Posted by
Roblimo
on from the we-need-more-stories-like-this dept.
GauteL writes "Sigurd Rinde, a typical desktop user, talks about how Linux can replace Windows for everyday use.
He talks about word processing, presentations, Web editing,
accounting, calendars, etc.
Read more
here."
356 comments
well done
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Anonymous Coward
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well deserved, its time more and more suits take part in the linux revolution.
Can't reach that Link
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Anonymous Coward
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and o yea.. This is what we need to see more of in the Linux community. Feedback from real users who know nothing but the Wonderfull World of Windows(tm).
First post!
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Anonymous Coward
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The link don't work./.ed already?
First Post
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Anonymous Coward
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FIRST POST FUCKERS!
Re:First Post
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Anonymous Coward
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Congratulations! You were so close to being first (only 213 off), I felt compelled to congratulate on A JOB WELL DONE.
End User Experience
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Anonymous Coward
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I still don't think Linux has enough day-to-day applications that most people need. People don't want to hassle with an OS especially if they can't do their normal stuff on it.
Replacing Windows with Linux
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Anonymous Coward
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At least someone in this world can get a nice Linux system configured in less than a week. First post! (Sorry, have to get it out of my system.)
Broken link
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Anonymous Coward
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It works better if you remove the "/a" from the URL;)
Re:KARMA WHORE
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Anonymous Coward
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I agree, who's the real troll? Obviously karma whore boy can criticize the trolls, but he cant find the maturity to apoloigize for being a troll himself...
1
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Anonymous Coward
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Dare I say, first?
is slashdot working?
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Anonymous Coward
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I think we is brokin' -davidu
Here?
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Anonymous Coward
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That link is not werkin
first
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Anonymous Coward
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first?
1st
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Anonymous Coward
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1st
Unix For Everyone
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Anonymous Coward
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There's also a movement to get unix into the home place, for the average joe and jane. Here's the link
Oh, yes. Almost forget. Moderate this down, fuckers.
Re:Masturbation(Word good?)
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Anonymous Coward
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I would have to disagree with your statement that "Linux just aren't up to the same caliber as those available for Windows yet".
I work at a computer lab at the help desk(a fairly large computer lab in fact), and I deal with MS Office 2000 every day. At my home I was raised with WordPerfect, so, yes, I do have some previous experience with other programs. I have found that MS Word is _not_ mature. It is extremely painful to fix a formating problem once it has cropped up(IIRC, they have even followed us through Copy and Paste into a new document)!
As for the feature set of Word. Yes, Word does many things, but how many of those hidden little features do you know how to use(or even need to use?) I find its interface very hard. Perhaps it is because I am used to WordPerfect. Who know's. But I do know that almost everyone at my place of work also complains about the just brain dead things that it does.
For instance, if a file is on a floppy disk. You decide that you are done, so you close Word. It asks, "Would you like to save the changes?". You say yes. Word will proceed to remove the current file, and start coping over the new one. However, if an error is encountered, Word chokes. All data is lost. You are left with a meaningless file of garbage, and a person that just lost a 10 page paper.
I have little experience with Outlook express. I never wanted to get stuck with a program that would infect my computer by simply _reading_ an email. That is a sign of a program that was either poorly designed or implemented.
As for a word processor that is compairable. I would think WordPerfect would fit the bill. I tried using StarOffice, but I didn't like it too much(too much like MS Office, and I didn't like that it put itself into one window). The formating problems of Word, I have never encountered in WordPerfect(thanks mainly to reveal codes). Granted it does have some shortfalls(fonts). But I believe they did it correctly. Start with a sound base, make sure it _works_. Then add all of the bells and whistles. You do _not_ want to start with the GUI, then make the program. You are left with a shell of the program that my look nice, but doesn't work correctly.
first post
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Anonymous Coward
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BIATCH
Can't find it!
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Anonymous Coward
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Where is the article? Hmmmmm.....
Re:Mentality
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Anonymous Coward
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"About the only thing Microsoft has come up with is naming a button on the GUI "Start". " What about M$ Bob or talking paperclips? See what giving Microsoft the freedom to innovate can do? I found the concepts in the Halloween documents rather innovative too.
FIRST POSTTTT!
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Anonymous Coward
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FIRST POSTTTT!
close your tags
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Anonymous Coward
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the link is dead foo on you
Now I would love to use it if it worked on my...
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Anonymous Coward
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Now I would love to use it if it worked on an old IBM thinkpad 730t. Is there in HWR (handwriting) software for linux?
nash_kgroce[at]crosswinds[dot]net
Now here I sit, all broken hearted, box won't boot, a panic started. -- Bathroom Linux
first post
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Anonymous Coward
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There's software under Linux?!!!
Offtopic!
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Anonymous Coward
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I know i'm going to hell for this, but I just noticed that redhat.com uses doubleclick.net for their ad service.....??? don't you find that slightly odd considering how doubleclick is you know... evil? Maybe i'll be flamed for acknowledging redhat's existance, but whatever... I remember a recent article about doubleclick being evil,so i thought i'd share.
Re:My experiences
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Anonymous Coward
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Also, WinNT does *exactly* the samething.
What version of Windows NT are you referring to? At least all versions>=4.0 will let you create/delete partitions and choose partitions to install from. I installed it quite a few times, and I never had it erase data that didn't belong to it. It takes some insight to get the NT bootselector to work though...:-(
Wrong!
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Anonymous Coward
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I keep hearing this reasoning, that the suits won't like Linux because it seems too good to be true, in terms of price. Bull. The main problem with suits and Linux is that they simply don't know enough about it yet. Once they're educated about Linux's strengths and what open source/free software really means to them, Linux will be very popular.
Re:Wrong!
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Anonymous Coward
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What I see as the roadblock to the corporate world's acceptance of Linux is the fact that they have nobody to sue if things go wrong.
The thing to remember is that MS *NEVER* rests. While they have a team of marketing droids to extoll the virtues of everything they do, the main organization is pretty well outside of that.
Most of MS's competitors have made the mistake of pausing for a few minutes to catch their breath and do some celebrating, only to find MS rolling over them with a steamroller when they weren't looking.
MS is always hungry, always looking for the next oppoortunity. If you want to compete with them, you have to as well.
messages?
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Anonymous Coward
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Where da fuck are all the fucking messages?
Finally....
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Anonymous Coward
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Well, finally people are seeing that Linux is a viable desktop substitute for Windoze. Now if only the link worked.... -MR
Why is the link dead?
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Anonymous Coward
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Why is the link dead?
wow... im first...
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Anonymous Coward
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Am i supposed to boast about being a first poster? or sugest a beowulf cluster? i forget... anyways.. interesting article. its good to see that people thinking that its an alternative to windoes for everyday desktop use. maybe oneday the rest of the world will too.. =)
Re:FiRsT PoSt YoU SpAnKeRs!!!
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Anonymous Coward
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Looks like you didn't get the first post. Who's the biatch now? Word to yo 40
However, we should occasionally allow us to look back at how far we have progressed and cheer. Linux has moved from weird minimalist fringe educational geek-test to a real operating system. I was impressed by the list of software the author had collected, and immediately downloaded several of these myself. This is just what coders and sysops need; a user's perspective on the very upsetting process of changing from one application to another.
Have a look at Linux Journal for February 2000, they compare KDE/GNOME, Applixware/StarOffice and lots of other desktop stuff.
As for the discussion of OSS/stability/price, I am running a 486 DX33 with a half-filled 350 MB hard drive. This is a stable 2.2.14 with KDE, VNC control and a few servers (bootp/dhcp). It is simply not possible for me to run current, up-to-date software with such flexibility and configurability (and for free!) on this hardware. DOS runs,maybe W95 would, W98 is not realistic and anything else (still supported) from Redmond is just not feasible.
If I can run a fast, efficient office-type application with good networking options on a 486 or a cheap laptop, I will be very satisfied. Check the minimum requirements for Win2K and see how many machines you own or use at work that can handle it. (There's a downloadable "Win 2K upgrade checker" from Microsoft if you want to know for sure if you can run it).
Roblimo has a problem
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Anonymous Coward
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What the hell is wrong with this? No messages, and the link is bad. Roblimo, you've got some explaining to do.
Use http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience.php instead. - Chad
Re:Choking the Chicken
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Anonymous Coward
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As for NT - just spent 3 days 3 hours each trying to install NT on 10G disk. Still no success.
On NT4 you need to do the install on a 4GB partition, then (after install) resize the partition up to the full disk size using PartitionMagic. Win2k works straight out of the box on big disks (did 'em both on 28GB IDE disks a few days ago)
Mindshare
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Anonymous Coward
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I guess that means that we are starting to win?! What we probably need now is some AO-hell package to grab machines to go on the net... I guess.
Busted link
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Anonymous Coward
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got a new one?
Re:KARMA WHORE
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Anonymous Coward
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lets not forget that the post has lost whatever value it had now that the link has been corrected, so therefore is doing us no service whatsoever and failing to admit it.
application interoperability?
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Anonymous Coward
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Why is there no discussion of application interoperability? Has nobody ever had to inter-connect (for example) a technical spreadsheet with a CAD program? We had to do exactly this, to let users describe the equipment they wanted to design, in an Excel spreadsheet, and then we had code to drive Visio to generate an accurate, to-scale drawing in Visio. We inported the Visio drawing into Excel, and generated design and calculation reports. No sneering now, this is a billion dollar company which develops & licenses ciritical, key technology that is responsible for producing the gas you put in your car (http://www.uop.com) Other examples : 1) using Excel as a front-end to a (very sophisticated) chemical processing simulation package. We drive the simulation from Excel, produce reports of simulation results using Excel. 2) using Excel as a front-end for industrial equipment monitoring, using COM objects written in C++ and Visual Basic. Where is Linux with application interoperability and component computing? You can recompile C++ projects each time you need a new component, but what about having a library of compiled components just waiting as DLL's to be called to duty? How is Linux going to meet the challenge of the massive (really massive) installed base of COM-enabled applications out there? Want to know what I am talking about? Check http://www.opcfoundation.org/ to get an idea of how heavy the installed base is. Want to get an idea of how many hugemajorgargantuan companies are behind this? Check out http://www.opcfoundation.org/OPC-MEM/memb.asp. i don't like Microsoft domination any more than you guys; however, I have been watching MS concepts take the real world by storm for the last 10 years. Next time you put gas in your cars, know that if COM and ActiveX were ripped from planet earth right now, your gasoline supply, electricity supply, water supply, food, chemicals and almost everything else you use 7 see would become in extremely short supply in very short order. MS does not dominate the actual manufacturing industry just yet. They have a death-hold on corporate desktops (ask me, i just came from one - checked out for a job designing back-ends of websites). Companies cannot control their supply-chains, cannot optimize, cannot maintain financial systems, or pay their people without COM. Ask people who actually develop software for corporations (not the desktop maintenance or helpdesk people, not the CIO who may not even have heard of COM). Ask the software engineers who write software like Oracle, PIMS (90% of world market for oil refinery optimization software see http://www.aspentech.com), Foxboro/Honeywell/FisherRosemount. It's over guys. This isn't about isolated word processors & adding a column of numbers in a mickey-mouse spreadsheet. People are automating and optimizing serious industrial systems with Excel (via COM), COM drives many softwares that are the reasons behind why you have food, electricity and water in your house. Linux for enterprise file/print servers, Linux for home users with web browsers & isolated wordprocessing image processing etc - OK, I see this. Industrial & scientific use with inter-operating applications, well ... Linux will have to adopt and embrace something like COM to meet the challenge that MS has thrown down. Does Linux have something equivalent to ODBC?
Re:application interoperability?
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Tony-A
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Moderate this up, please.
Re:Linux for the desktop
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Anonymous Coward
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see post 184 for comments
first natalie portman post
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Anonymous Coward
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slappin dat fat ass beeeotch
Re:Important Points
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Anonymous Coward
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see post 184.
Stereotype
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Anonymous Coward
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"Maybe the writer wears suits, but he's hardly a typical non-tech user. As soon as he talks about compiling and vi v. emacs, he's disqualified."
Ahh, humanity. Whenever we're making a pro or con argument we let it all swing on a stereotype. Anyone who wants to argue different I suggest you grab a dictionary first, then re-read what you type with the definition in mind.
Re:slut?
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Anonymous Coward
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No, apparently, they use BSD.
Re:Visicalc? No, it was Multiplan
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Anonymous Coward
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Microsoft {wrote | borrowed | stole | "innovated"} Multiplan as a competitor to Visicalc back around 1978 when The Evil Mister Gates was merely The Not Very Nice Mister Gates and was only a hundred-thousandaire.
Re:Who came first?-costello
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Anonymous Coward
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"but that they got there first in establishing a relationship with the PC hardware manufacturers."
[raised eyebrow] Oh is that what their calling it these days? Wonder if off the record those PC hardware manufacturers would see it the same way everyone else apparently does?
Re:Masturbation-anchors away
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Anonymous Coward
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"While I respect the opinions of the author of this article, I have to say that in my experience the apps for Linux just aren't up to the same caliber as those available for Windows yet."
Should be changed to read in my *opinion* the apps for Linux just aren't up to the same caliber...
" I mean, can you show me a mail client as powerful and easy to use as Outlook Express? How about a word processor with the feature set of Word (and I know a lot of/. readers think of a spell checker as "bloatware", but some of us like having a lot of options we can configure)."
1-Power(ful) is relative. I'm certain some of the old hands here can show you some tricks that Outlook can't touch. Easy to use, too subjective to have a viable discussion on. 2-Anyone else see the irony above? Hint think lots of options we can configure vs ease of use.
BTW Judging by the 'deficiencies' in some of the posts I've seen over the years. I wouldn't consider a spellchecker "bloatware" but essential equipment.
"I suppose this article in particular is just serving as a final straw to me. Lately I've noticed a really disturbing trend towards self-congratulation in the OSS movement, and especially on this particular discussion board. Criticism of Linux is less and less welcome while this sort of wanking is on the upswing."
1-I think praise for what the developers have done is overdue. 2-Make a note to yourself most of the developers responsible for OSS and the fruits we now argue and debate over are not the ones, to borrow a word "wanking" here or anywere else for that matter.
"Look, sitting around patting ourselves on the back while ignoring the deficiancies in our software is the exact same behavior that we love to flame companies like Microsoft for. It feels good to convince ourselves that Linux is finally "there" and that anyone who can't use it is just an idiot. It feels good to think that even a "suit" can use it now. It feels good, but it's not true -- not yet."
1-Who is "ourselves" and who died and made them spokespeople? 2-Wheither it's true or not for the general populace shouldn't be the question. Wheither or not it's appropriate on a person by person basis should be
"..GIMP can hold a candle to Photoshop yet." Depends on what your needs are, and by that criteria the candle should be lit.
"Flaming the "non-believers", trolling about "suits", preaching to the choir and pretending that flaws don't exist are all symptoms of this loss of focus."
Once again developers loosing focus or another example of the "ourselves" crowd being judge,jury, and death sentance.
"What I want to point out is that self-congradulation (which is how I view this article) is inherantly dangerous to the future of the paradigm from a Big Picture point of view. It should be recognized as such, and should be avoided whenever possible."
The glass is half empty.
Re:Masturbation
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Anonymous Coward
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I mean, can you show me a mail client as powerful and easy to use as Outlook Express?
There's always "mail".:)
Re:not too bad
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Anonymous Coward
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The profit margin is not high when compared to other successful software companies. Their PE ratio is much lower, and EPS much higher, than companies like Sun, Cisco, and Oracle. And their fundamentals are MUCH better when compared to companies like Redhat or VA Linux, who aren't making any money. Constantly increasing prices? Like for what? Can you give examples? Not for Windows 9x you can't. 95, 98, and 98 SE all cost the same.
Re:RH installs
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Anonymous Coward
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Well I just tried to upgrade from RH 6 to 6.1, NT loader was loading the OSes. The upgrade did not ASK where lilo was to be installed unlike 6.0. It just attached itself to the MBR. I thought my partitions were hosed til I fdisk/mbr to get the NT loader back. But I was so pissed RH didnt ask like usual I killed off Linux on my box for the time being. I mean jeezus, RH needs to at least ASK and give me the option like they used to. Til then no more damned Red Hat...might have to look into SuSE.
Re:KARMA WHORE
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Anonymous Coward
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You may be the karma whore, but I am the lizard king.
Re:VB Equivalent in Linux?
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Anonymous Coward
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Sorry, but Perl is nice but it is no equivalent.
I learned Perl first, I enjoy it, I really do. Perhaps I do not have exposure to it's latest and greatest and newer tools. But the IDE and debugging of VB is much better than any tool I used with Perl. I do like vi for editing but I got spoiled on Intellisense. I could put my reference material down...it's great.
commence flaming
First Fuckin p0st!!!
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Anonymous Coward
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First p0st!!!
Link is incorrect
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Anonymous Coward
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The link to the story is messed up, it has a/a in the end.
well...
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Anonymous Coward
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that's nice that linux can do that and all... but... i'm sure sco openserver/unixware will do it better with more apps... speaking of which, which one should i get??? im gonna get the cool free license!!!!! heard its real cool/better than linux.
Re:RH installs
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Anonymous Coward
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The AC (who seems to be trolling, especially with that comment about Outlook and IE)
No. IE is a better product than Netscape. In my opinion, IE has consistently beaten Netscape in terms of speed and reliability since version 3.0, and would have won the browser war even if Microsoft hadn't given it away then embedded it in the O/S
I've used Netscape, on Linux, and even upgraded it to the latest version. But I got plain fed up of it crashing unexpectedly, or not displaying a page it had downloaded, or just taking weeks to do anything. So I went back to my W98 installation.
Yes. It's true. Microsoft in this corner have the better product. Linux machines make great web servers, but there is no really good web browser for Linux. Get over it.
we finally made it
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Anonymous Coward
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onward to world domination
Re:KARMA WHORE
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Anonymous Coward
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yeah that immature person would be you, karma whore
Re:Linux GUI Manifesto - the revenge
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Anonymous Coward
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It's time to make a decision: World Domination or Elitist Bitching.
The average IQ of most people is 100 - 110.
The average manipulator (the word user has too many negative connotations in the UNIX world) of UNIX not only has an IQ of at least 130 but more likely 140. This is the equivalent of making all vehicles without power steering and power brakes, then bitching because those punks over there in the hospital ward are too weak to drive themselves in the ambulance.
