My granddad, Henry, might be described as a “silver surfer”, although I think that term might imply a greater level of computing aptitude than he has, or is interested in cultivating. As one might expect, he’s not a very technical person, and his computing demands are modest. In fact, Henry mostly uses Firefox and occasionally writes a letter using LibreOffice. (BTW, I don’t usually call my granddad by his name, but it seems more natural to do so when typing this post than repeatedly typing ‘my granddad’!)
When Henry bought his new PC it came with Windows Vista pre-installed, and everyone seemed to be saying what a terrible operating system it was. By this time I’d been using Linux exclusively for years and wasn’t prepared to begin learning my way around Vista just to support him, and besides, I’d seen it prompt the user for security confirmations too often to be friendly enough for him. So I installed Ubuntu for him instead. Guess what? The world did not implode. Although he’d been using Windows XP, Henry didn’t suddenly find himself unable to use his computer. He could still launch and use Firefox, could still find his documents and edit them, could still watch Sky News videos on their website using Flash. Henry was even able, unaided, to use upgrade-manager when prompted to migrate from one release to the next.
Ubuntu wasn’t all a bed of roses for Henry. He’s had trouble using his printer from time to time – which appeared to be a driver issue – and most recently he’s had very annoying network connection issues, where Network Manager has not recognised his (new) broadband router despite it being connected via a cable, with no wifi to complicate things. Perhaps these are side-effects of Ubuntu being based upon Debian Unstable, I don’t know, I never did sort-out that networking problem…. Anyway, arguably up until now Ubuntu has been easy for a non-technical person to use – someone who doesn’t care which operating system he’s using, or what software runs on it, as long as he can get stuff done, and arguably that ease of use largely stems from the ease of use of GNOME 2, albeit sensibly set-up, configured and made pretty by the Ubuntu folks.
Henry’s network problem is now fixed; a happy (and hoped-for) side-effect of migrating him from Ubuntu to Fedora 15 (although I expect reinstalling Ubuntu would have had the same effect). I considered this move quite carefully before making it – GNOME 3 is, after all, quite different from the GNOME 2 interface he has been used to. However, on balance I think GNOME 3 is easier to use: the changes are significant, but they’re easy to adjust to in a way that the change from, e.g. GNOME 2 to Unity wouldn’t have been. Here are a few of the factors I considered:
- GNOME 3 has a single ‘Activities’ button (although it doesn’t look like a button). This is much simpler to understand than the old Applications, Places, System arrangement, especially where Henry would ignore Places and System because he didn’t need to use them and consequently didn’t know what they did. Even if ‘Activities’ isn’t an intuitive term for him, given that it’s the only option it’s clear that it’s the one to use.
- Henry used to have a launcher for Firefox on his top panel, where Ubuntu put it by default. That was convenient, but it was small, meaning that it was a smaller target for the mouse than was ideal and was harder to see too. The Firefox icon in the GNOME 3 Dash is considerably easier to see and to click. Using GNOME 2 I could have put a larger Firefox icon on the Desktop, but that wouldn’t always be visible and would require double-clicking, which for an 83-year-old can be a hit-or-miss affair (to say nothing of the fact that Henry hasn’t really learnt when a double-click is needed versus when a single-click will do, and why should he?).
- GNOME 3 has no task bar. This is good because Henry doesn’t do multi-tasking, so it was at best a waste of space and at worst it was confusing. If he does open more than one window he can now switch between them in a less abstract, more visual way, via the Overview. It’s slower than a task bar, but it’s easier to understand.
- There is no longer a minimise button. This is a bit of a pain-point for me – I used to use minimise a lot and will have to change my work-flow – but for Henry it’s a good thing: he doesn’t need to minimise windows and if he did so by mistake he’d assume he’d closed the window – he’d not know how to restore it. The lack of a maximise button is a different issue, but having shown him that dragging the window to the top of the screen does this he’s happy, and now there’s no risk of him accidentally hitting the close button instead of the maximise one.
Why not Unity?
- I wasn’t convinced that Henry would adapt well to the hidden global application menu. I think a global menu would have been disruptive enough, but being able to see it change when applications are launched, switched or closed might have been enough of a visual clue that it’s the menu for the focused application; however, having the menu hidden until the mouse rolls over it was, I thought, a bridge too far.
- Similarly, hidden scrollbars that appear as floating widgets on mouse-over isn’t very intuitive either, and less so when they aren’t applied consistently across all applications (e.g.Firefox currently doesn’t support them). I’m quite sure Henry wouldn’t have liked those.
- Unity’s launcher is a bit overcrowded. Application launchers are prominent, which is certainly a good thing, but if an application isn’t already on the dock it’s not very clear how to go about launching it. Of course, one can learn how to use it, but for a user that isn’t interested in learning how to use a new shell and just wants to do some stuff GNOME 3 is simpler.
Why not a different GNOME 2 distribution, or KDE, LXDE, XFCE, etc.?
- I’m not using any of those. I’m Henry’s technical support, so if we’re both using the same system it’s easier for me to support him. If I was using a highly technical shell this point wouldn’t apply, obviously, but since I’m not, i.e. since the shell I use is also appropriate for Henry, then it makes sense for us to use the same shell, and that is GNOME Shell.
- Most importantly: given the reasons above, I genuinely think GNOME 3 is easier to use than any of those systems.