Way back in 2004 Daring Fireball’s John Gruber posted a long but very interesting rant about why open-source GNU/Linux software is hard to use.
The article itself was a response to a misguided, condescending post from a Linux alpha geek about how he couldn’t figure out printer-sharing on a networked Linux box. The geek’s take was that the software should be made “easy enough for Aunt Tillie,” and implied that UI design in the open-source world was close to achieving this.
Gruber rightly pointed out that the open-source developer ranks were nowhere near to achieving that level of usability in their software, and would never achieve it as long as they treated UI design as an afterthought.
A somewhat long, but worthwhile read.