IQ may be going up gradually, but without that old cliche "ease of use", Linux will not dominate desktops. That means a GUI that even a 100 IQ idiot can love and no assumptions that the user has even heard of vi, can rewrite a script or knows what a compiler does. Cars are not usually maintained by their drivers unless you are a high school student or a mechanic, nor should they be.
Most people don't want to deal with XON/XOFF or a complicated interface, which is why we have telephones and web browsers: most people "Just Want It To Work Without Reading The Manual"(TM).
The most common complaint with tech support is RTFM. Well, folks, that's not a bug, that's a feature! Most people will *never* learn to even read the manual, much less program, *NOR SHOULD THEY*.
Let's be very clear about this: UNIX is for smart people willing to learn. Most people are neither smart, nor willing to learn, and if we want that "World Domination", we better realize that a proper user interface will require us to design both for idiots and experts, clueless and clueful. Norton Utilities used to have a simple and an advanced series of menus. We need to do something more challenging: creating a user interface that allows idiots to be productive and have fun while allowing the clueful a way behind the curtain to manipulate the system in a more advanced fashion.
So, how about it?
Re:not too bad
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Anonymous Coward
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The one thing I got out of this that was useful was the mention of Moneydance for personal finances. I had been looking for a good alternative to Quicken and it looks like I found it. Now if only Intuit would port TurboTax to Linux...
Re:Roblimo sucks
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Anonymous Coward
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Roblimo sucks
-1? Who gave Roblimo moderator access?
Re:Now...
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Anonymous Coward
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That would be MacOS X now...
Re:oh no, WYSIWYG again
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Anonymous Coward
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Monitors don't have as much resolution as printers. If your monitor or your font is too small, WYSIWYG is impossible, even with Display Postscript.
Re:VB Equivalent in Linux?
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Anonymous Coward
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You are missing the point. What takes a user three lines of VB code to do likely takes twenty lines of C code to do. For application extensions, C is no more or less powerful than VB, it just takes way longer to program and debug your code.
It's lonely up here at the top.
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Anonymous Coward
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don't hate me because i'm first.
Re:KARMA WHORE
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Anonymous Coward
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nor was it "News for Redundant, Bitchy, Hypocritical, Deluded Karma Whores"
Thank you, try again
why waste your time?
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Anonymous Coward
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If you are going to take the effort to LEARN how something works, you may as well take the time to LEARN Linux. Then at least you will know something you can grow with.
Sure, you can stay with Windoze for now, but as more people clue up, do you want to be the last to leave a very large, and slowly sinking, ship?
Uh... all the learning in the world is not going to change the fact that all the client applications under Linux are far inferior to the applications under Windows.
People use applications, not operating systems.
--
So baby, blow me....
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Anonymous Coward
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a kiss.
Re:Masturbation
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Anonymous Coward
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Well, I have to take exception to your comments here. Afterall, what is 'doing one thing, and doing it well'? are you refering to checking mail, sending mail, and reading mail as being three separate tasks? If so, then your are out of step with what the majority of consumers and computer users want. That is to be able to check, send, and view mail from a single application. Outlook Express was far and away easier to install and configure than, for example, sendmail/fetchmail/mutt... although I only use these apps under Linux (I don't use win98 anymore) If the Unix philosophy is what you are striving for (namely one task, one program) then what place to programs like Star Office and Corel Office have to do with Unix philosophies? Star Office, while I love it dearly, cannot compete in speed to MS Office, and quite frankly, no application is yet to compare to MS Excel... It simply is the ruler of spreadsheet apps. I sincerely hope that MS comes to their senses someday and ports Excel to Linux. Either that, or some company develops a kick-ass program that can do all of the things that Excel can, but faster. Have you ever actually used Excel? or Outlook Express? If you can honestly state that mail programs under Linux are better and easier to use than OE, then I'll call you a liar! -just my opinion...
suits
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Anonymous Coward
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real men dont wear pansy suits
Gee... Thanks!
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Anonymous Coward
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You are not a Linux GUI Czar.. You are, as has evidence has shown, a shill for MS.
You are not a Linux GUI Czar.. You are, as has evidence has shown, a shill for MS.
Pity you don't have the stones to:
(a) provide evidence (b) provide your name
... though I'm willing to bet that you're Joe Barr.
If you can do better, do it. But if I want the job, why shouldn't I have it? Worried I'd destroy Linux from within by pointing out its flaws and trying to make it a better experience for its users? sheesh... hard crowd.
Re:My experiences
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Anonymous Coward
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You assumed RedHat would 'do the right thing'. I believe there are several warnings during the install that it will wipe everythign you have
No it doesn't. In fact it says that non-linux partitions will be preserved as long as I don't choose a server configuration. I didn't have to resize my NT partitions if that's what you mean - I had unpartitioned space on my drive for the Linux installation.
You are missing IE and Outlook express. What features, specifically? We have mail programs, and IE. IT sounds like, as the article said, you are stuck doing things the MS way.
IE is more stable, renders faster than Netscape, and has a more configurable interface. The screen doesn't keep flickering as you scroll it (I'm refering to the Linux version of Netscape here) - it's nauseating to read text that flickers as you scroll.
For one thing, NS messenger doesn't support more than one POP mail server. I like Outlook's interface, it works well (I can't quantify why exactly, but I like outlook's interface more than NS or eudora's interface). I don't mind using pine when I'm stuck at a text terminal, but I prefer something more visual when I'm using my personal computer (any recommendations?)
sco
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Anonymous Coward
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sco != licensing nazis. yeah.
Re:Masturbation
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Anonymous Coward
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Heh, sounds like you want something like SeriousVoodoo. Maybe it'll run under UAE?
I keep hearing about how the Amiga is dead and has no apps, and that I should see the writing on the wall. Then I look at what's available for Linux and Windoze and hear people spout opinions that Outlook is a good mailer rather than merely an average one?! That's when I realize that the Amiga is still the place to be, for now at least. The Amiga may have no future, but it still has the best present. I just hope my Amiga hardware doesn't die, because I don't know where I would find a replacement.
Yeah, I'll get a Athlon-Linux box for CPU-demanding things (e.g. Quake 3) but as a 'Net client (stuff like mail, news, and web browsing), the Amiga is still unrivaled.
reader/writer Excel, Word shall inherit the world
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Anonymous Coward
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Everyone knows that once KDE or GNOME offer applications with acceptable Word and Excel compatability - Windows is done for. And not a moment too soon. All of Windows' success can be attributed to these two file formats.
Re:My experiences
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Anonymous Coward
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I'll bet you didn't even try to press at the LILO boot prompt, did you? If you did, you would have seen your precious NT partition there as a boot choice.
dumbass.
Re:My experiences
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Anonymous Coward
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someone mod this up, pleeese
Re:My experiences
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Anonymous Coward
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I never obtained a lilo boot prompt - just a screen of static at start up. I'm using ez-drive as well, so this probably contributed. I did try to read the redhat online manuals, but I couldn't find anything that documentated what the installer would do when NT was present (I did read a howto on getting NT and linux to dual boot). I'll take you suggestion and submit a bug report, thanks.
Re:First post?! :-)
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Anonymous Coward
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Gee.... Closer to 300 in reality.
Correct Link
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Anonymous Coward
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http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience.php
Re:RH installs
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Anonymous Coward
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Netscape3 vs IE3? IE3 couldn't do decent HTML3.2 at the time and its CSS implementation was completetly wrong (the microsoft css gallery spectacularly missed the point of the language). Admittedly the w3 specs at the time were incomplete, but mistaking size definitions broke CSS and people didn't attempt it mainstream until the 4.0 browsers. IE3 had an internal default style sheet (much like the idea of Verso's core/base style sheet) that let you overwrite base tag attributes accidentally!
With HTML rendering left - N3 was much more consistent in its rendering (remember the transparent GIF problems if it was a background image in the 16 bit version?) and was a clean trim app (4 was bloated misdirected tripe, argh!). IE didn't win until 4, and wasn't fast until 5. IE3 was shite.
Re:A Typical User?
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Anonymous Coward
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"can my mother use this?" [...] but until all of our mothers are chatting on Linux boxen there simply isn't going to be a place in the desktop market for Linux
My 40-year-old mother can't use Windows even with written directions. From all the tech support jokes, there seems to be a lot of people with that trouble. Does that mean there isn't a place in the desktop market for Micros~1 software either?
Perhaps the "mother metric" isn't the best measurment out there. There's a place for windows, AND a place for Linux, and a place for *BSD, and Be, and whatever else.
Re:Mentality
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Anonymous Coward
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Um... I don't want to drive, because it requires learning. I want to walk.
That's not a good analogy. A better one is "I want to drive, but I don't need to know how my car works." Which is totally valid. How does your microwave work? Do you still use it? How does your refrigerator work? Do you still use it? Do you scoff at those who actually use appliances without knowing how they work internally?
Us Vs them
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Anonymous Coward
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Yeah, more Suits!
fist prost?
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Anonymous Coward
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grits?
1st?
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Anonymous Coward
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31337
Broken Link
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Anonymous Coward
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Broken Link: Try http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience.php Hey! I'm a suit and I love Linux. (I even have a dreaded MIS degree) I especially like it when I can fix something myself. (Like the script in RedHat 6.1 which points to "sound" instead of "soundcard"
BUSTED Link
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Anonymous Coward
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Watch the Thing!
1st Post!
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Anonymous Coward
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First Post!
Re:My experiences
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Anonymous Coward
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Odd, I've had better experiences installing LILO on the MBR rather than the boot partition. LILO knows how to start the NT Boot Manager, but not vice versa, so putting LILO on the MBR makes sense.
Re:Finally...
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Anonymous Coward
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Quine "quine?" "'Quined' quined" quines "quined.
Unmatched '"'.
Re:KARMA WHORE
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Anonymous Coward
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BJH -- Naked and Petrified!
Jesus. This guy is a moron. ACs UNITE!
first
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Anonymous Coward
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hah
This article is so amateurish and this site is ...
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Anonymous Coward
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so biased.
Re:Suit? Hardly.
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Anonymous Coward
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I haven't ever installed '98, so I don't know how it compares.
Using a boot disk and installing on a bare drive, the user must manually run FDISK and FORMAT. (The user must also be familiar with the COMMAND.COM environment and understand the concept of drive letters.) When I installed Win98, FORMAT crashed on me while "verifying" the disk. After that, the Setup program crashed on me several times, and never completely finished. The user is required to manually install drivers from another CD.
?!?!?!?!
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Anonymous Coward
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FIRST BIATCH!
Re:Whats is stopping ME
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Anonymous Coward
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You should upgrade your hardware to Packard-Bell.
Re:One word: Styles
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Anonymous Coward
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Ahh, if styles could explain(and fix) things like random page breaks, or double spacing in the middle of a paragraph(that has no double spacing at all), neither of which we could get rid of. You would be my God!!! I would still dissagree that Word is more powerful. I've seen people try to use it for some things, which it (pardon the expresses) _really_ sucked at(e.g. legal work). But isn't that the beuty(sp?) of choice?
Linux + Buisness
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Anonymous Coward
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Well, It looks like Linux is finnaly making it into the Buisness desktop. =]
Re:Linux + Buisness
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Anonymous Coward
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Actually, You werent first. Couldn't you find another way to express yourself, actually read the document before posting? Look like you have somewhat of a intelligence.
Re:Sorry, I'm not looking for a women...
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Anonymous Coward
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Trollin for NINJAS
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Anonymous Coward
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Pancakes for all
MOO FUCKAZ
?!?!!?!
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Anonymous Coward
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FIRST BIATCH!!!!!!
typical desktop users
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Anonymous Coward
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Nice read. One question though, do typical desktop users always post incorrect html code with their urls? -Charlie
Re:Linux GUI Manifesto
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Anonymous Coward
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You're right - Linux doesn't have the apps and hardware support for professional music production:( I still have to have a Win98 partition to do my modest composition work in Cubase. I would expect it's gonna be a while before we see pro music software ported to Linux/Unix. I remember when the Mac was the best music platform (maybe still is?) - it took a while for the Windows PC to get up to speed. Whether or not it happens on Linux, I don't know. I guess it will boil down to marketshare. My one nit with your post is the Linksys cards I have work fine in Linux. Best of luck.
Replacement.
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Anonymous Coward
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The fact is Linux just isn't easy enough to use to be a desktop replacement. Even if the average user can install and (sort of) configure Red Hat to run on their hardware, they still don't know how to fix or change anything.
dishonesty at its finest
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Anonymous Coward
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abiword ready? wtf are you smoking? its full of bugs... you should give me a couple months so i can fix some of them, then maybe it will be ready.
Microwave
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Anonymous Coward
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"...How does your microwave work? Do you still use it? How does your refrigerator work? Do you still use it? Do you scoff at those who actually use appliances without knowing how they work internally?"
Well if you do know a little about microwaves(a little learning), as opposed to knowing nothing (The I don't wanna know) then you'll know why you shouldn't put metal objects in a microwave. Or why breads get tough on the outside for example. With a little knowledge you can use (and get better results) from your microwave as opposed to it just being a coffee warmer. So the long and short is that the "I shouldn't, wouldn't, couldn't viewpoint" will come back to bit it's practicioner. One way is that eventually the world will be bi-polar. The ones who aren't afraid of exploring the world around them, and the ones who have been shielded ( by their own request?) from the world. One becoming dependent on the other. The have's and have-not's built by our fears. Enjoy the brave new world.
Link...
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Anonymous Coward
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Roblimo once again forgets his HTML.
1st
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Anonymous Coward
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whoot
Either the link is bad or the page is down
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Anonymous Coward
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I think this qualifies as informative, don't you?
Interesting article
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Anonymous Coward
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I'll bookmark this for when I need to point out to my M$-centric friends who dont believe Linux is good:)
-- Sygnus 1
Broken link
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Anonymous Coward
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the link has an error in it
boring
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Anonymous Coward
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boring
Above URL is broken...
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Anonymous Coward
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I'm stupid My/. hasn't updated in a couple hours My browser is just screwed
I'm leaning more towards stupid.
Re:KARMA WHORE
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Anonymous Coward
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Why not read to see if you're redundant first? Really, it was pointed out enough. 2 other comments? You're not helping the SNR around here.
FIRST POST!
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Anonymous Coward
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FIRST POST! FIRST POST!
?
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Anonymous Coward
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What happened to all the messages here?
URL Aside
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Anonymous Coward
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not being able to get to the article was a bit irritating - maybe it was/. 'd BUT the description of this story -> Sigurd Rinde, a typical desktop user seems a bit fishy already. What constitures "typical"? That's another one of those dangerous words, like "normal" or SANE... Gotta go try the URL again..
malformed URL.
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Anonymous Coward
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The correct one is http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience.php. For some reason your link had some odd tags in there.
A good read, even if we've all read thousands of stories much like this one.
1st post
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Anonymous Coward
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really thought the link is borked up, there's an extra ' http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience.php/a
a suit??
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Anonymous Coward
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Maybe I have not met enough suits, but I've never met one that I believe would be willing to (learn / put up with) vi.
Re:My experiences
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Anonymous Coward
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What I've read is that lilo can't be installed on the mbr if you've NT installed. I forgot to mention that I'm running ez-drive, so lilo killed ez-drive as well, so this may have been the reason why things didn't work.
It most definitely does not work on my setup- the screen started snowing madly upon boot up. Linux does boot from the boot floppy, but NT can't boot up. It worked after I redid everything, using the custom installation and installing lilo on the boot partition instead (and then copying the boot image over to NT).
The First Commandment of Posts
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Anonymous Coward
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And then the Lord High Root sayeth: "Thou shalt always check the links in thy posts, and then check them again, lest though shouldst become naughty in my site":-)
I don't make a full switch yet
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Anonymous Coward
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Good for him that he found all the desktop tools that he needed, and made a clean switch from Windows. I wish I could do the same thing, but for now I am limited by the following issues:
- A boss who is close to retirement and not willing to give up MS Word. Not only does he need to read my documents but wants the ability to edit them. Conversion back and forth just don't cut it.
- Hardware: I never got my old pcmcia cdrom to work... Now I have a nice HP 820 pcmcia cdrw, and again no drivers for this baby. Hooking up my old logitech pagescan scanner? Forget about it. B/W quickcam: someone has a driver that MIGHT work, but it is definitely not straightforward. Oh, I have a Linksys network card that worked like a charm in RH 6.0, but now I can't make an FTP install to RH 6.1... (it's a bug and they know about it since october)
- Software: sure there is a lot of nice stuff out there, but some software simply isn't available for Linux. E.g Statistical DOE software (Design Expert for Windows is very nice), data analysis software that just doesn't exist for Linux, and software that controls various analytical machines in the lab... Nope the manufacturer just doesn't see a market for that (yet?). Then there is Sigmaplot for Windows for making graphs. Keeping in mind that my boss needs to work with these files as well, I don't have that much choice. Sure gnuplot exists for both platforms, but that lacks options, and I don't think my boss would appreciate the lack of a nice point and click interface.
Why don't I make all those drivers (assuming I could get the specs) and programs myself? I am not that much of a programmer, I don't enjoy it, and I don't have the time for it. Like dozens of other people, I simply use computers as a tool to get a job done, and I use whatever is best to do that.
It would be great if I would never have to see a BSOD anymore, but for now, it wouldn't work for me as a desktop OS 100% of the time. No doubt there are many others that have similar considerations.
Re:RH installs
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Anonymous Coward
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I assure you, I wasn't trolling; I didn't make up a weekend of agony. If you can tell me how I could have gotten NT to boot again, I'd love to hear it. The lilo prompt never appears, I just get a screen of static on boot up.
I actually did manage to restore NT from my rescue disks, but it would keep blue screening at the logon prompt. If it doesn't work once, try again: I tried the rescue disk procedure again, and this time, it would blue screen even before the logon prompt appears. As I mentioned in another post, I'm actually using ez-drive as well, so it was probably a combination of ez-drive and windows NT that made things go bad, although somebody on a newsgroup had told me that it would work with such a combination.
I read the redhat faq (4.16), which says specifically to install lilo on the boot partition and not on the mbr if NT is present. I thought it would be reasonable to assume that the installer would detect the presence of NT and do the right thing (the right thing defined as what redhat specifies in its own FAQ). -I decided not to go with the custom installation the first time because I wasn't familiar with how the partitions had to be set up.
The point here being that the Redhat installer is too stupid to do something that Redhat instructs in its own FAQ, with very destructive results (at least for a Linux newbie like me).
P.S And yes, Outlook and IE are much better than Netscape - I think this is pretty apparent to anyone who actually makes an objective comparison.
