**So-Shel-ist** @shel · May 04, 2018, 18:30

**So-Shel-ist** @shel · May 04, 2018, 18:30

So-Shel-ist @shel

May 04, 2018, 18:30

Why non-techies don't use FLOSS alternatives Show more

I decided to download Scribus as a FLOSS alternative to InDesign or Publisher.

I opened it and was told I need to download GhostScript and it directed me to a site which redirected me to a GitHub releases page

Which had about ten different release versions with shorthand filenames making it very difficult to find the right version. The documentation for Scribus was outdated and gave no help

First one I tried told me to install using Command Line

didn't work

**So-Shel-ist** @shel · May 04, 2018, 18:32

**So-Shel-ist** @shel · May 04, 2018, 18:32

May 04, 2018, 18:32

So-Shel-ist @shel

Why non-techies don't use FLOSS alternatives Show more

Took me 3 tries to find the GhostScript EXE which would install on my machine and then finally I had it installed Scribus stopped giving me error messages.

And this was how it took me as someone who used to use Linux and understands stuff like 64-bit versus 32-bit software.

Scribus itself has Documentation which jumps into telling me the command-line functions before how to use the GUI.

**So-Shel-ist** @shel · May 04, 2018, 18:34

**So-Shel-ist** @shel · May 04, 2018, 18:34

May 04, 2018, 18:34

So-Shel-ist @shel

Why non-techies don't use FLOSS alternatives Show more

If you ask the community where to get more Scribus templates they'll link you to a GitHub repo intended to be a directory of templates except nobody actually uses it and adding things to it is people pushing merges to the repo.

and the program itself just has a lot of flaws such as seemingly no ability to add new pages once you've already set the pagecount, and it doesn't understand page folds

**So-Shel-ist** @shel · May 04, 2018, 18:36

**So-Shel-ist** @shel · May 04, 2018, 18:36

May 04, 2018, 18:36

So-Shel-ist @shel

Why non-techies don't use FLOSS alternatives Show more

like if I tell it "do a two-sided landscape US Letter" it doesn't cut the page in half like InDesign it gives me two side-by-side full US Letter.

I'm figuring it out and using it fine but it's REALLY difficult to use whereas InDesign and Publisher didn't take me long at all to learn back when I worked on a student publication.

Like, FLOSS developers design software for other developers then the FLOSS community wonders why non-techies don't use it

**So-Shel-ist** @shel · May 04, 2018, 18:36

**So-Shel-ist** @shel · May 04, 2018, 18:36

May 04, 2018, 18:36

So-Shel-ist @shel

Why non-techies don't use FLOSS alternatives Show more

I can't recommend something to someone where the installation process expects you to run strangely named files on command line.... maybe

**So-Shel-ist** @shel · May 04, 2018, 18:37

**So-Shel-ist** @shel · May 04, 2018, 18:37

May 04, 2018, 18:37

So-Shel-ist @shel

Why non-techies don't use FLOSS alternatives Show more

I can't fault FLOSS for bad GUI too much since it's rarely done with the resources that for-profit products have

but the installation process at least shouldn't expect me to separately download an obscure dependency off GitHub

**So-Shel-ist** @shel · May 05, 2018, 01:39

**So-Shel-ist** @shel · May 05, 2018, 01:39

May 05, 2018, 01:39

So-Shel-ist @shel

Why non-techies don't use FLOSS alternatives Show more

to be clear my criticism isn't that the software itself is bad UX due to lack of polish or whatever, but that at every step it expects and assumes a very high level of tech competency that even as someone with a minor in computer science and a background in working tech support professionally, I do not feel like I have. If you want someone who doesn't work in tech for a living to use your software you should never make them use command line or compile from Github

**liffy 💜** @lifning · 2018-05-05T01:43:58Z

liffy 💜 @lifning

Why non-techies don't use FLOSS alternatives Show more

@shel these are artifacts of it happening in the open.
in big software houses, obtusely built software packages get written as well, and the same questions of "how do I get this to run" get asked inside the company, and someone takes the answers and does the labor to put release engineering process in place to capture it all and package it in an easily consumable way.

generally in the floss world, this labor is done by Linux distribution maintainers.

May 05, 2018, 01:43 · SubwayTooter · 1 · 2

**liffy 💜** @lifning · May 05, 2018, 01:47

**liffy 💜** @lifning · May 05, 2018, 01:47

May 05, 2018, 01:47

liffy 💜 @lifning

Why non-techies don't use FLOSS alternatives Show more

@shel supporting deployment of a software package across a very heterogeneous range of PC platforms is a very different skillset than is required to write the software itself. the people doing the work of making the libraries aren't wrong for putting it on github - but we need more people doing the work of *carrying the ball from there to the goal* to make it accessible to all. it's less exciting work but extremely necessary, as you've discovered