open source have long claimed that GNU/Linux is difficult to install but this is no longer true. The major distributions, such as Mandrake, Suse, and Red Hat, have put great effort into making the installation process straightforward and easy. GNU/Linux is now no harder to install than Windows XP, but few end-users need to install Windows (at least, not before they get started) because it comes pre-installed when they buy their PC. Until it becomes more common to find open source operating systems pre-installed on new computers, the need for the user to do their own installation must go down on the debit side of the ledger.
Niche applications
Open source has created some fantastic new software, but there are some niche areas where open source projects have not penetrated to a great degree. For example, I don’t know of any industrial strength open source CAD programs, and while there are some great open source web site editors I don’t think any match the capabilities of Macromedia’s Dreamweaver (but I am happy to be corrected on both counts).
If you use some kind of special-purpose software, it would pay to check that the same functionality is available before taking the plunge to an open source operating system.