Well, I installed Debian 2.1 (slink) a few weeks ago, not using the extra Resource CD at all, and the base install was 48 megs, which didn't include even lynx or killall. I downloaded everything I needed with apt-get.
I always thought Outlook Express was bloated to the extent of being pretty much useless... I never considered it powerful, just a memory hog that doesn't do things as well as the stand alone applications.
For that exact reason it is very much against the UNIX philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well.
Here is a scheme for doing one thing and doing it well: checking mail, one thing. sending mail, one thing. reading mail, one thing. GUI that holds it all together, one thing. Other interfaces (graphical or not), other single things.
This way, the other interfaces can make use of the checking, sending, and reading mail programs (and of course there are others programs too) to use them as they like. For instance, an icon on your desktop could alert you to when you have mail, and an icon built into an application can too. No need to poll the POP server twice, just have the check for mail program poll it once and send the result to whatever programs want it.
Plus, so you don't like the GUI that came with the mail program... write your own without having to rewrite all of the single applications.
Ignore that lpr is a nightmare and realise that to print in UNIX just about any program calls lpr... they don't rewrite the printer drivers because the seperate program philosophy leads to heightened flexibility (develop a brand new mail protocol? Just rewrite send and don't worry about ther repercssions), better code, and more choice for the end user (GUIs and such).
Star Office, I believe, uses a lot of Java code... of course it's going to be slower, don't blame the philosophy.
Yes, I've used Excel and Outlook Express... Excel I like, but as for OE, I used Netscape Mail because it ran twice as fast and did everything anyway.
You're missing one thing: the self-congratulating people usually aren't the ones who actually write the code. A real programmer always have something that itches him in his code.
So leave 'em out of our way bragging, and let's go back to the code.
OG.
PS: The.ifo files are one of the most perverted format I've ever played with:-)
My (67-year-old) mother is happily using Windows 95. She uses CompuServe for email, and has yet to explore the Web--she thinks it would be more complication than she has time to put up with.
My 61-year-old mother-in-law uses Windows, and complains about random crashes. If I was physically closer to her and had the time, I'd consider setting her up with Linux. The larger the market share for Linux and thus the more general support there is available for novice users, the easier the transition to Linux is.
The "typical" user turns off his computer, but leaves the monitor on--and thinks he's saving energy.
All the monitors I use on a regular basis go into a low-energy sleep mode when the computer is turned off.
-- Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
With an RPM file, you can see where its going to go, but virtually all RPM's can't be relocated. If you wan't the RPM to be installed elsewhere, you need to exract and install the files manually. John
-- John_Chalisque
Re:oh no, WYSIWYG again
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John+Allsup
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(Hypothetically speaking), since you have the imaging architecture in place for printing the file, why not just use that to obtain a WYSIWYYG display??
(This is what NeXT and anything DPS driven was able to do, and what, for similar reasons, the new MacOS X is able to do -- there is a single imaging model that is powerful enough for handling both dislplay and printing. X11 just doesn't cut it in this respect (drawing support that is on par with Windows 2, no useable scalable font support...) John
-- John_Chalisque
Re:Hooboy: the "typical user"
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Frodo
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Correction: typical user nowdays doesn't know what the heck "netscape" is. You should ask "what icon do you see in the top left" to say what browser he's using.
-- --
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Well, I agree that Linux desktop is not for everyone. But I, as a programmer, have almost no problem at setup of Linux desktop nowdays. Put in YourFavoriteDistro, select GNOME/KDE and in an hour you have working desktop system.
As for NT - just spent 3 days 3 hours each trying to install NT on 10G disk. Still no success.
-- --
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
As if... It didn't install neither on 4G, nor on 2G, neither with own NTFS, nor with pre-formatted FAT16 partition. And this seems to be well-known problem - I asked people, and they said they had similiar trouble and recomended me to byte-copy existing NT partition. And this was the only way to make it working.
-- --
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Go to www.perl.com and browse the CPAN module listing. I know there are some graphing modules, but I'm not quite sure about the math functions. I wouldn't be surprised if more of the common ones were there.
-- the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Have you checked out freshmeat to search for any graphing tools? Or even checked out http://www.redhat.com/appindex/MathScienc e/ for opensource or commercial applications? While they certainly aren't free, MatLab or Mathematica should be able to do anything that Excel can and much, much more.
-- the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
re: staroffice importing vba
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caolan
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well theres a serious problem with importation, if staroffice could import in vb, that vb wouldn't make a lot of sense inside staroffice. The object model would be very different, and the feature set does not map 1 to 1 between different applications
Though it might be possible to have some sort of wizard which would attempt to guess what the vb was doing and suggest some starbasic to convert it into, that might be possible, but it would be very difficult I imagine
Finally staroffice could just attempt to import in the vba as starbasic comments and allow you to manually convert it over, not a perfect solution by any means but it might be worthwhile for users ?
Staroffice has starbasic, which is a vbalike basic based scripting language. It is supposedly of equal power and flexibilty to vba. So I suppose that answers that question fully. In effect there is a vba equivalent right now for linux. Though I havn't personally used starbasic or know much abount it yet. C.
The cool thing about Linux is that people are free to experiment with totally new kinds of user interfaces. Don't get locked into the same old ideas of Apple and MS.
The desktop metaphor is dead. Today's children use computers before they have desks.
Anyway here is an article on possible UI alternatives from Jacob Nielsen: The Anti-Mac Interface.
A favorable review of the Linux desktop, finally someone with a clue saying that we don't need 1e-6soft Office or anything... --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
-- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine. Quine "quine?
Oh, but SVG will kick VML's butt. Once they get the standard (er, Recommendation) agreed. It's actually supported by multiple vendors.
Dancing Bears @ the Circus
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gelfling
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If you're sitting all alone in your home you are free to use whatever applications you want to do whatever you want. That's not the question. The real issue is how do you get something like this deployed in suit-world and how do you support it? The problem we stumble over again and again is support & commonality. You have to deploy something that won't break very easily or is easy to fix if it does and like it or not you have to protect folks from their own ability to break or change something. How would we recover from the people who routinely power off the machine while it's running just because that's what they do and they're never going to change. Next - we're still in the dancing bear stage. It's not how well, it's that it dances at all. Now folks have all sorts of expectations about what their desktop @ work should do: instant messaging, multimedia, hot swap.... that you can't take away from them just because Linux can't support it yet . Yes these are great strides but the first time some PHB can't read somebody else's Powerpoint presentation with embedded audio and OLE objects then you just look like an idiot who overpromised something.
I have a tip, never assume anything in computing.;)
As for IE and outlook, try mozilla and balsa. However, pine + fetchmail is so slim and trim you may like it although it's curses based... the main thing is that you should try all the flavors out there and you'll soon find NT's one size fits all lacks the personallity of niche/pet linux software. Trust me, there is a window manger, editor, etc for every taste. =)
Quite honestly, why?! Why does everyone who posted on this thread insist that Linux must be for the masses, that my grandmother must be able to use it, and that it must supplant every other operating environment? What is the gain?
Don't get me wrong. I like UNIX systems. I use *BSD on my servers, I use Linux on my desktop, and I am probably going to spend some time playing with HURD in the near future. But I honestly don't see why we need to convert the masses.
Do you think the masses give a damn about conceptual theory like Open Source (or Free Software or whatever you want to call it)? No! I guarantee that if you talk to the average buyer at CompUSA, they will have no idea that they are paying for Windows 95/98/2000 separately from the computer. I have yet to see a single vendor (barring on-line retailers) separately say to the customer, ``oh yeah, that laptop is $2500, and $150 of that goes to Microsoft.'' So the argument that Linux is ``free'' holds not water, not only from the ideological point of view, but from the practical point of view of the consumer, as well.
So my question is, why cast pearls before swine? You hopefully all realize that we use Linux because it is technologically superior, and it makes our needs different from the needs of the average user, because the average user does not give a damn about technological superiority. For the techie crowd, the UNIX-based environment already offers everything that Windows ever did, and we like it better. (I've been typesetting documents in (La)TeX for years, I can also use to make slides, there were spreadsheets like oleo for years, databases are taken care of by MySQL, Postgre, or Sybase and Oracle if you're willing to pay...) For John Q. User, Windows is exactly what the doctor ordered.
The UNIX user interface right now is exactly what it should be. A good command line, the best of any OS that I have ever seen, and a damn good window system (X). That's really all that's necessary---a window system. Let's face it: I'm sure most UNIX users mainly use X to have a bunch of xterms on our displays. I toss GNOME in for the extra eye-candy and to have a better mail notify program than xbiff around. I quite honestly don't give a damn about drag-and-drop and all the other excess baggage that people seem to be clamoring for ``so my mother can use it.''
We all think we are an elite crowd because we are UNIX users. So why the blazes are so many of us trying so desperately to change that?
The real world is starting to figure out how much can be done without paying $30 -$infinite licensing fees to Microsoft and still be able to interact with almost anybody and do just about everything better. All thanks to one suit who took the time to figure it out.
I remember installing Linux for the first time in November 1998, it was slackware 3.6 and I downloaded the whole thing. It took me several months (I'll admit, I was a NEWBIE) to get X working properly, partly because there weren't any drivers for the i740 and because I was clueless. Over the past year I've learned a lot by doing it the hard way- configuring printer support, getting sound working (I bought an sblive), compiling new software. Now I can safely say I'm far from a beginner (though no expert). And still, what I praise Linux for is it's true beauty: long-tested, open source, quality programs such as latex, gimp, vi/emacs, gcc, perl, and unix utilities.
Now none of the configuration troubles I went through are needed- linux has progressed tremendously. KDE/Gnome (though now I use IceWM with no DE), the kernel, abiword, gnumeric, xmms. Hopefully soon we'll get a really good web browser (I'm sick of typing killall -9 netscape every 30 minutes) and DVD support.
However, I hope with Linux in the future you will still have a choice of what software you can run. Just in the last month I've discovered LaTeX, and being a long-time html coder, it was easy to pick up, and now I see it as a tremendous improvement to the wordprocessor philosophy. Now I can do all of my reports/letters in latex, vi, aspell (much better than ispell, btw), with some nice mp3s in the background, much faster than with windows. I'm also learning bash programming and soon perl/c. But anyway, I'll admit, forcing the idea of Linux on people just doesn't work. Linux is an OS for people with higher expectations of their computers (and no billy, crashing four times a day with just a simple file server running and a few apps IS unacceptable). I know I'm beginning to sound somewhat corny, but thank you everyone who made this all possible- the linux kernel hackers, kde/gnome projects, and even the thousands of people who write 0.1 software on freshmeat. I really like what Linux is today, and it's great to see an article with an average user embracing it.
What's really sad is that I have no idea what you were trying to say in that post. It doesn't parse - why don't you try reading your own posts before hitting that "Submit" button, huh?
Look, I posted the link - big deal. Did it really require a dozen trolls to come out of the woodwork and jump all over me for it? No. Did it require anal-retentives like yourself to start counting links? No.
Actually, you can get the NT Boot Manager to start LILO, if you try. You have to grab the first block from the partition and store it as a file under NT - see the NT+Linux HOWTO for details. I've tried it, and it works quite well (a pain in the ass after recompiling the kernel, though.)
Actually, ever heard of VisiCalc? That was the Apple II's killer app, prior to the IBM PC's appearance. Many people ran their businesses on Apple II's for quite some time thanks to that one application. I think that sentence just goes to show how old school he his. In a good way. He's seen apps before the advent of Microsoft, during Microsofts reign, and is now looking onward.
Just wanted to point out that 40% includes R&D. That's the margin that the DOJ repeatedly points to, and that's the same figure that Microsoft states in their conference calls when reporting financials. It's way over and above any other company in the industry, just about.
IMHO, it's all in the mentality of the person. WinXX is good for someone who wants to use a computer as an appliance, while Linux is great for someone who wants to learn what makes a computer tick, and how to use it effectively. Hell, I learned more about computing in my first 8 months of using Linux than I had in the first 5 years of my computer use. And I'm better for it.
yes i do scoff at those who blindly use appliances. yes i know what a klystron in a microwave is and i do know how a refrigerator works. i *do* take the time to learn enough about a car so i can do on the spot repairs if im stranded in the middle of a desert. i *do* take the time to make sure the faraday cage around my microwave is working properly and i do take the time to make sure refrigerants arent leaking from my fridge.
True, but when I make the final switch (i.e. nuke my primary W98 partition), I think it will ultimatly be because I use computers as tools too much not too. I can site two examples of this.
One, with the exception of NC allocating *all* the memory (under an old kernel), and occaisionally just vapourizing, I have *never* seen my GNU/Linux/Caldera/Debian crash. Full stop. I use my computer extensively for my homework, and I'm not a good enough student to have wide margins on my deadlines. A good ol' GPF crash could be fatal, under some circumstances. Especially if my computer then decided not to reboot into Windows. (Which it has done spontaniously, twice) Fortuneatly, no really disasterous one has occured yet. Just in case, I keep my autosave at 2 minutes and my files within DOS length filenames' reach C:\.
Two, I do a little bit of playing god/sysadm for my school and home networks. At school, we have an old Apple LW which yields both spectacular print and astronomical toner prices. The various Powers That Be would like to charge for Laser Print. Having already implemented a Samba imitation of NT Server (since we cannot afford Wintel NT hard/software), I found it quite easy to find out about LPrng's accounting features. It's free, and we needed find a store which carries it. Had it not been adequate, *I* could have written a rudimentary system, because the Unix sytem gives you that freedom.
In short then, for people who use computers as appliances much of the time and hence need high versatility and efficiency, the only choice is still some variation on Unix.
Sorry if that was too long;-)
BTW, my.SIG's a joke. I wouldn't want to offend anyone. It's based on the idea "God is just an idea". I should probably change it;-).
To learn to drive a car, you need to learn how the controls work. (and this is not an inherently easy thing.. I know people who still haven't done so well.;-) You need to know nothing about the internals, only the input and output.. To use a "expert" computer system, the same is true. YOu don't need to know that the input you give it is added to a linked list internally, you just need to know what that input will affect. Much like you don't need to know what a microwave does with the numbers you give it, but you need to know how to set the time you want your food cooked.
-- Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Um... I don't want to drive, because it requires learning. I want to walk. Yes, getting stuff done is the goal. However, to get stuff done over the long term, generally it is much more efficient to spend some time learning in the short term. *nix is fast most importantly automatible(it is possible to script and schedule EVERYTHING) once you invest a short amount of time learning how to use it. No, I'm not gonna give my grandma a Linux box, I'll give her a webTV, as that's all the computing power she needs, with no added problems. However, if anyone is inclined to learn an OS, Linux and it's concepts aren't any more complicated then Windows is.
"We should learn from Microsoft's attempts, however failed, to make a computer into a thing you can use like an appliance, not shun them." I'm sorry, I must have dozed off while Microsoft has done this. Could you tell me how they have? "Microsoft computers", by which I assume you mean Windows 95/98/2000/NT are now still less like appliances then amigas or Macs of 10 years ago. MIcrosoft was lucky enough to get on a platform that became in a way the "de facto standard" of the computer world, and have either made poor clones of other products, or bought out other companies and used their products. About the only thing Microsoft has come up with is naming a button on the GUI "Start".
Ok, to be fair, Linux hasn't been all that much of a revolution in computing interfaces either. However, it is much more suited to building a kiosk or appliance layer on top of. Linux is more then a kernel that runs X and a desktop complete with file tools and all, it is a kernel that can be used in digital VCR like devices, palm pilots, web servers, conventional PC like desktops, informational kiosks, dumb terminals, single perpose monitoring and custom screen interfaces in manufacturing plants, in video game consoles, etc. Linux is more then the conventional desktop, it can be used in most any market of computers you can think of. And if it doesn't have the interface you like yet, you can build your own. Linux is freedom to create, use only what you want of the os, and no more...
-- Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Actually, computers are suppose to be tools. For some tasks and for some people, an appliance is what is necessary. For other people and for other applications, a highly configurable and option rich environment is needed.
All my grandmother's friends have email. She however freaks out when her flashlight runs out of batteries and still uses an electric typewriter. She will never be comfortable using even a Windows OS. She needs an internet appliance so she can communicate via email with her family and friends all over the world, with as seamless an interface as a telephone or toaster.
I develop software and do scientific research. UN*X systems have the development environment tightly coupled to the whole concept of the UN*X operating system. It makes software development easy and fast. I find it much easier to write my code in Emacs and invoke gcc & gdb from bash or a Makefile than I did coding in Visual C++ (for you this might not be true). To analyze the large amount of scientific data that I have to, nothing is easier than sort, cut, tr, perl, etc.
I'm sort of rambling here, but my point is that there is no one interface that is suited to all people and all situations. I find the Mac easy to get started on, but for me it doesn't scale up as well as UN*X - once I get to the intermediate/expert level of use I am more efficient on UNIX.
What I would like to see in UNIX apps is a complete decoupling of interface and implementation, with GUIs built using something like XUL. Then you could create a 'novice' UI that exposed many of the common tools and made liberal use of the mouse. This could be used to transition users into a more advanced UI that emphasized shortcut keys and scripting. This would require all developers to expose the functionality of their program in a standard way. Maybe this could automatically be integrated into one of the standard GUI toolkits so that there doesn't have to be any extra work done by developers?
WinXX is good for someone who wants to use a computer as an appliance, while Linux is great for someone who wants to learn what makes a computer tick, and how to use it effectively.
If that's the case, then I'm afraid that Linux will never be popular - nor should it! Computers are supposed to be appliances; the fact of the matter is that most people want to get stuff done, not to go diving into technical swamps. (There's a word for those who do want to go diving into technical swamps: it's "geek". I'm one of those myself, and there's nothing wrong with being one, but suggesting that everyone should be like that is preposterous.) If you ask me (and I know you didn't), it's precisely the fact that our community insists on sticking with the PC-era mentality of "more power^H^H^H^H^Hwork to the user" - and it shows in everything, from hardware to programming languages to user interfaces - that is hindering the arrival of the age of ubiquitous computing. We should learn from Microsoft's attempts, however failed, to make a computer into a thing you can use like an appliance, not shun them.
-- To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Re:VB Equivalent in Linux?
by
Helge+Hafting
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· Score: 1
You have way more power in Linux. Most of the apps are open source. Why even bother with a scripting language, use C and fix the app itself. More power and speed. And fame too, if you add something really useful.
When Windows 95 was being reviewed one of the Microsoft project leaders defined a very simple metric: "can my mother use this?"
My mother asked me what linux distribution would be easiest to give a try.
Some people seems to assume that every user out there is an idiot. It isn't so bad, because most of the "idiots" know a helpful kid or something, and it all works out.
