Can you fix it?

Helios has posted a very compelling story about the troubles a group of elderly citizens experienced with their computers. Thankfully, there were some very good outcomes in that story. There were also some problems discovered and outlined. These problems directly relate to the user experience discussed by devnet.

While Tom Adelstein gives us a comparison of platforms without our sometimes rose-colored glasses view of free software, and

Scott Ruecker gives us the "perspective of a non-technical user", these are building blocks of information, not end goals. We need some action. A lot of people need your help.

What distribution do you like to use? Could you set it up for a real greenhorn to use? I'm not talking about setting up a system where there will always be a Linux guru within reach of a scream for help. I'm talking about setting up a system that will work without tending for long enough to allow the user to do most things they want to do, alone. They can learn to update and customize after getting comfortable.

Some minimum criteria may be in order:

1. A browser. In the tale by helios, linked above, the lady could not find Firefox. This is just plain wrong. Helios made an excellent point that it should be obvious how to start Firefox; it should not be buried in menus. You might put an icon on the desktop with the label "web", or "internet", or similar.

   
   
   

2. An email client. This should also be obvious, as in a clickable icon on the default desktop. Naming the icon "Thunderbird" won't help. Setup should not require someone capable of reading Sendmail configuration files.

3. A word processor. OpenOffice.org may be the obvious choice here, but then again, maybe you have other ideas.

4. An instant messenger. Gaim supports just about everything, I think.

5. A music player. Amarok, Xmms, whatever.

6. An image editor. Gimp is pretty universal.

7. A page with simple explanations about the system. This should be very easy to get to and emphasize simple. Keep the target audience in mind: people who are quite capable of typing and clicking a mouse but who are (as yet) completely uninterested in how operating systems work. Think, "what do I do" and "how do I do" rather than "why". The "why" should be limited to a few links.
   
   

8. Something to take a snapshot of the desktop, in case of trouble. Being able to show somebody a screen shot of the desktop can help troubleshooting. I have a special button that looks like a little camera that accomplishes this on the simple fvwm desktops I set up:

   *FvwmButtons(Icon copy.xpm, Action
   'Exec import -window root desktop-$(date +%Y-%m-%d-%H.%m.%S).png')

   If the user thinks something doesn't look right, he or she clicks the camera once, calls me, and I can take a look at it and explain what's happening. Hardly ever used, but very reassuring.

Now, how about designing a desktop for your favorite distro and your favorite computer greenhorn and posting it on LXer? Can you show what modifications you would make to the standard, downloadable, generic version of your distribution in order to make it usable by the stereotypical Aunt Tilly, who can foul up an MS Windows system in fifteen minutes? If you can do so, will you share what modifications you make, so that others can download that distribution, apply your mods, and save Aunt Tilly from the monsters in the back allies of the Internet?

Part of what makes free software work is recognizing that each person cannot do everything. Another part of the recipe of success in open source is that each person may build upon the work that came before. Here's a chance for you to do a little bricklaying and help somebody begin using your distribution who might otherwise be trapped and left out. You don't have to create perfection. It would be enough to get a start for someone else to begin building upon it.

Take a shot at it, please. Start a comment thread with the name of your distribution and your specific modifications to the desktop that would help a newbie. Think about all those folks who worked so hard to get your distribution to the point where you can use it. Can you help them take the user experience just a step further?

Thanks!