On 18.05.2016 10:58, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote: > [Ole Streicher] >> In my opinion, the situation for the Debian Pure Blends is better here >> than for the Desktop environments: If a user doesn't know what the >> Blends mean, he just ignores it and doesn't install anything from it. > > An unskilled user do not ignore options he do not understand, he worries > and tries to understand them in order to avoid making a mistake that > will bother him in the future. If you believe options that are unknown > or confusing do not cause any harm, I am quite sure you are mistaken. > They increase the cognitive strain and force people to spend time trying > to understand that the option can be ignored. They also slow down the > installation process.
Again, this questiones the whole tasksel step during the installation: As Christian points out, the majority of users doesn't understand what "Desktop Environment" means, especially if is should decide whether he needs "Cinnamon" or "Mate". My own experiences are that I don't know anyone who understands the "standard tools" item. Compared to that, "DebiChem" is understandable: That has something to do with chemistry. If the help would have been displayed, then he could also know it. He then could also understand what a "Pure Blend" is. It may help him to understand what a "Desktop environment" is. And maybe someone finds a smart help text for the "standard tools". If we really care that people should understand what they see, the first issue *should* be to implement the help texts here. > Note, I am not against the blends selection option during installation, > but believe it should be introduced after taking the negative effects as > well as the positive effects into account, not by claiming the negative > effects do not exist. I claim that they do not increase much. The issues are already there. > There exist usability research indicating that more than 7 options will > confuse the human brain and cause a lot of cognitive strain. To me it > tell us that we should avoid "just two screenfulls" of options, and > instead try to make sure at most one screenfull, and preferably less > than 7 options are presented in any dialog in the installer. This is already violated in some steps of the installation. And we already have 13 Blends; I don't see a good way to squeeze them into 7. Best regards Ole