Those who can't do the simplest things in linux can't use the control panel in windows <I>at all</I> either. And registry editing is a black art they haven't heard about. So they get help - by paying or relying on "the guy in the office who knows about computers". I have seen the sort - he didn't believe he had a "start button". Uh - all I have is this accounting package...
So what if linux becomes mainstream? No problem for computer experts. The self-learned hobbyists will learn a new os. The bright kids who knows a few trick will know a few linux tricks instead. And the truely dumb will buy everything preinstalled and bring the computer to the shop in order to have a new printer connected, like he does today with windows. Or ask one of those bright kids for help, if he knows one.
Re:He ain't no "suit"...
by
Helge+Hafting
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· Score: 1
Even suits have hobbies. Some play golf. This one seems to have a computer hobby. Unusual perhaps, but being a geek suit is possible - doing suit work for money while also knowing computers.
And what's so strange about ditching powerpoint? He got rid of it even before trying linux. HTML takes time to learn, but so does powerpoint. Suit types aren't born with powerpoint knowledge either.
Re:Linux for the desktop
by
Helge+Hafting
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· Score: 1
Is Linux's customizability, especially in the GUI arena, a detriment for the average PC user, or is this just a hurdle people will eventually understand?
Not a problem. Remember the changes dos->win3.0 and win3.1->win95? Very different indeed. People were confused for a while, and recovered. A change to linux isn't bigger than that, provided that the user don't have to install himself. And you can get the close button in the same place as MS, pick the correct distribution or have the shop customize it in that direction. People use linux at work (in spite of the company "standardizing" on MS) and don't get in trouble as the boss don't see the difference when he walks by.
Linux isn't going to replace Windows in the near future to the extent that we would like it to, and the answer is simple: most people who use computers for everyday tasks simply don't care how productive it is, by that I mean that they don't care enough to learn something new. It's pretty pathetic actually.
Uh, so you're saying it's not useful to see on the screen exactly what will be printed? It's just useless flash?
If you want to misunderstand me, please do it correctly.:-)
I don't believe that WYSIWYG is the best way to present information when you are using it. Maybe before you print it, but not while you are working with it.
Linux/GNU and the whole Open Source phenomena is for me one of the most interesting socioeconomic experiments ever! It certainly hints towards (or at least gives ideas about) where the society may go - in particular regarding work, organisations and intellectual properties.
I thought that line was interesting. I hadn't really thought about Linux and Open Source in that way. Will cooperation and sharing become dominant social attitudes in the future as it gets easier and easier to meet our basic needs? Is the natural progression of knowledge from hoarding and secrecy to openness and teamwork? For example, early mathematical discoveries were seriously protected, i.e. people got killed for revealing them. Now you can go on the internet and download preprints for free from around the world.
Maybe the free software movement is just a small taste of things to come. Maybe its about more than just software.
-Nathan Whitehead
Re:VB Equivalent in Linux?
by
sheared
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· Score: 1
Does PERL and TCl/Tk give you access to numerical functions of some pre-existing mathmatical functions (as found in a spreadsheet)? Does it have the ability to perform graphs similar (again) to what is in a spreadsheet? I ask only because I do not know. If they do, then maybe it is a viable alternative. I just don't have time to reinvent the wheel with my current job. I would imagine that PERL and TCl/Tk are fairly simple languages too (I had to teach myself VB, but I'm by no means a programer (although I've got some pretty big VB programs now)).
Thanks for the info!
Re:VB Equivalent in Linux?
by
sheared
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· Score: 1
I did try the starbasic. It has been a while since I tried it but I seem to remember it very lacking. I tried to record a macro that involved many of the things I tend to do in my VB macros (I typically record first and then go back through and modify to my liking (when that is an option)), and I seem to remember it just leaving most of it out (of the macro). I assumed that meant that the macro language did not support those options.
This was within the last 3 or so months, if someone has information to the contrary regarding a newer version, please let me know! Also, does starbasic convert over VB programs?
The path to acceptance on the desktop is through the average desktop user, and that means interoperability. Microsoft and company have done an excellent job of using proprietary file formats and protocols to obfuscate their products. This works well against anybody who wants to try to build a product that interoperates with MS software while competing with it. It also guarantees upgrade revenue. Sort of the same idea as switching around the exercises in a textbook and releasing it as a "new edition". They're not going to stop doing it for a while, because it makes them money.
Harsh as that environment is, it's the environment we currently exist in. People are going to keep sending email as Word attachments for at least a while longer, and they may or may not understand what you mean when you try to explain why they shouldn't. Just remember that eventually, people are going to realize that there was NO reason for them to have problems opening documents that they wrote at work on their home computers, except bad engineering (and possible greed).
Even if Linux never takes the desktop, people will eventually realize that software should be have much better quality and things will change. The change is in the wind, and Linux is part of that.
"Those who will not reason are bigots, those who cannot are fools, and those who dare not are slaves." --George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824)
What I said was that there is going to be acceptance problems.
If you don't think Linux is going to have acceptance problems with the suits, may I respectfully suggest you pull your head out?
I think the whole point of the post was that Linux was better than expected. Of course, any one that has used it knows this. The problem is getting them to at least try it before they forbid it.
RTF Post.
-- Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Actually, it is just the server install that wastes the entire hard drive. All of the workstation prepackaged installs simply waste your existing linux partitions.
The AC (who seems to be trolling, especially with that comment about Outlook and IE) is complaining about NT beeing whiped because he expected lilo to be installed "on the boot partition instead of the mbr". In other words, the NT partitions were not destroyed, he just had to RTFM and figure out how to boot NT (aside from with his rescue disks).
While he may have wanted to use the NT bootloader to boot linux (which is possible), it is far from obvious that that is "the right thing" for the installer to set up his machine to do. A person may want to use the (more flexible) LILO boot loader to bring up the NT boot loader, instead of having NT boot linux. Either configuration is possible, in fact I once had a machine set up both ways: My initial LILO prompt had three options:
linux
be
nt
If you selected nt, the NT boot loader would let you select between
Win98
Nt4
NT4 (SVGA mode)
NT5 Beta
Linux
One last escape option before entering the windows world.
Ignore him, there are some people on/. who think everything they don't like to see is a troll. Anyway, I imagine it was almost certainly the ez-drive thing that caused most of the problem. On an NT machine, putting LILO on the boot partition instead of the MBR isn't really necessary, and requires additional configuration that is not trivial. BTW, ez-drive itself should generally not be necessary unless you're running an older version of DOS, and I would avoid using such things as much as possible. And to be fair to RH's installer, NT's boot process is ridiculously fragile, and the "recovery disk" is usually utterly useless. NT _should_ be better about this. But in conclusion, yes, installing an OS is _always_ going to be dangerous. It is wise of you to have had a backup handy. The RH installer works fine for most people (even most people who have NT). For the record, that's why you were flamed: by some idiots who had successfully installed on an NT machine before, who thus assumed it would always work fine.
-- I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
That's actually a good observation. If you try loading microsoft.com on IE3 it won't work. NS3 IMHO is better than IE3 cause it can load up ore pages successfully. IE3 was faster, and was already componentized by then (it was an ActiveX control by ver3).
IE4 was technically beter than Netscape in every way (speed, stability, standards support).
IE5 was the same as IE4 except it added more standards support, XML, improved DHTML (basically you can access and change every element on the webpage dynamically now) and VML and other XML variants. VML rocks, pity not many people use it (thanks to netscape's slow ass job on mozilla).
I'm sorry I suggested you might be trolling (on the other hand, I'm glad I posted instead of vaugely moderating.
I misparsed your statement I'm missing IE and Outlook Express to mean that you expected IE and Outlook Express to be included with RedHat linux. Given the tone and content of the rest of your message (and the other messages claimed by you), I should not have made this mistake.
I agree, Outlook and IE are much better than NS. At work, IE is my second browser (after Mozilla, of course). IE5 is definitely superior to the Netscape 4.x series.
I'm sorry to hear that you had problems with the LILO prompt coming up. When I was setting up my machine with NT and linux, I didn;t have that problem (then again, no ez-drive). The only times I've had trouble with the LILO prompt is when I used partition magik to move my boot partition, then rebooted. Glad I had my rescue disk!
Again, sorry about the troll comment. Completely my fault.
I agree, this man does not qualify as 'Average Joe' (no offense to any Joes out there). This guy knows what network hardware he has... does your secretary know that?
In my experience with customer support in the 'average' world, people don't even know what HTML is, and don't care about Postscript etc.
Whilst there are applications out there that can substitute the Windows desktop, to set up this environment initially still takes more than the 'average' user. Once the machine is set up, -then- perhaps a truly 'average' user could get away with it.
There is still work to be done in the base "ease of use and installation" category.
It was eventually sold to Lotus, who decided not to continue publishing it.
-- --
Ryan Watkins
vamp@vamp.org
http://www.vamp.org/
Human Interface Design Guidelines
by
VSc
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· Score: 1
Something programmers should study is Human Interface Design Guidelines. A lot of general principles are discussed. Why, for instance, sacrificing one pixel border of GNOME's start button would speed up the things drastically. Or binding the main menu to a mouse click on a desktop (alá AfterStep).
UNIX interface is notorious for user un-friendliness. AfterStep appears to be the fastest (in human terms) but still the default button positions are not perfect (close and minimize/maximize are too close together). Looks / feels save the situation somewhat.
What I would look for would be a correct (in a sense the above guidelines imply) user interface as a *default*.
--
God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ --1Thes5:9
There are actually some versions of NT (earlier ones perhaps?) that will just crash during bootup if booted from at least some versions of LILO. This doesn't seem to be an issue anymore (likely either NT or LILO was fixed in some way) but it used to be a major hassle.
-- I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
OK, let's see, when did the Apple ][ come out? 1976/7? It was basically gone when the Mac came out - 1984.
That means that this so called typical end user has been using a desktop computer since at least 1984, or 16 years. On top of that, if you were using an Apple ][ you were either working for a small company that computerized EARLY (Pre 1980) or didn't follow the IBM PC trend, OR you bought the computer yourself. Any of these situations puts you in an self selected group of power users. This is NOT a typical desktop user.
You know all those "Joke" stories we hear about "End users". Part of what makes jokes funny is that the must have an element of truth
The average programmer is 2 standard deviations higher in intelligence than the "average" person. We literally can't understand why people don't get it.
Just remember, the average user finds the task of installing even Win9x well above their heads, and if anything goes wrong at all with their computer, needs help.
-- --
73 de KG2V
For the Children - RKBA!
"You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Try a more minimal UNIX
by
Craig+Davison
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· Score: 1
With NetBSD or OpenBSD, you'll know exactly what's installed- the default installs are tiny. And since almost all utilities are BSD-derived, configuration files are consistently organized and easy to find. Maybe give one of those OSes a shot.
Ok, I'm a long time Linux advocate, and if you don't believe me, just check out my previous posts. But last night was a Nightmare. But I do claim that this is largely my own fault.
With a RedHat 6.1 CD I received at LinuxWorld, I tried to upgrade my current 6.0. But since I have a Quad boot (Slackware/Redhat/Win95/NT) and a NTFS partition, the upgrade died on the scanning. I checked with bugzilla, and it is known that the upgrade doesn't work if you have an NTFS partition. I still wanted to install from the CD so I rebooted and continued.
After one attempt, I didn't have enough diskspace for my custom install, so I went back an chose not to have KDE (I'm more a GNOME person). Then I let the installation go. It seemed to work fine, but after I rebooted, I had a ton of error messages. It seems that my/usr/bin and/usr/lib and other directories were missing! But the 'df' showed that the/usr partition was almost full. When I checked the total file size (with ls -Rla and an awk script) it didn't match up. It seemed that it messed up the file inodes or something.
So I got brave and reformated the/usr partition. After spending several hours installing rpms by hand (reminds me of my old slackware days) I still don't have text when I bring up X. My xterm is missing the word "xterm" where it should be. And the menues are ok until a run the mouse over them, and then the text goes away?
I've been using Linux for a few years now, and if this is bothering me, I can't imagine what a newbie would do.
PS. If anyone knows how to fix the xterm problem, please let me know. I've installed every font I can think of. Is there something that I'm missing?
The average desktop user has not yet heard of linux, and has yet to pronounce it correctly. Most "average" users are still trying to figure out why they need a modem to use the internet. (Sadly, either that or similar situations are true.)
Note: this is NOT a flame.
------- CAIMLAS
-- ~/ssh slashdot.org
ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I would absolutely love to have a really good Outlook Express clone. Why, you ask? Well, here's my setup:
POP Server: I just want to be able to enter my pop3 server, username, and password. Bang! I can download my mail into a nice, graphical inbox folder.
SMTP: Again, enter my smtp server, and there ya go, you can send e-mail.
Auto-view window: click on a message and read it, press a few hotkeys to delete it or move to it's respective folder.
**Graphical** filters: Click on a menu option, click "add new filter" use dialog boxes and scroll-down menus to enter, e.g. "When" "Sender" "contains" "spam" "move to" "/dev/null... oops, I meant Trash"
Simple address book: Just name, alias, and e-mail address... only have to type in the alias, and there ya go. As an optional bonus, perhaps it could have an auto-complete feature for e-mail addresses I've previously sent to.
And maybe a built-in usenet client on the side, though Pan pretty much fills this niche for me.
There ya go, e-mail is ready.
Now, show me a currently available mail client for linux that can do all that without involving a cryptic (for a complete newbie like me) interface like Sendmail, and I'll be eternally grateful. Until then, I'll stick with Netscape Mail.
I think someone needs to add a > to the end of that/a tag. dontchathink?
Currently Linux Cannot Win on Laptops
by
jonathansamuel
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· Score: 1
Windows installs perfectly most times, even on laptops. It detects most hardware.
My experience with trying to get a functioning Linux/X system up and running is as follows:
Micron Pentium laptop with 16 MB: Red Hat 5.2, Suse 5.2 -- console worked but no X; TurboLinux 4 -- X and Console worked after configuring.
IBM Aptiva K-2 desktop w/ 32 MB -- Suse 6.3 worked perfectly and recognized my modem AFTER I bought one of the supported modems from the approved hardware list SUSE maintains.
COMPUSA P2 Laptop w/ 128 MB -- TurboLinux 4 would not install at all; DragonLinux 8 beta 1 (Slackware derivative) installed except that TinyX displayed multiple images of the same screen. Cursor would appear and reappear. Suse 6.3 does not run X Caldera 1.3 -- still working on it.
I would be the first to admit that I am probably doing something wrong in every case, but still, my mother is not going to be using Linux on her laptop anytime soon.
Or the reference to slashdot on the first line. It looks to me like this article was very much a lets-see-how-long-it-takes-to-get-slashdotted article.
just my $0.02 (add GST if in Canada) #include <signal.h> \ #include <stdlib.h> \ int main(void){signal(ABRT,SIGIGN);while(1){abort(-1); }return(0);}
Sorry, worng answer. If you RTFM you'll notice that the RH prepackaged installs waste everything on the disk and then set up the partitions to cover the entire disk. If you had win/BE partitions they'd be gone unless you did a custom install.
-- I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
i'm soooo sorry... first post
by
captredballs
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· Score: 1
I swear this is my first time and I'll never do it again
--
I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus
Re:i'm soooo sorry... first post
by
captredballs
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· Score: 1
Doh! slashdot seems broken... or I'm broken... yes, its me.
I hearby plead for moderation.
--
I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus
Linux is a splendid operating system for advanded computer users who understand how their systems work and want to control it better. Linux has yet to replace Windows for playing 3d games of high quality (OpenGL).
Linux is however a good operating system for a first time user who is not use to any particular system and an experienced user who understands the under lining of their computer. Linux is still just slightly short of replacing Windows in every area in my opinion.
-- abstraction is 2 keep the weak from knowing the truth. show your source code && always seek the knowledge within
What about Project Management tools ?
by
darkcompanion
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· Score: 1
There are already tons of -free- Suitware apps available. StarOffice is nice, but quite heavy (takes hours to startup, and I don't like 150 Megs installs on my tiny 600 Meg equipped laptop); KOffice is moving in the right direction. And some apps like KOrganizer are very impressive. And wasn't Corel's beta Office suite free to download ?
Only one thing am I missing : I have not yet found a decent project management tool. KProject has not moved along since almost 2 years, and Xopps is too leightweighted. If you happen to know one, please let me know.
Well this guy seems to be almost right on the mark. Honestly, if my 77 year old Mom can use Linux to send her distant relatives, anyone can. Software reaches a point where it really doesn't matter what OS it is on. As long as it does what it is supposed to, and does it well, an OS will suffice for the majority of people.
Repeat after me MS copies, copies, copies, copies, copies, copies. Read your history books. Hmm... No one writes history books about consumer products, only wars, fancy that...
Bottom line: when MS says Linux is only good for Word Processing it's because that's all they know considering they keep copying, copying, copying, copying, copying.
-- The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Yes, MS copied MSDOS from CP/M and the GUI from Apple. I didn't mean they got there first with the idea, but that they got there first in establishing a relationship with the PC hardware manufacturers.
I don't think I've ever heard people say Linux is good for WP. What I usually hear is that it's good as a server. I know that's how I treat all the *NIX--If I want a server, I run *NIX. If I want desktop stuff I run Win. If I need to develop for *NIX, I telnet/ssh into it from Win.
-- For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
This is an article that will ease the mind of people who are intimidated by the techniness of linux even _before_ trying it. Of course, the author sounded slightly more technologically aware than a regular suit (able to set up home network, tried vmware, started with Apple II and not a M$ junk, knows html, etc. ) and I am sure he had problems setting some sticky stuff up. But, the overall result is, you end up with even better tools at your disposable..docs suck. all hail ASCII.
About time... what Linux needs to truly take off is support from the average desktop user, not just the techies and power users. I just hope we see more favorable reviews from "average" people and that these reviews encourage other "average" users to run Linux on their PC. It's important to recognize that Linux isn't just a server OS, it can work well as an office platform too.
I hope reviews like this will dispel the intimidation that is keeping the average PC user from even trying out Linux. And perhaps an increased user base will encourage more badly needed software support... definitely a good thing.
Re:Linux for ordinary people
by
Giordana
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· Score: 1
At the last BLU meeting I attended, someone said the desktop queston (whether Linux will ever replace Windows) was irrelevant. I can't help but disagree.
I've been running Mandrake 6.0 since November '99. I've found software to do everything I used to do with Windows except file my taxes (WebTurbotax doesn't like my browser). The only things I miss from Windows are certain plugins (like Quicktime and Shockwave). Plus, my printer(an Okidata) and ex-modem aren't Linux compatible.
