FOOGL (Firefox, OpenOffice.org, GNU/Linux) Usability

First, we had the hugely-important, but horribly-named "Economic impact of FLOSS on innovation and competitiveness of the EU ICT sector" report, and now we have the equally horribly-named tOSSad F/OSS Usability report.

Since this is actually about Firefox, OpenOffice.org and GNU/Linux, they should, of course, have called it the FOOGL Usability Report. Despite this monumental gaffe, it does include some very useful information about usability, traditionally viewed as free software's Achilles Heel:

The survey showed that the majority of respondents agree that all three products have sufficient number of features and are user-friendly in general. Among the positive features of Firefox and OpenOffice.org are their user-friendly graphical interfaces. These include menus with clear definitions and abbreviations, and logical navigation of the main and context menus. OpenOffice.org and Firefox was also considered to have a sufficient set of features and are easy to install.

Regarding GNU/Linux, the survey results show that in average there is a positive opinion among the survey respondents in terms of installation, information presentation, navigation and the overall impression from the operating system. Therefore it can be concluded that the more experience users have with GNU/Linux, the more positive is their opinion of it.

However, respondents also mentioned gaps in the usability area of these products. For some users, one of the GNU/Linux’s disadvantages is the difficulty of installation of hardware and the learning curve needed in the process of migration from the MS Windows interface. OpenOffice.org also has some issues with insufficient performance compared to MS Office, according to the respondents.

Apart from sole usability aspects, the survey discovered that there is a need for more information about which F/OSS programs represent alternatives to their commercial counterparts. The survey also showed that no charge and the GNU General Public License (GPL) remain the main reasons for switching to F/OSS products.

(Via Erwin Tenhumberg.)