Promoting Linux for non-techies is a good thing. I'm a techie, and I'm still learning a lot. My sister, who is definitely not a techie and uses my computer for web surfing, is getting the hang of Linux. It does what she wants it to (except printing), and she's happy.
As far as using computers as an "appliance", both BeOS and Linux are being used in "web appliances" . With their ease of use compared with Linux's stability, Linux may come out on top in a few years.
--
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
Score 0: Redundant (but I can't resist)
by
Tim+Behrendsen
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· Score: 1
I was all set to rip this guy (NOT a typical user, crediblity shot as soon as he said any WP under Linux is comparable to Office, etc, etc), but Slashdotters have beat me to it. Bravo!
And just when I was just about convinced that any positive article about Linux would get a huge pass by the majority of the Slashdot population.
Until Linux gets a standard component architecture going, it will always lag on the desktop. There is no integration.
-- I'm still working on a clever footer.
"Try doing THAT in powerpoint"
by
whoosp
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· Score: 1
I have the full overview in a 'left side' frame. What happens during slide five? Somebody has a question that you are about to answer in slide 14. I 'click' forward to 14 and then back again. (try that in Powerpoint).
OK, I will.
1. Start powerpoint 2. Add some slides 3. Click from slide 5 to 14 in the left pane and then back again
Granted, the above is using powerpoint 2000 and I don't know if that's what he was using. But I do get tired of people claiming a product (microsoft or not microsoft) doesn't have a feature when it really does.
Re:Linux needs MS Exchange integration
by
whoosp
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· Score: 1
Use citrix terminal client to a server that has outlook on it. Or use Netscape to access your exchange server via Outlook Web Access. Both options of course rely on your admin to set them up for you...
I think "invested" is the key word. I've found that the time I spend setting up Linux really is an investment, in that I get back more than I put in. It's true that setting up a desktop machine a couple years ago took a lot of effort; but nowadays, with a modern distribution (I'm using SuSE 6.2), it's really fairly effortless.
Now, I haven't had a whole lot of trouble with Windows95 (which I use at home for playing games) either, but it has what I consider a much more irritating way to waste my time: application bloat. It's rare to install even the simplest Windows program without getting a good half-dozen entries filling up the "Start" menu. And often, the software that you need to run a new piece of hardware, like my scanner, installs a couple dozen entries that are mostly useless. Sure, you can delete the excess; but it's sometimes tricky to figure out what's safe to delete.
My other big gripe with Windows apps. is that they often install big parts of themselves to my nearly full C: drive, even when I tell them not to. At least with an RPM file, I can see in advance where it's going to go.
Sometimes they run at that resolution because at least one of the crappy Windows programs they bought doesn't run otherwise. This includes the typing program we got a couple weeks ago, which displays a black screen if you aren't set to 256 colors.
Back to the topic, I think a typical Windows user would do just fine with a pre-installed Linux system, especially if he wasn't told the 'root' password.
Eavsdropping on the "suits"
by
DrCode
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· Score: 1
Ever eavsdrop on a couple "suits" in a computer store? Usually, I hear one recommending the best Windows "fixit" program for the other to waste money on.
So the other day, I was almost shocked when I walked down the software aisle at Office Depot, and heard a woman (in a suit) explaining the differences amongst various Linux distros. to a fellow.
I personally think this is due to our social and economic models. We have, for better or worse, become a capitalist society in so many ways that we are used to thinking of things in a financial sense. It's not so much our active interest, more a this is what we did, and we'll keep on doing theme.
There have there have been a number of different philosaphies over the years which have threatened it, usually at a more intense level, from Communism through to restablishing Barter. I see OSS in just the same light. The difference is, this time, a worldwide following, a (generally speaking) peaceful purpose, and the ability for OSS models to greatly out-perform a commercial or closed one.
-- Ancient Wiccan Tradition : An It Harm None, Party Like Wyld Thang
This is interesting. I'm part of a LUG and most of linux users I know are computer geeks or student in a computer related field. I think that making linux more accessible to people that doesn't know what a partition is is great and it doesn't make linux less powerful neither than versatile. Please don't start a dump KDE vs Gnome debate on this...
Re:Hooboy: the "typical user"
by
sylvester
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· Score: 1
For the typical user as you describe, I would argue windows is _certainly_ not ready for consumption. The people that are oblivious to resolution (which is a great example) have _no_ idea how to cope with the things windows does, even when it works relatively properly. Not a sniff. I've seen it, I've dealt with it a lot. Even with hewlett packard's make-it-easy software, a true newbie (or even someone that's used a machine at work for a while) will have a helluva time installing drivers...it's amazingly inconsistent how you _actually_ get drivers to work.
Sure, usually you can just plug something in and insert a disk..and I think every user should know how to do that (or equivalent sort of thing) under any OS. But some people just have no time/interest/ability to learn that. I'm a windows user, and extremely comfortable in my environment. I've tried linux (probably installed it 20 times) and every time I have a megabig problem during install, and I just don't have a tolerance for it. My win98 is "rock solid" for a windows machine -- it crashes perhaps once a week, which is better than I saw during _several_ of my linux installs.
And moreover, a linux install that lets me ignore everything and just let the installer do everything installs an amazingly bloated system. Way more than my current win9x system. And there's no way to trim it down that's readily visible without flipping through every package.
So there's my linux wishlist, I guess. I don't need a gui - I was a DOS boy for a long time. I need to know what I have on my system, where it is, how to change it. And there just doesn't seem to be a resource for me to learn that...It's perhaps a flaw in the decentralized nature of linux development.
> 7. Help should be context sensitive, and never more than a STANDARD KEYBOARD SHORTCUT away.
help should be helpful above all. Many help files, especially those of the context sensitive kind, contain a lot of help on the obvious things (an explanation of the GUI) rather than any help on functionality of the app in question. I usually prefer a well organized pdf-file or a man-page over the offered context sensitive help, where in the best case I have to check 5 boxes and toggle a similar number of ok-buttons, before I get close to what I want to know. In the worst case the things I want to know about are not in the context sensitive help at all, and I have to look for the manual anyway (provided it exists).
Maybe the writer wears suits, but he's hardly a typical non-tech user. As soon as he talks about compiling and vi v. emacs, he's disqualified. Gee, I'm a suit, a middle-aged lawyer suit fer chrissakes, but I've been known to fool around with vi and emacs. A lot of posts on this story take the attitude that this guy can't be representative, that the "average" suit wouldn't know that emacs has little to do with a Mac, etc. That may be true, but while I make no claim to being a spokesmodel for the entire suitworld, let me tell you that the suits are paying a lot more attention to Linux now than they were even 10 months ago, let alone a few years ago. This type of article won't convince millions of suits to switch, but as I see how suits react to Linux on various suitlists I'm on, I can be fairly sure that it will influence a few. Then those influence some more, and some more.... Some here don't want the suits to invade the Linux world, and that's fine. But for those who would prefer that The Word of Linux be spread, rather than getting all elitist about it, articles like this one do help. And the fact that I'm a member of The Censorware Project does not make me unsuitable to know what suits suits.
He is NOT a typical desktop user.
by
Pufferfish
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· Score: 1
'PC experience started with Apple II and visicalc'
That, in itself, makes him an atypical user: he has a lot of experience and began using computers quite a while ago. He owns two computers (not to mention that his 10 year old son has his own computer), he owns a scanner, CD-RW, and a zip drive. The computers are all networked. This doesn't sound hard-core techy to most slashdot readers, but it is a cut above the typical user. The fact that he installed linux himself makes him atypical: nowadays OS installation isn't hard, but it isn't something that the typical user does.
Still, it obviously means that Linux is getting to be more of a mainstream OS. Just today I saw it mentioned in Foxtrot, which, while it is nerdier than some strips, is still not User Friendly.
Of course, I'm not saying that this guy is a linux-pro, and I'm not saying that the typical computer user (which is a pretty blurry term: how do you define it? someone who uses computers? how often do they have to use them to qualify?) is a clueless newbie: often, the typical user is a newbie for a week or two, but then gets into the competent-but-not-knowledgeable category: they can drive the car expertly, but they still have no clue what goes on underneath the hood.
It seems like Linux is still testing the waters of the mainstream. But, according to me at least, that penguin still needs some swim lessons.
How come when you say it, it gets a 5, and when I say it, it gets a 0? =)
Oh well, no point in whining (I've done enough by now, and I'm not eager to lose a few more points for being troll or something). But I pretty much agree with what this post says. So in other words: Yeah, what he said.
Just some quick food for thought. Maybe he BECAME skilled by USING Linux. My brother-in-law partitioned, installed, and within a month recompiled (with the odd e-mailed question) on his own (he lives an hour away so don't think I was driving over every night to fix stuff). Sure it took a while to get a dial-up connection working but that was the MAIN stumbling block for him.
People who are intelligent and resourceful pick up stuff like this quickly.
A screen of static at start up????? I don't get it. Your display runs through the bios on bootup right? or does it just go from nothing to linux?
Re:REDUNDANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -1! -1! -1!
by
billybob+jr
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· Score: 1
it's funny how many people like to bitch at people who post redundant links. Making lots of assumptions as to the poster's intentions. Perhaps it is more revealing of their own motivation.
I use a SS7 board. ETEQ Chipset. Aka VIATech. That means a lot of the hacks or adds that allow USB do not work for me. Also, I use a TNT2U board so I need my quake3 and I tried so hard and I could not get it to run. Sigh. Also, I have USB perfs that that NO USB = BAD! Also -- DVD and I love movies. I am a big uptime freak so rebooting switching, etc etc etc just does not work for me. Sure win98 crashes dont either but I dont have to reboot every hour when I get a hickering for some q3. Also, SB Live no worky for me. Sure this is a personal bitch session but those are MY reasons why I HAVENT replaced. That shouldnt stop you though. I have had Red Hat since version 3.something. (Thats a flame war waiting to happen) but for above mentions that are adjusted over the times -- thats why I cant switch -- YET!
Setting up a Windows machine is not particularly easy, particularly with Windows 3.1 and '95. (I haven't ever installed '98, so I don't know how it compares.)
In fact, installing any operating system on a bare computer and getting all of the hardware to work properly is not easy for a novice. Most Windows systems come pre-installed, with the hardware designed around the available (Microsoft) software.
The average user installs new hardware either by taking their machine back to the shop and paying a tech to do it, or (in the case of Modems, Zippy drives, etc) plugs in the new hardware and sticks in the CD labelled "Hardware Setup for [Company Name]"---which has been specially prepared to make one particular piece of hardware work under Windows. Often, hardware (or software) problems render this useless, anyway.
Re:VB Equivalent in Linux?
by
ekidder
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· Score: 1
> Why even bother with a scripting language, use C and fix the app > itself. More power and speed. And fame too, if you add something > really useful. I can think of many reasons. You don't know C and have no intention of learning it. You just want to get the job out. Fixing the hardcode is a great way to make a program non-configurable. One of the neat things about VBA is that you can pretty much make any app using a core engine - similar to MOOs, MUSHes, etc.
Linux is rapidly becoming THE force in servers and high-end machines, but it has gained very little ground in the desktop machine's territory. Corel's distribution was great for improving the desktop usability of this OS, but perhaps it is still too complex for the average user. I have found people flounder when presented with anything other than Windows. They don't understand the concept of multiple desktops unless you explain it for five minutes, and they can't comprehend the close button being anywhere other than where MS puts it. Is Linux's customizability, especially in the GUI arena, a detriment for the average PC user, or is this just a hurdle people will eventually understand?
Hehe your attitude towards the spell checker is the attitude he was talking about! Its that eliteist notepad doesnt do it! type stuff. It was semantics and just an example and yer nit picking about it! *grumbles* Maybe im just to tired to say something smart?
I think it's time some company came together and made a sort of "WinLinux". A linux that, in theory, can operate just as user-friendly as windows can, but with the power of linux backing it up. Imagine a user-friendly OS that isnt so unstable you have to restart every 30 minutes! The future is here.:)
-- --
We should kill all the intolerant people in the world.
XFMail does all that and more (no built-in USENET reader, though). Multiple POP or IMAP boxes, powerful filtering, PGP integration, threading, auto-view, address books, etc.
That's funny. I did the same thing this weekend, but with Storm Linux 2000. I downloaded the ISO file from their web site, cut the CD (On my NT box), dropped the still hot CDR in the #2 computer, booted to the CD ROM and was up and running in KDE in about 15-20 minutes from first boot.
What was Cool: The install was cake - could have done it blindfolded. This has to be as easy as it gets.
What sucked: During the install, if you instal networking, DHCP is not an option. You have to hard code an IP, then go back and switch to DCHP after the system is up. Once you do switch to DHCP, you have to specify the DNS servers as well (it won't pull these from DCHP like MS products do). My last complaint - Every time I log out, the network setings are lost. I have to setup DHCP and specify name servers EVERY TIME I LOG IN.
All in all it was fun, and I finally got a Linux box up and running. I tried out KDE and Gnome and I think I like Gnome better. As was mentioned before, Nescape sucks and my Evil MS Intellipoint mouse scroll wasn't supported. I was told on the Linux.com chatroom to try Mozilla. I went to the site and it tells you straight out that it's not stable enough for every-day use. No thanks. I had my fun Saturday, and by noon Sunday that same box was running NT. I'll build another box for Linux, but it'll be a low end box. Until it provides more than web browsing functionality (and even that is questionable with Netscape), I won't have it as my primary box.
Re:reader/writer Excel, Word shall inherit the wor
by
nah
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· Score: 1
HAve you ever tried using Sun's Staroffice. It offers compatibility with word formats through word 7.0 (95), and I'ce been transferring documents back and forth no problem.
Please add two important factors: formats and applications.
I'm a Windows user now that I'm out of the programming world. Windows was there when I needed a cheap and functional GUI. Nobody else was. I've got no universities or big companies behind me. I'm an individual person with a family of computer users, and numerous clients.
Unlike our "suit" friend, I don't have time to explore document properties and chuckle at others' ignorance. I've got to exchange documents with sometimes a dozen colleagues or clients at different locations, all of whom expect a Word or Finale or Cakewalk document for the round-robin editing. I had to teach all (read: every one) of them what FTP was because the documents were too big for email! Some couldn't even get the hang of that, so I had to create web links for download/upload.
Would I like Linux? Personally? As a person who likes to have a machine configured to my taste, probably yes. But -- call me unimaginative -- there's not a whole lot of non-technie stuff that I haven't been able to do in Windows.
So what about format exchange? As a composer, I'd love to use other scoring applications, regardless of the computing environment. Why can't I? Because I have eight years of score production, representing over 30 years of compositions, in one file format. Even Windows applications have trouble importing/exporting readable files -- Unix has, what, Lilypond? It reads nobody else, nobody else reads it. Last I heard I couldn't even export a Midi demo with it. At least the major scoring programs come with Win/Mac file exchange and Midi output. So will a niche OS get attention from a niche field like musical scoring? Not likely, not until the niche OS is mainstream.
And applications? Even after 15 years in machine/assembly programming, I decided on Windows in 1992 because I had to get work done. I know Linux users hate that Neanderthal-sounding argument, but folks, I have a complete DAW running so I can do music production and scoring. The applications are install-and-run, with very little configuration, which most of them do automatically. Manual configuration is available for the tweaking. It's stable. It never crashes. That is what I need... and it runs under Windows.
Example: I have an upcoming piece for string orchestra. From a single keyboard and screen I'm running four computers (all Win95b) with the desktop-in-screen (VNC Viewer). Each computer is running different sound/scoring apps (Finale, Cakewalk, Cool Edit, Audiomulch...) and hardware (one with two 24-bit 96KHz sound cards, another with a 32-channel Midi card...), graphical apps (Photoshop, Paint Shop, screen recorders...) Most of the hardware doesn't even have Linux drivers, by the way.
One computer is also being used by my wife, another by my stepdaughter. So -- back to the example -- in a single day I produced the score and parts from my pencil sketches, output from it a General Midi demo which was then massaged by using audio samples and sequenced, produced PDF files of the score and parts, burned a CD of the demo for the reviewers, created an mp3 file for the conductor, edited my web pages to make the score and demo available, and uploaded it all. The conductor could then download and print the PDFs while listening to the demo, as I continued working on the score for another composer whose music was to be premiered in the same concert. The only time I had to leave my keyboard was to take a break or load a CD to burn into the machine in the next room.
The rest of the family continued working, writing, doing homework, browsing, checking email, etc., never noticing that I was using their spare CPU time for audio processing. I have a full four-track sound setup (no Linux drivers), a networked Palm V, and in the background I'm running SETI at Home, as well as FTGate mail server and Wingate networking over Linksys (no Linux drivers) cards. I run IRC, telnet, FTP, chat, and HTTP servers on a sporadic basis when friends or clients need stuff. Only one application -- the Java chat -- needs command-line configuration.
Some of this may be no big deal for Linux power users. But when I got hot for Linux, I went searching and couldn't locate even a fraction of the applications and drivers I'd need to do my daily work.
My point is this: Our "suit" was a clever and computer-savvy business user calling on commonplace applications. I could do what he does. But my day involves much more than text and spreadsheets and even images. I need easy movement from application to application, file to file, and client to client -- and I mean people, not software. My family and clients have never seen a command-line process!
I would love to get out of the MS world. MS is distasteful to me as a company. But those of you who are pioneers have much to do -- including making Linux (or any successor OS) work effortlessly (yes, appliance-level), and enticing companies (read: payback) to create drivers and software for it... beyond a few commonplace applications.
I'm afraid ol Rob has fallen into the "Read The Good Caption about Linux and Post" problem. If Rob had actually taken the time to read the full story and had a good idea that typical users know not, this wouldn't have been posted. Here's hoping to seeing a correction on this.
--
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
I have been working with Linux now for a year and a half. I am not a programmer, yet. My focus has been on networking, and understanding the way the hardware works with the OS, as well as certain server applications(Apache, Sendmail, etc).
I read this and thought that he was far more that he said to be, and expected the response from everyone else to be one of 'finally they get it'. I am glad it didn't turn out that way.
I am not a fan of MS, but it is true they have done a lot of things right. Ease of use as well as apps that actually help users are things they did right. Until we address those issues on the client and home user sides, Linux and BSD will not become a fan favorite.
I still use windows for browsing the web. I use BitchX for IRC chats. I use StarOffice and Office2000. I see Windows as a great client, and good print server, and I also see Linux as a great server and router. I can't answer on the developmental side as I am barely out of the starting gates:-)
It's nice to see fellow users let their guards down and admit Linux isn't everything-- cause it isn't. My guilt level of having a windows box at home (and a linux box) is lessoned.
Linux needs MS Exchange integration
by
xeno-cat
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· Score: 1
I've been able to run Linux at my office without trouble. The only integration problem I have is with the Exchange server. I'll be looking into some solutions with my partner in crime but I am woundering if this is already underway?
-- "A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
Netscape's video probably is. However, this is likely more a reflection on Netscape than the X Server, though YMMV. (By and large, Linux can come pretty close or better... See the story on/. on 3D games a few days ago... )Sadly, netscape as a whole in Linux is only so-so. And microsoft, being determined to use one monopoly to prop up another will *never* give us IE! However, if you're interested in something a little, uh, adventurous, try Mozilla. Don't know what it's like under Linux, but didn't seem to crash under W'95 and *very* nice HTML 4 rendering.
Please, no one take offense at.sig It's a joke, from "God is just an idea in the mind of man".
-- He who fights and runs away,
My experiences
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2
I've just installed RH Linux 6.1(yesterday in fact), so I'll share my experiences so far. Here are the ups and the downs (more downs than ups).
Ups: 1. Surprisingly easy to use. KDE is a generation beyond the Unix desktops I'm used to ( CDE, or just plain vanilla fvwm)
2. It's fun.
Downs: 1. The redhat installation wasted my NT partitions. Very very nasty. I went with the default installation (instead of custom), thinking that the installer would automatically "do the right thing" i.e. install lilo on the boot partition instead of the mbr, but it didn't. I ended up having to repartition my entire HD (luckily I'd backed up most of my data, but it's still a big hassle). This has to be fixed, quickly.
2. I'm missing IE and Outlook Express. I think I'll stick with NT most of the time because of this. Netscape just doesn't cut it.
3. Video seems slower than NT. Netscape flickers as the screen scrolls.
1) You assumed RedHat would 'do the right thing'. I believe there are several warnings during the install that it will wipe everythign you have. You are the one who had to re-partition your drive; redhat doesnt' do this for you without asking. Also, WinNT does *exactly* the samething.
You are missing IE and Outlook express. What features, specifically? We have mail programs, and IE. IT sounds like, as the article said, you are stuck doing things the MS way.
It looks like you are getting the treatment most newbies get: a thorough bashing. Not much help, is it?
That being said, you probably should have read the documentation a bit more intently. The installation guide is fairly clear on this: if you need to tinker with partitions, you need to use the custom install. However, if Anaconda wiped your HD without so much as warning you, that is indeed utterly tactless. Filing a polite bug report would porobably be in order. See: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/
There is also the question of the Master Boot Record. You talk about RedHat overwriting the MBR as though that was a bad thing. I know there are reasons not to use it, but LILO is hardly an impediment to your running NT and GNU/Linux on the same machine. You could have just re-configured LILO, if you had a problem.
Had you chosen the custom install, you could have tinkered your partitions a little bit, installed non-destructively, and not overwritten the MBR. Better yet, you could have overwritten the MBR with a properly-configured LILO. The problem is you did not chose the proper installation method.
For future reference, always read the installation manual before going ahead with a new OS on a machine. Otherwise, problems can an do happen. However, if you feel RedHat did something utterly destructive to your machine without warning you, write a nice bug report and users everywhere will thank you for it.
There have been a couple comments that this guy isn't an average user. This is true, but it's not because he knows the difference between a CD-ROM drive and a coffee-cup holder. There are two revealing comments he makes which don't even have anything to do with the main thread of his article:
-> Learning is fun -> Changing one's habits is good
90%-99% of the people in the developed world (a) actively avoid learning anything unless they absolutely have to and (b) actively avoid having to do anything that is the least bit different from their normal routines. Trying new things instead of running in terror immediately marks this fellow as Different.
Daniel
-- Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Python is a nice, lightweight, embeddable, easy-to-learn scripting language that you could take a look at. I've read your other comments; it appears to have some sort of numerical modules, although I'm not sure what level they're at. (most of what I do is non-numerical..)
Daniel
-- Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I recently gave up on a Linux desktop. Got sick of having to upgrade 5 libraries every time I wanted to install a new app. I also gave up on win98, it just gets flakier with the age of the installation, until one day it does not boot and you have to reinstall.
Uh, you realize, do you not, that these two fascts are related? The reason (well, one reason, but a big one) that Linux doesn't bitrot is that (a) there are mechanisms in the operating system to keep you from running programs with mismatched version numbers (sonames and so on), and (b) most distributions make sure that you have the correct libraries for your programs. Windows has essentially no such safeguards, which leads to a lot of the chronic problems that you see with it; the phrase, I believe, is "DLL Hell". In fact, many programs *do* install new versions of base libraries on a Windows system; they just ship with the program, never mind that there's no way to guess how overwriting random files in c:\windows\system will affect other programs on the system. Easier for the user -> more bitrot. If you don't like downloading the libraries manually you should try a distribution with better autoupdate tools than yours had; Debian springs immediately to mind, although with your low frustration threshold something else might be appropriate.
Daniel
-- Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Re:Hooboy: the "typical user"
by
Daniel
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· Score: 2
Well, I think the default Debian install includes Emacs and all of TeX (!). But aside from that I don't think it's too bad..:) And it does make it fairly simple to strip the system down to its base components.
Daniel
-- Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
If the Linux crowd can settle on a single standard for graphical interface and API (HOPEFULLY, the upcoming XFree86 4.0 will help this idea along)
I don't see any indication that it will - that's similar to expecting that a new x86 processor will cause the operating system world to settle on a single standard and API for all OSes that run on x86 processors.
XFree86 4.0 will not, as far as I know, come with any particular toolkit, or desktop environment built atop it blessed as the "single standard", so you'll still have KDE/Qt vs. GNOME/GTK+ vs. .
Well, M$ finished their last fiscal year with a 42% profit according to Cnnfn. I don't think there is a more profitable Fortune 1000 company. Most in the Fortune 1000 have ( my quick mental averaging) about a 15% profit. That profitability is the main reason that M$ is running a stock valuation of about 400 times annual sales. Seems high to me. If you don't mind paying their ( constantly increasing) prices, then good for you.
--
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
In fact there is even a port of VB to Linux. See, for instance, Gnumeric.
OTOH VB itself is a language that I hate. I can understand how someone who had never dealt with a real language could be impressed by it, but personally for scripting I am much happier with Perl or Python than I ever was with VB.
Think of them as VB except easier to really learn, cross-platform, faster,...
Cheers, Ben
-- My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Other industries think 10 or 15% pre-tax margin is good, the computer industry thinks 10-15% post-tax is good, but M$ consistently reports 40+% post-tax profit. Got nothing to do with R&D.
Sure, you can use Linux and StarOffice in a wide variety of desktop situations. Guess what -- you can still use Windows 3.1 and a circa-1994 copy of Office or SmartSuite in a wide variety of desktop situation. Sure, it'll crash more than Linux -- but if the buisnesses were worried about crashes on desktop machines enough to accept the disadvantages of a minority platform, they'd have bought OS/2 Warp 3.0 instead of Windows 95.
Linux won't be able to compete with Microsoft on the desktop until Linux doesn't just have an adequate office suite, but a suite with complete feature-parity with MS Office. Even then, it'll be an uphill climb...
If you use redhat, Caldera, or SuSE use rpmfind. If you use debian use dselect. They'll find all the packages you need to install to support and application.
Someone has finally figured out what I've griped about in regards to Linux: the lack of a consistent user interface and API.
Say all you want in vitriol about Microsoft, but at least you have to give them credit for maintaining a reasonably consistent user interface and API. This makes is FAR easier for programmers, and also, you instantly have a market for 85% of the world's desktop computers anyway.
If the Linux crowd can settle on a single standard for graphical interface and API (HOPEFULLY, the upcoming XFree86 4.0 will help this idea along), then we can talk about Linux becoming a large-scale desktop corporate standard.
I suppose if you define "suit" as merely being someone who isn't like most slashdotters (e.g., a financial person, doctor, lawyer, etc.), then you might say that. If that was true, then I and many others would be considered a suit too. However, the word "suit" describes a lot more than just a job description, for me atleast. Such as indifference, a certain mentality...incestous, flock like, lack of willingness to really drive at the fundamental issues, aloofness, etc.
But even if "suit" doesn't necessarily carry these associations for you, he is 180degrees off from the typical personality in the financial community. Please don't assume that suits (or even Joe Schmoes) are just a few lessons/hours away from being able to make practical use of Linux--never mind preferring it.
Powerpoint, though not ingeniously designed, was purposely built for whipping up presentations--it is easy to use and quick. Not only does HTML (manually) take more time to learn how to use it efficiently, but also the per presentation time is significantly greater than what it takes to whipup, say, a 20 page presentation. Though I suppose the efficicies of a better designed presentation might make HTML desirable for someone who is presenting the same material over and over (e.g., a salesman), enough to make them willing to spend the extra time at it. I doubt HTML's practicality for embeeding and altering spreadsheets and the like. In any case, your typical "suit", even if he were computer literate, would be petrified of his presentation failing while doing something so different than the rest (HTML).
Re:Hooboy: the "typical user"
by
crumley
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· Score: 2
So there's my linux wishlist, I guess. I don't need a gui - I was a DOS boy for a long time. I need to know what I have on my system, where it is, how to change it. And there just doesn't seem to be a resource for me to learn that...It's perhaps a flaw in the decentralized nature of linux development.
What Linux Distribution are you using?
I think that Debian has answers to most of your concerns. I am sure most the other distributions work similarly - Debian is just what I know.
The default install is not all that bloated, depending on which options you choose. And the much maligned dselect will let you see exactly what you have installed. Dselect's interface may take a little getting used to, but its a really powerful tool for figuring out what you have installed, and trimming bloat on systems that are short of disk space.
As for finding out where the package has stuff installed: dpkg -L package_name will tell you exactly what files are installed by with a given package. You can usually configure the package by fooling around with the files under/etc. Just look at the man pages and the documentation under/usr/share/doc to figure what to do.
-- Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
The author of the original article does make a passing reference to the lack of file format compatibility being a huge and largely overlooked weakness - only a passing reference.
What bugged me about the article is that what went unspoken was the huge amount of time this guy must have invested in his setup. Admittedly he has a nice setup, but knowing what it took to get to a similarly nice setup for myself, I could recommend replacing windows with Linux to only the most dedicated geeks. It takes a lot of time, and a lot of perseverence, and it is still not as good.
I recently gave up on a Linux desktop. Got sick of having to upgrade 5 libraries every time I wanted to install a new app. I also gave up on win98, it just gets flakier with the age of the installation, until one day it does not boot and you have to reinstall.
I have migrated to NT, which (for a desktop) gives me the same stability as Linux. I am not upset about having to pay a little bit more money for apps and the OS - I get it back in time not wasted tweaking stuff. And when Window2000 hits the streets I will shell out the $200+ for it, its well worth it.
But Linux will still stay on my file server. Windows2K I fear would bring it to its knees.
>I recently gave up on a Linux desktop. Got sick >of having to upgrade 5 libraries every time I wanted to install a new app. I also gave up on >win98, it just gets flakier with the age of the installation, until one day it does not boot and >you have to reinstall.
Uh, you realize, do you not, that these two fascts are related? The reason (well, one reason, but a big one) that Linux doesn't bitrot is that (a) there are mechanisms in the operating system to keep you from running programs with mismatched version numbers (sonames and so on), and (b) most distributions make sure that you have the correct libraries for your programs. Windows has essentially no such safeguards, which leads to a lot of the chronic problems that you see with it; the phrase, I believe, is "DLL Hell".
Well, NT has no such protections either, and it manages to be rock solid, even with nasty windows installations overwriting DLLs. I don't have any problem with having new Linux programs requiring new libraries, but I do not enjoy having to hunt them down on some random website, only to find yet deeper dependancies that require further updates.
If you get an application install in Linux it should be entirely self-contained, out of the box. This is my largest gripe with Linux apps.
I think the mere fact that he uses vi and does all his work "alternative"-style makes him exempt from the suit genre. To be called a suit, first you must be with the mainstream suit population. This guy deviates from the mean. I consider this guy a Linux guy who felt like writing about the dent he's put in the suits. Truth is, suits don't even know wtf Linux is, let alone how to use vi, or even what "root" is.
Maybe the writer wears suits, but he's hardly a typical non-tech user. As soon as he talks about compiling and vi v. emacs, he's disqualified.
Gee, I'm a suit, a middle-aged lawyer suit fer chrissakes, but I've been known to fool around with vi and emacs.
I thought the point was that he's not a real emacs using jock, but just another vi luser. (Yeah, yeah, forget about Torvalds for a minute, everyone is allowed a few eccentricities.)
Seriously, I think both sides are right here.
Computer software has a lot of room for improvement before the masses can use it comfortably (while this certainly applies to Linux, it is *not* a problem limited Linux).
The general level of sophistication of the average person is rapidly increasing.
It remains to be seen if the programmers will finally develop something as "easy to use as a telephone", or if people will get so used to telephones with neurosurgery attachments that a typical PC will seem like a joke.
I'm a fan of mh myself, though if you're looking for something more like an "integrated client", I'd suggest using emacs-mh as a front end. I only run the mh commands directly inside of scripts (or if my emacs is down for some reason).
There's something to be said for living inside your editor.
But it's not as though there aren't problems with mh though. Okay, so all the messages are stashed in ordinary unix files, one message to a file. Nice and simple, right? But it uses arbitrary numbers for file names (1, 2, 3...). So let's say you tar up your ~/Mail/Linux folder, and stash it on tape. Six months later you want to get some old messages off of the tape... Oops, those numbered filenames conflict with each other now, don't they? How do you make sure your old message number 5 doesn't blow away the new message number 5?
Also, using these commands in shell scripts is kind of arcane. I mean I've got dozens of shell scripts like this:
These days most people just learn to use procmail (which is perhaps even more arcane...), which seems to be the last nail in the coffin for the utility of command-line mh.
In general, the "do one thing and do it well" thing is pretty much history. It's more like "do one thing kind-of-okay, and provide two hundred flags to do everything else, plus enough really verbose POSIX alternates to make the man pages incomprensible".
Uh, so you're saying it's not useful to see on the screen exactly what will be printed? It's just useless flash?
Only right before you print it (assuming that you're going to print it at all -- I've seen people email MS-Word documents, send them to other people on floppies, and even put them up on the web for download). And even then, it should only be necessary in the rare case where you don't trust the computer to do a good job formatting it. If you still don't trust the computer, is the solution to ask for WYSIWYG, or to ask for better/smarter software?
A reason against WYSIWYG? It is wasteful and inappropriate for editing. For example, can you think of any reason why, when editing a document, that you need to see the margins?(!) Did you buy a 19" monitor just to throw away 25% of the screen area? And heaven forbid that you have a small monitor -- I have seen people print things in large fonts simply because that's what they had to use in order to be able to read the document as they edited it on the screen.
Here's a real life question someone asked me: "Is it really going to be this hard to read once it's printed?" I reassured them that, no, the printer has much better resolution than the screen. So much for WYSIWYG -- we pay the price and don't even get anything for it.
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-- As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I mean, can you show me a mail client as powerful and easy to use as Outlook Express? How about a word processor with the feature set of Word (and I know a lot of/. readers think of a spell checker as "bloatware", but some of us like having a lot of options we can configure).
IMHO is Gnus far more powerful than Outlook Express. It can be configured to do exactly what you want it to do. Of course it's not as beginnerfriendly as Outlook, but far more userfriendly.
When it comes to Word, I will like to repeat something Douglas Engelbart said (from my memory): "Here we have a computer and it's capable to present us the information the way each individual want it. And what do we do? Reinventing paper on screen (WYSIWYG)!"
As users we have to learn to see beyond the fancy user interfaces, and and focus more on the usability of the information we are producing.
Every time I see one of these articles, I'm amazed at how very little what I consider essential computer usage ever gets mentioned. I use Visual Basic ALL THE TIME in the Microsoft Office apps.
Is there something in Linux that can provide the power and flexability of VB in something like Excel? I'm not talking about a macro language like what use to be in Excel (circa 1991 or so), but something that you can program to adapt to certain situations? What I spend hours on now would take weeks without visual basic. This is one of my PRIMARY reasons for not being able to make the switch to Linux.
Re:VB Equivalent in Linux?
by
Pfhreakaz0id
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· Score: 2
Oh man, don't open that bag of worms here. Almost all of 'em will tell you Perl or whatever is the same thing/just as good/better.
A lot of these folks just don't understand it. UNTIL YOU HAVE VB, LINUX WILL NEVER HIT THE DESKTOP IN CORPORATE AMERICA. Maybe elsewhere, but not here. ---
Re:VB Equivalent in Linux?
by
squidfood
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· Score: 2
Well, I do some pretty heavy-duty "scientific" processing and mathematical manipulation of huge data sets, and I use a combination of Perl and shell scrips on Linux (as a first filter), and Excel with VB (to do the much of the analysis). So if you accept that as a qualification, I have a comment. I wonder how many folks who quote the power of Unix have gotten into Excel? It is damn powerful, and damn fast (intuitive at getting results). I've tried the various (underpowered) Linux Office spreadsheets and they don't come close. I agree, Linux is VERY powerful. If I have a large batch job with many calculations, I'll write a Perl routine. But the ease of the Excel Pivot Table, compared to using the "power" and needing to write a search routine to summarize? No comparison. My ideal environment at the moment is a Windows box on my desk, and a Linux box in the corner. I have a couple term emulators (vi or emacs) to write my perl scripts, generate my data, then (here's the rub) bring it over and look at the data in Excel. It works wonderfully for me (at the price of two machines). Before I did this work, I used Linux quite a bit, so I am very familiar with the tools. But, even KNOWING all the ins and outs, and not particularly WANTING to learn anything outside of Linux, Excel coming along really changed the way I worked. To me, MS as a WHOLE isn't evil, but windows is. This battle should be on making Linux such a pervasive environment that MS CAN'T AFFORD NOT TO release an Office for Linux. Do you think that's better than digging for non-working solutions in the name of OS purity? I'm pleased to hear that others have had my experiences with Excel...and let me reiterate...I haven't found a good Linux tool that matches, even with a lot of work on Perl and other things.
every day I get closer to running Linux at work
by
paled
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· Score: 2
Matthew has produced a suite of Oracle on Linux tools at http://www.orasoft.org. He doesn't have a replacement for Schema Manager for database synchronization, but his tools are catching up on SQL Navigator and TOAD (free version at http://www.toadsoft.com/toadfree.zip). I saw an MS Outlook Client at the Mandrake booth at LinuxWorldExpo. Gotta get that one. I've been using StarOffice since I got my new machine in Dec 99 instead of MS Office. Almost there, stay on target... stay on target Got that demo disk of VMWare - going to run that on RH6.1 for awhile.
when i first read the headline to this story i thought it said "A Slut's Experience With Linux". I had to re-read it and then i realized my mistake. I wonder if any sluts use linux though.
For the most part I agree with you. Until the last sentence. I think the occasional self-congratulation is appropriate as long as it doesn't cause the community to rest on their laurels, which is what your point was as I see it. Linux has come a long way and it doesn't hurt to see someone from the "suits" category learning to use it and do productive work with it. Hopefully stories like this will just make the developers that much more committed to improving the software. I think it is imperative to stop and take a look at what you've accomplished once in a while.
Some thoughts on Sigurd's conclusions
by
Chalst
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· Score: 2
Interesting article. Personally I don't think Linux is `there' yet for office apps, but it is at least a viable option. Some thoughts:
Latex: if you need to write up scientific equations, then Latex is indispensible. If not, avoid it, because it is a user-unfriendly nightmare. Scientific users use in becuase there is no alternative, not because it is pleasant to use. Now that MathML is coming, maybe we won't have to use LaTeX for much longer.
PowerPoint: About the non-linear presentations: nice thought, but I have to disagree. Telling a story is a linear thing, and giving a presentation should be like telling a story. If you want to jump around all the time, then it sounds more like brain-storning than presentation to me, in which case I don't think there is a good electronic rival to the flipchart yet. This is one area I think MS has a decisive advantage over anything on the Linux desktop.
Excel: it is the de facto standard, but it is also a buggy dog. I haven't seen the Office 2k rivals, but I think the free software rivals have a chance of displacing it.
Heck, all it took was the "I got started on an Apple II". I true suit wouldn't know what an Apple II is.
Still, he seems to give a practical reportcard for Linux as an office machine. The things he suggest would be approachable by a suit.
Some good points to think about...
by
nlh
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· Score: 2
Sigurd makes some very thought-provoking points in his article and really highlights what I believe are some of the key issues that are helping Linux make its way into the mainstream -- even the corporate one:
As a recovering Windoze junkie (I'm in rehab), I can pretty easily recall some of my key arguments against moving to a purely Linux world. It boiled down to Games, Application Compatibility, and GUI.
Games. While my current workload doesn't allow for as much gaming time, this used to be the #1 thing preventing me from using Linux all the time (or at least from nuking the Windows partition.) Loki has done and is doing a great job of changing that. I imagine the number of games ported to Linux is growing exponentially, and no longer will people be able to cling to that aspect of the M$ world.
Application Compatibility. Sigurd pointed this out in his article: Everyone in the corporate world uses MS Office - Word + Excel primarily. It sucks but it's true. People get upset when you send them PDF files or plain text (and, as a matter of professionalism, it doesn't look too nice when you send a plain-text business plan to a Venture Capitalist) With the arrival of Linux-based apps to handle and create these documents, one can at least easily communicate with ones peers (even if via a primative language!)
GUI. I hate that this is a reason, because I think the command line is quite elegant most of the time, but try telling that to a legal assistant at a major lawfirm or a secretary at a large company and they'll laugh in your face. GNOME, KDE, and sleek windowmanagers like Sawmill are making life MUCH better.
I think there is still a bit to go before more people are willing to make "The Switch," but it's getting more compelling every day.
Re:Some good points to think about...
by
cougartoo
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· Score: 2
Sigurd has done a service for the community, whether he knows it or not. I agree with many others, he's not a naive user, he's a power-user.
But he's collected, in one place, a wealth of knowledge on using Linux day-to-day!
Personal Finance.Moneydance is great!! I am really impressed with it: simple, stable, flexible, smart. This fills a big gap in my day-to-day use of Linux, and gives me another reason to stay out of windows. Anyone using it regularly? Are there comparable personal finance systems out there?
Or he turns the monitor off, but leaves the computer on, thinking the whole thing is off <br><br> That's so true:).
A while ago, I had the librarian tell me off when I closed "program manager" on the library computer (to her, it meant the computer was broken). So she promptly turned the monitor off, waited 15 seconds, and turned it back on.:D.
Learn about styles. They are the reason you're having so much frustration with Word. I've seen this a lot when someone comes from Wordperfect (I did too).
Once you understand how Word works, you will find it far, far better than Wordperfect. It's extremely powerful.
Recently I attended a local PC User Group meeting because a friend invited me to see the Corel Linux demo that Corel was putting on.
First, my idea of a UG needs to be updated... because when I was younger a UG consisted of kids who've never kissed a girl pirating software, so imagine my surprise when this UG had only people in it who were 45 years old and up. I saw more grey hair than I had in a while.
They seemed to enjoy the Corel Linux demo, but I finally got a real view of the typical computing world when the Corel woman asked, "Has anyone here ever installed an operating system?", and only 3 hands went up. Me and the 2 other youngest people who happened to be in attendance. This shocked me because in my little computing world, everyone I know has done dozens, if not hundreds of installs of many OS's.
She then asked, "Who has installed linux?" and of course mine was the only hand to go up, and people were looking at me as if I had 3 heads (I don't).
Once she had convinced the people there that Corel Linux looks EXACTLY like Windows she bothered to point out that you could even open up a terminal window "if you ever felt like typing MSDOS commands." (At that point I think several people shuddered and at least one person dry-heaved).
She also forced me to say that I frequently "mount my CDROM drive" and that made some people laugh and confused the rest. This was all part of her way to show that corel automounts the CD.
Why am I rambling you ask? Because like many here I also do not think that the fellow this thread is discussing is a typical "suit" user.
Hell, I haven't even networked my house yet.
-- Ignore Alien Orders
Re:GNU Guile; of course it can handle other syntax
by
alexhmit01
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· Score: 2
Note: Scheme is MIT's dialect of LISP
Not surprising. At MIT, the intro Computer Science course is in Scheme. While an Intro course, this isn't your typical intro course, we do cool things like write relational database engines and primitive (non-optimizing) compilers in it (a fake assembly language, but close enough).
One of the weeks is spent on the "Meta-circular evaluator." The meta-circular evaluator is a Scheme program that interprets Scheme code and executes it. We also discussed (and worked with a sample of part of) a C interpretter.
The power of scheme/LISP is that it handles all objects the same. Whether it is a program (lambda function), list, or atom. This is EXTREMELY powerful. We were able to flesh out the shell of an Object oriented version in a weekly problem set (I did it in one night in like 8 hours).
If you base you systems in Scheme/LISP, you have TREMENDOUS functionality. I'm flashing back to the paper in my architecture course on how the inferior C won out against LISP. It actually made some compelling arguements, but I don't know how much I agree.
I love Outlook Express, but I'm not going to talk about that. Instead, I'd like to say a few words about mh (or nmh, actually) because somebody mentioned "The UNIX way(tm)".
nm is a suite of programs, each of which does one thing well. There's comp to compose mail. It calls your favorite editor and then hands the message off to send, which sends it. When you receive mail, you call inc to move the messages from the spool file to mh's mail directory, where each message is one file. Inc will show you a list of new messages. You can get a list of all your messages with scan. Use show to read a message, repl to reply to one, forw to forward. These can take a message number as an argument. All these are normal shell commands that you can type interactively or put in a script. Since each message is a file, you can also use normal file handling commands like mv and cp to organise your mail and you can script those operations as well. Configuration is distributed. If you don't like how mh sends your mail, you configure send; nothing else. For someone who prefers the UNIX way, mh is heaven.
I still prefer a really good integrated client to mh, though. It's just that there aren't any really good ones for Linux. (Yes, I'm actually saying that Outlook Express is better than any mail client available for Linux. Sue me. (Yes, I've used mutt) --
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
He ain't no suit, for whatever that means. Though I suppose the definition and connotations of the word "suit" can vary somewhat, it certainly involves more than just having the computing IQ of an Ape (which this guy certainly doesn't have). Beyond his relative adeptness with computers, there are some other non-suit like qualities to him. For example, he dropped Powerpoint for HTML and a browser? Think about what this says about this guy. He is willing to diverge from the rest of the herd (powerpoint) -- definetly not a "suit" like quality. In addition, he has the time (real or percieved) to not only learn HTML sufficiently, but also to use it instead of Powerpoint. While I hardly think Powerpoint is a particularly good product, it is certainly faster for your quicky presentation. Again, if you're going to generalize, "suits" value time; a "suit" would not waste time in HTML. More time/value points: He uses vi (while it's a great text editor for those who have the time to learn it, it ain't a suit tool). He doesn't seem to mind, or atleast makes no mention of, having to track down and download all of these various programs (e.g., vmware, IglooFTP, Klynx, etc.), nor the compilitation/installation processes. He is obviously familiar with slashdot, enough to refer to it as "/.". I could go on, but you get the point...
While my intent is not to deride him or the person who posted, lets be real here. There is little value to his article. He doesn't speak for the financial community in general or "suits". Nor does he attest to Joe Schmoe's view of Linux. What he might have been able to do, he did not do. He did not provide slashdot with a window into how his comrades, the "suits", would or have (not?) approached Linux. Instead, we got a not particularly well written commentary of an individual with a professional job outside of computing (perhaps not your typical slashdotter), yet he has time to burn, and nothing to lose. The mere fact that he finds Linux acceptable doesn't mean most will. We (you) can't pat ourselves on the back for doing a great job. Being both a student of finance (not a suit) and working in and around IT and technology, I can tell you that Linux/Open Source has miles and miles to go.
The only thing a reasonable person could draw from this, is in regards to professional (e.g., Doctor, Lawyer, Financial people, etc.) people's possible use of applications--there are some applications out there that they can theoretically use (not true even 2 years ago)--he found them sufficient. Though having tried using most of them extensively, I disagree with much of it.
While I respect the opinions of the author of this article, I have to say that in my experience the apps for Linux just aren't up to the same caliber as those available for Windows yet. I mean, can you show me a mail client as powerful and easy to use as Outlook Express? How about a word processor with the feature set of Word (and I know a lot of/. readers think of a spell checker as "bloatware", but some of us like having a lot of options we can configure).
On the whole, I do agree with your post- but I would like to take an exception to this particular part of it. If the spell checker is all that you care about, hell, even kEdit and gEdit can use the (default in most linux distros) ispell program, and they do. Does notepad or wordpad include a spellchecker? I didn't think so.
But on the whole, as I said above- you are mostly right. We don't need to keep patting ourselves on the back, we need to bring things up to par- and Outlook is a damn good example, as is IE. Mozilla's not there yet. It's getting closer every day (I'm downloading the latest build as we speak) and I think that it's great, but we don't have a great web browser yet. Nor do we have a great mail client. We still lack the one thing that Microsoft can claim over us- unification and easy drop-in replacements of parts. KDE is doing great things in regard to this- KParts is a great stride forward in this field (as also noted in another post) but it's not perfect and it's not even public yet.
Just give us time...
StarOffice isn't a good alternative to Microsoft
by
Animats
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· Score: 3
I'm underwhelmed with StarOffice. It's still an early version; the basic stuff is there, but it's not a finished product. It's always doing something slightly wrong. Import of Word documents works maybe 75% of the time, and the format never quite matches. The HTML editor is on a par with Netscape Navigator, the drawing tools are lame, and it keeps trying to act like a visual shell with folders. There's also the annoying problem with Sun that they tend to lose interest in their software products after a while. Remember their Java Workstation IDE product? If Sun keeps at it, StarOffice could be a nice product. But will they?
On the other hand, it doesn't have that stupid dancing paper clip.
The thought of using TeX in the year 2000 leaves me completely cold. That's the last gasp of the programmer-oriented word processors. The line that began with Runoff and went through nroff, troff, and ditroff ends with TeX. And it's time for it to end. Macros are just the wrong tool for that job. (Whatever happened to math formatting for HTML, anyway? There was a working group on that, but it seems to have been lost somewhere along the way, probably because everybody's off doing electronic commerce.)
Even if Linux becomes just as easy to use as Win, that's not easy enough. Why? Because the easiest system to use is the one you already know how to use.
What will make Linux dominate? In the short run, nothing. Open Source tends less to innovate, and more to emulate. So when the OS becomes a commodity product with little room for innovation, the Linux price point (0) will then drive people to Linux. This is already starting to happen.
Of course, when the OS is totally commoditized people will care as much about which OS they use as they do now about what kinds of circuits are in their TV sets. Not even geeks will care by then. Commodity products are boring. Hopefully something new and exciting will come along to replace the OS as something for geeks to work on. It will be nice too if that something is difficult to emulate so that the true innovators can have time to make money on it before people copy it.
-- For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Maybe the writer wears suits, but he's hardly a typical non-tech user. As soon as he talks about compiling and vi v. emacs, he's disqualified.
Still a really interesting write-up, though. Just don't point to this as proof that your PHB could survive in a Linux world yet.
Re:Hooboy: the "typical user"
by
Crixus
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· Score: 4
Wake up people! The typical desktop user doesn't understand the difference between "netscape" and their operating system! If you unplug their keyboards in the night they will call tech support in the morning! They run their monitors in 640x480x256 because they don't realize there are any other settings!
Yes! I love it when I see someone get a system shipped to their door with a 19" monitor and the screen settings are exactly that, 640x480x256.
The Start button is roughly the size of a house on a 19" monitor in that resolution. I don't switch them to 800x600 or 1024x768 because it's likely a better resolution for them with that monitor, I switch them because I swear that once the huge start button tried to kill me.
One day, before Netscape.com was a portal, I was asked by a cousin what search engine I used, "Yahoo or Netscape."
It was difficult helping him to understand the difference.
"...and so, as the sun sets on Slashdot World, everything is hunky-dorie and everyone lived happily ever after and without Microsoft."
While I respect the opinions of the author of this article, I have to say that in my experience the apps for Linux just aren't up to the same caliber as those available for Windows yet. I mean, can you show me a mail client as powerful and easy to use as Outlook Express? How about a word processor with the feature set of Word (and I know a lot of/. readers think of a spell checker as "bloatware", but some of us like having a lot of options we can configure).
What's more irritating about articles such as this one is that they don't really serve a productive purpose to us as a community of developers. It glosses over the failings of Linux, and this is a Bad Thing(tm). Remember the "Jihad Tux" icon on Suck back a couple of months ago? It was funny, but it was a bad omen as well.
I suppose this article in particular is just serving as a final straw to me. Lately I've noticed a really disturbing trend towards self-congratulation in the OSS movement, and especially on this particular discussion board. Criticism of Linux is less and less welcome while this sort of wanking is on the upswing.
Look, sitting around patting ourselves on the back while ignoring the deficiancies in our software is the exact same behavior that we love to flame companies like Microsoft for. It feels good to convince ourselves that Linux is finally "there" and that anyone who can't use it is just an idiot. It feels good to think that even a "suit" can use it now. It feels good, but it's not true -- not yet.
When I first installed Slackware (waaay back when), it was nearly impossible to deal with as a newbie with no previous UNIX experience. Linux has come a very long way; I won't dispute that. It's not a replacement for Windows yet, however, and we as a development community aren't doing ourselves any favors by pretending (as an example, not a flame) that the GIMP can hold a candle to Photoshop yet.
I am conviced that the OSS development paradigm will lead to a better product that any closed paradigm. I am also convinced, however, that if the community loses their focus that the OSS paradigm breaks down. Flaming the "non-believers", trolling about "suits", preaching to the choir and pretending that flaws don't exist are all symptoms of this loss of focus.
Now, I'm not trying to discourage discussion. I'm not trying to sell short the efforts of the people developing Linux and various OSS apps. I'm not trying to suggest that the whole community is one way or the other, nor am I forgetting that Linux kicks ass in particular areas. I'm not saying that the people who developed the OSS paradigm or who work on the software don't deserve a vast amount of credit.
What I want to point out is that self-congradulation (which is how I view this article) is inherantly dangerous to the future of the paradigm from a Big Picture point of view. It should be recognized as such, and should be avoided whenever possible.
----
-- Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
About time... what Linux needs to truly take off is support from the average desktop user, not just the techies and power users. I just hope we see more favorable reviews from "average" people and that these reviews encourage other "average" users to run Linux on their PC. It's important to recognize that Linux isn't just a server OS, it can work well as an office platform too.
No, it's not. Whatever you do folks, don't get complacent. Linux is NOT ready for the average user yet.
Roadmap:
1. Forget skins. They're bullshit. Concentrate on UI design - flash can come later.
2. Make your UI consistent across apps. Someone needs to come up with a "Linux UI style guide" - preferably have some kind of library that does standard keybindings and mouse handling - eg. for context menus. These things vary so wildly between apps right now (heck, even cut & paste varies wildly between apps right now) that it makes using the computer a jarring experience.
3. Design GUI apps for the GUI - that is, don't think in terms of command-line apps. Too many GUI apps (heck, look at KDE & the basic bits you get with Corel Linux) look and feel like someone decided to switch to a command-line app at the last moment. Developers - try coding the GUI first, and then work on the internals - not the other way around. The GUI should NOT be tacked on at the end.
4. Do usability tests on your granny. If she can't get it (and if she can, she musn't be related to Ada Lovelace), then you're doing it wrong. Take notes, and go back to the drawing board.
5. Try running Linux without editing a text file for configuration / using the keyboard for anything except data entry. If you can't, it's not ready yet.
6. Provide: a. Duhhhh-level install. That is - you insert the disk, you hit OK, it does it. b. User interviews (find out their needs and provide them a list of options based on them) for the medium level install. c. Techy level install - that is, you let them customize to the nth degree. d. Provide a,b,c in all your apps.
7. Help should be context sensitive, and never more than a STANDARD KEYBOARD SHORTCUT away.
8. If it looks like an idiot could use your app, you've not made it easy enough. You've designed it for a pretty smart idiot.
Simon [... wonders if anyone would be willing to take me on as Linux GUI Czar.. hmmmm... have to look into that]
Hooboy: the "typical user"
by
konstant
·
· Score: 5
You know your market perspective is skewed when...
Roblimo calls a guy with a three computers at home running over a lan he installed himself, and who waxes nostalgic for his old HTML editor a "typical desktop user".
Wake up people! The typical desktop user doesn't understand the difference between "netscape" and their operating system! If you unplug their keyboards in the night they will call tech support in the morning! They run their monitors in 640x480x256 because they don't realize there are any other settings!
If you're planning on marketing Linux to the masses, at least get the character sketch straight. This guy is at least what you could call a "power user". Hell, I'm sure some of the people on this board who call themselves "geeks" couldn't do have of what he's apparently done.
-konstant Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-- -konstant Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
First of all, good for him, it'll no doubt save him money in someway...but I have a few grumbles with what he says anyway...
Have to admit that I was inclined to do my best to end my relationship with MS (costly stuff that, forty percent plus margin kind of makes me uneasy in the have-I-been-taken-for-a-ride department)
Where does he get 40% from? How does he know how much Microsoft spends in R&D?
Word can easily be replaced by Wordperfect, Staroffice or Abiword. Quite satisfactory, and MSWord files are no problem.
Yeah, if all you use words for is just typing up stuff, Word has MANY features, most people only use 5% of the features, but not everyone uses the same 5%. In many areas, Staroffice and Wordperfect fail (good antialiased fonts is a BIG area). Table support, integration (eg. embedd other documents like excel/pdf/ etc are lacking. He probably does use these, but then, if all he needs is 'abiword', then maybe he would be just as happy with a simple editor like notepad or wordpad.
Somebody has a question that you are about to answer in slide 14. I 'click' forward to 14 and then back again. (try that in Powerpoint).
Uh, maybe he should look at PowerPoint again. Linus likes PowerPoint right?:P
This is where I see a glaring gap among the Linux applications. Netscape is useful (but unstable), best solution I guess is having a Palm Pilot in conjunction with Kpilot or Jpilot.
On the dot;).
And the few times I needed a helping hand both Mandrake and Caldera did their best without sending me through the hoops of four levels of interrogation before support - MS style
Oh, I dunno, I've found Microsoft to be the best support company (in my own experience). But then, I deal mostly with developer support where they ship you like service pack cds by courier to your door:). I've heard phone support is pretty crappy, but web based support is good. I've always had personal responses from my emails to Microsoft.
I think a lot of what the guy is saying hovers around the 'correct' mark, but it depends so much on your personal needs. A lot of the reason why everyone uses Office is because there's a huge 3rd party market for plugins and applications based on Office. I mean, you can write a (small) accouting system using Excel and macros alone, and heaps of people use Excel for exactly that. Unix is damn good for shell scripting, but Windows is damn good for business/producvitiy app scripting and integration. Want to reuse IE in your word document to render VML drawings, with vector data coming from an Access database? No problem. COM. Want to play an MPEG video in your power point app using Windows Media Player? No problem. COM. Want to add your power point presentation into a word document, and also display an excel sheet inside your powerpoint presentation? No problem. COM.
etc. KOffice/KDE is making huge strides towards this, but still has a way to go.
If all you need to do is to type up letters, then spending money of Office is stoopid. But just don't think that that's all Office does.
There are two problems with this post. The first problem is that the HREF tag is incorrect--the closing is not formed correctly so the link doesn't work. The second problem is that the bitmap doesn't correctly identify this post as a joke.
This guy is a typical user? You're joking, right?
He indicates that he's presently using three different distributions of Linux, and has recompiled (at least one of them) 3 times. He has a home network, with a full-time Internet connection. He "naturally" chose KDE over Gnome, and prefers vi to emacs.
He's a "typical" user. Right.
I don't like to see "end luser" comments, because those end users are the people who pay us. (If half of my clients had half a clue, I'd be looking for a real job....) But to suggest that this guy is anything like a "typical" end user is too much--way too much.
The "typical" user turns off his computer, but leaves the monitor on--and thinks he's saving energy. Or he turns the monitor off, but leaves the computer on, thinking the whole thing is off. The typical user carefully types his password on his notebook when he boots it up on the airplane--otherwise that heavy-duty security won't let him into his files. The typical user hopes that someday the computer support geeks will stop giggling about the time he demanded immediate onsite response, and the "critical problem" turned out to be that the monitor was unplugged.
All joking aside, how typical is this guy? Would any of us pass this article along to "typical" users at an employer's, or at client's? How many typical users that we know would be able to read through the first paragraph and understand what it means? If this is any realistic notion of a "typical" user, ESR (et al)'s dream of "taking over the world" is a joke--because the vast majority of the world simply can't read that first paragraph.
When Windows 95 was being reviewed one of the Microsoft project leaders defined a very simple metric: "can my mother use this?" You can prate all you want about the stability and reliability of *nix or *BSD--but until all of our mothers are chatting on Linux boxen there simply isn't going to be a place in the desktop market for Linux (et al). My (67-year-old) mother is happily using Windows 95. She uses CompuServe for email, and has yet to explore the Web--she thinks it would be more complication than she has time to put up with. Would I expect Mom to recompile Mandrake 6.0 3 times to deal with "Level 5 problems"?
Slashdot Mirror
well deserved, its time more and more suits take part in the linux revolution.
and o yea.. This is what we need to see more of in the Linux community. Feedback from real users who know nothing but the Wonderfull World of Windows(tm).
The link don't work. /.ed already?
FIRST POST FUCKERS!
I still don't think Linux has enough day-to-day applications that most people need. People don't want to hassle with an OS especially if they can't do their normal stuff on it.
The link above doesn't work. Click here instead.
bnf
(NT) means no text
The NEW Gerbil Post is HERE!
Try here if you're lazy.
At least someone in this world can get a nice Linux system configured in less than a week. First post! (Sorry, have to get it out of my system.)
It works better if you remove the "/a" from the URL ;)
I agree, who's the real troll? Obviously karma whore boy can criticize the trolls, but he cant find the maturity to apoloigize for being a troll himself...
Dare I say, first?
I think we is brokin' -davidu
That link is not werkin
first?
1st
There's also a movement to get unix into the home place, for the average joe and jane. Here's the link
Oh, yes. Almost forget. Moderate this down, fuckers.
I would have to disagree with your statement that "Linux just aren't up to the same caliber as those available for Windows yet".
I work at a computer lab at the help desk(a fairly large computer lab in fact), and I deal with MS Office 2000 every day. At my home I was raised with WordPerfect, so, yes, I do have some previous experience with other programs. I have found that MS Word is _not_ mature. It is extremely painful to fix a formating problem once it has cropped up(IIRC, they have even followed us through Copy and Paste into a new document)!
As for the feature set of Word. Yes, Word does many things, but how many of those hidden little features do you know how to use(or even need to use?) I find its interface very hard. Perhaps it is because I am used to WordPerfect. Who know's. But I do know that almost everyone at my place of work also complains about the just brain dead things that it does.
For instance, if a file is on a floppy disk. You
decide that you are done, so you close Word. It asks, "Would you like to save the changes?". You say yes. Word will proceed to remove the current file, and start coping over the new one. However, if an error is encountered, Word chokes. All data is lost. You are left with a meaningless file of garbage, and a person that just lost a 10 page paper.
I have little experience with Outlook express. I never wanted to get stuck with a program that would infect my computer by simply _reading_ an email. That is a sign of a program that was either poorly designed or implemented.
As for a word processor that is compairable. I would think WordPerfect would fit the bill. I tried using StarOffice, but I didn't like it too much(too much like MS Office, and I didn't like that it put itself into one window). The formating problems of Word, I have never encountered in WordPerfect(thanks mainly to reveal codes). Granted it does have some shortfalls(fonts). But I believe they did it correctly. Start with a sound base, make sure it _works_. Then add all of the bells and whistles. You do _not_ want to start with the GUI, then make the program. You are left with a shell of the program that my look nice, but doesn't work correctly.
BIATCH
Where is the article? Hmmmmm .....
"About the only thing Microsoft has come up with is naming a button on the GUI "Start". "
What about M$ Bob or talking paperclips? See what giving Microsoft the freedom to innovate can do? I found the concepts in the Halloween documents rather innovative too.
FIRST POSTTTT!
the link is dead foo on you
Now I would love to use it if it worked on an old IBM thinkpad 730t. Is there in HWR (handwriting) software for linux?
nash_kgroce[at]crosswinds[dot]net
Now here I sit, all broken hearted, box won't boot, a panic started.
-- Bathroom Linux
There's software under Linux?!!!
I know i'm going to hell for this, but I just noticed that redhat.com uses doubleclick.net for their ad service.....??? don't you find that slightly odd considering how doubleclick is you know... evil? Maybe i'll be flamed for acknowledging redhat's existance, but whatever... I remember a recent article about doubleclick being evil,so i thought i'd share.
Here's the link: .php
http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience
Fix the link in the article! First post!
Who cares about a typical desktop user? I want someone who can write everything in uncommented assembly language!
they ripped it off (via Lotus 123) like they do with every products. in this case they renamed it Excel ;-)
The article is here http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience. php
Join the largest computer in the world!!
distributed.net
The thing to remember is that MS *NEVER* rests. While they have a team of marketing droids to extoll the virtues of everything they do, the main organization is pretty well outside of that.
Most of MS's competitors have made the mistake of pausing for a few minutes to catch their breath and do some celebrating, only to find MS rolling over them with a steamroller when they weren't looking.
MS is always hungry, always looking for the next oppoortunity. If you want to compete with them, you have to as well.
Where da fuck are all the fucking messages?
Well, finally people are seeing that Linux is a viable desktop substitute for Windoze. Now if only the link worked.... -MR
Why is the link dead?
Am i supposed to boast about being a first poster? or sugest a beowulf cluster? i forget... anyways.. interesting article. its good to see that people thinking that its an alternative to windoes for everyday desktop use. maybe oneday the rest of the world will too.. =)
Looks like you didn't get the first post. Who's the biatch now? Word to yo 40
Missing > in fact. Try http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience .php
Yes, you have a very good point here.
However, we should occasionally allow us to look back at how far we have progressed and cheer. Linux has moved from weird minimalist fringe educational geek-test to a real operating system. I was impressed by the list of software the author had collected, and immediately downloaded several of these myself. This is just what coders and sysops need; a user's perspective on the very upsetting process of changing from one application to another.
Have a look at Linux Journal for February 2000, they compare KDE/GNOME, Applixware/StarOffice and lots of other desktop stuff.
As for the discussion of OSS/stability/price, I am running a 486 DX33 with a half-filled 350 MB hard drive. This is a stable 2.2.14 with KDE, VNC control and a few servers (bootp/dhcp). It is simply not possible for me to run current, up-to-date software with such flexibility and configurability (and for free!) on this hardware. DOS runs,maybe W95 would, W98 is not realistic and anything else (still supported) from Redmond is just not feasible.
If I can run a fast, efficient office-type application with good networking options on a 486 or a cheap laptop, I will be very satisfied. Check the minimum requirements for Win2K and see how many machines you own or use at work that can handle it. (There's a downloadable "Win 2K upgrade checker" from Microsoft if you want to know for sure if you can run it).
What the hell is wrong with this? No messages, and the link is bad. Roblimo, you've got some explaining to do.
clearly, the link was supposed to be to http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience .php
Use http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience.php instead. - Chad
I guess that means that we are starting to win?! What we probably need now is some AO-hell package to grab machines to go on the net... I guess.
got a new one?
lets not forget that the post has lost whatever value it had now that the link has been corrected, so therefore is doing us no service whatsoever and failing to admit it.
Why is there no discussion of application interoperability? Has nobody ever had to inter-connect (for example) a technical spreadsheet with a CAD program? We had to do exactly this, to let users describe the equipment they wanted to design, in an Excel spreadsheet, and then we had code to drive Visio to generate an accurate, to-scale drawing in Visio. We inported the Visio drawing into Excel, and generated design and calculation reports. No sneering now, this is a billion dollar company which develops & licenses ciritical, key technology that is responsible for producing the gas you put in your car (http://www.uop.com) Other examples : 1) using Excel as a front-end to a (very sophisticated) chemical processing simulation package. We drive the simulation from Excel, produce reports of simulation results using Excel. 2) using Excel as a front-end for industrial equipment monitoring, using COM objects written in C++ and Visual Basic. Where is Linux with application interoperability and component computing? You can recompile C++ projects each time you need a new component, but what about having a library of compiled components just waiting as DLL's to be called to duty? How is Linux going to meet the challenge of the massive (really massive) installed base of COM-enabled applications out there? Want to know what I am talking about? Check http://www.opcfoundation.org/ to get an idea of how heavy the installed base is. Want to get an idea of how many hugemajorgargantuan companies are behind this? Check out http://www.opcfoundation.org/OPC-MEM/memb.asp. i don't like Microsoft domination any more than you guys; however, I have been watching MS concepts take the real world by storm for the last 10 years. Next time you put gas in your cars, know that if COM and ActiveX were ripped from planet earth right now, your gasoline supply, electricity supply, water supply, food, chemicals and almost everything else you use 7 see would become in extremely short supply in very short order. MS does not dominate the actual manufacturing industry just yet. They have a death-hold on corporate desktops (ask me, i just came from one - checked out for a job designing back-ends of websites). Companies cannot control their supply-chains, cannot optimize, cannot maintain financial systems, or pay their people without COM. Ask people who actually develop software for corporations (not the desktop maintenance or helpdesk people, not the CIO who may not even have heard of COM). Ask the software engineers who write software like Oracle, PIMS (90% of world market for oil refinery optimization software see http://www.aspentech.com), Foxboro/Honeywell/FisherRosemount. It's over guys. This isn't about isolated word processors & adding a column of numbers in a mickey-mouse spreadsheet. People are automating and optimizing serious industrial systems with Excel (via COM), COM drives many softwares that are the reasons behind why you have food, electricity and water in your house. Linux for enterprise file/print servers, Linux for home users with web browsers & isolated wordprocessing image processing etc - OK, I see this. Industrial & scientific use with inter-operating applications, well . .. Linux will have to adopt and embrace something like COM to meet the challenge that MS has thrown down. Does Linux have something equivalent to ODBC?
see post 184 for comments
slappin dat fat ass beeeotch
see post 184.
"Maybe the writer wears suits, but he's hardly a typical non-tech user. As soon as he talks about compiling and vi v. emacs, he's disqualified."
Ahh, humanity. Whenever we're making a pro or con argument we let it all swing on a stereotype.
Anyone who wants to argue different I suggest you grab a dictionary first, then re-read what you type with the definition in mind.
No, apparently, they use BSD.
Microsoft {wrote | borrowed | stole | "innovated"} Multiplan as a competitor to Visicalc back around 1978 when The Evil Mister Gates was merely The Not Very Nice Mister Gates and was only a hundred-thousandaire.
"but that they got there first in establishing a relationship with the PC hardware manufacturers."
[raised eyebrow]
Oh is that what their calling it these days?
Wonder if off the record those PC hardware manufacturers would see it the same way everyone else apparently does?
"While I respect the opinions of the author of this article, I have to say that in my experience the apps for Linux just aren't up to the same caliber as those available for Windows yet."
/. readers think of a spell checker as "bloatware", but some of us like having a lot of options we can configure)."
Should be changed to read in my *opinion* the apps for Linux just aren't up to the same caliber...
" I mean, can you show me a mail client
as powerful and easy to use as Outlook Express? How about a word processor with the feature set of Word (and I know a lot of
1-Power(ful) is relative. I'm certain some of the old hands here can show you some tricks that Outlook can't touch. Easy to use, too subjective to have a viable discussion on.
2-Anyone else see the irony above? Hint think lots of options we can configure vs ease of use.
BTW Judging by the 'deficiencies' in some of the posts I've seen over the years. I wouldn't consider a spellchecker "bloatware" but essential equipment.
"I suppose this article in particular is just serving as a final straw to me. Lately I've noticed a really disturbing trend towards self-congratulation in the OSS movement, and especially on this particular discussion board.
Criticism of Linux is less and less welcome while this sort of wanking is on the upswing."
1-I think praise for what the developers have done is overdue.
2-Make a note to yourself most of the developers responsible for OSS and the fruits we now argue and debate over are not the ones, to borrow a word "wanking" here or anywere else for that matter.
"Look, sitting around patting ourselves on the back while ignoring the deficiancies in our software is the exact same behavior that we love to flame companies like Microsoft for. It feels good to convince ourselves that Linux is finally "there" and that anyone who can't use it is just an idiot. It feels good to think that even a "suit" can use it now. It feels good, but it's not true -- not yet."
1-Who is "ourselves" and who died and made them spokespeople?
2-Wheither it's true or not for the general populace shouldn't be the question. Wheither or not it's appropriate on a person by person basis should be
"..GIMP can hold a candle to Photoshop yet."
Depends on what your needs are, and by that criteria the candle should be lit.
"Flaming the "non-believers", trolling about "suits", preaching to the choir and pretending that flaws don't exist are all symptoms of this loss of focus."
Once again developers loosing focus or another example of the "ourselves" crowd being judge,jury, and death sentance.
"What I want to point out is that self-congradulation (which is how I view this article) is inherantly dangerous to the future of the paradigm from a Big Picture point of view. It should be recognized as such, and should be avoided whenever possible."
The glass is half empty.
There's always "mail". :)
The profit margin is not high when compared to other successful software companies. Their PE ratio is much lower, and EPS much higher, than companies like Sun, Cisco, and Oracle. And their fundamentals are MUCH better when compared to companies like Redhat or VA Linux, who aren't making any money. Constantly increasing prices? Like for what? Can you give examples? Not for Windows 9x you can't. 95, 98, and 98 SE all cost the same.
Well I just tried to upgrade from RH 6 to 6.1, NT loader was loading the OSes. The upgrade did not ASK where lilo was to be installed unlike 6.0. It just attached itself to the MBR. I thought my partitions were hosed til I fdisk /mbr to get the NT loader back. But I was so pissed RH didnt ask like usual I killed off Linux on my box for the time being. I mean jeezus, RH needs to at least ASK and give me the option like they used to. Til then no more damned Red Hat...might have to look into SuSE.
You may be the karma whore, but I am the lizard king.
Sorry, but Perl is nice but it is no equivalent.
I learned Perl first, I enjoy it, I really do. Perhaps I do not have exposure to it's latest and greatest and newer tools. But the IDE and debugging of VB is much better than any tool I used with Perl. I do like vi for editing but I got spoiled on Intellisense. I could put my reference material down...it's great.
commence flaming
First p0st!!!
The link to the story is messed up, it has a /a in the end.
that's nice that linux can do that and all...
but... i'm sure sco openserver/unixware will do it better with more apps... speaking of which, which one should i get??? im gonna get the cool free license!!!!! heard its real cool/better than linux.
The AC (who seems to be trolling, especially with that comment about Outlook and IE)
No. IE is a better product than Netscape. In my opinion, IE has consistently beaten Netscape in terms of speed and reliability since version 3.0, and would have won the browser war even if Microsoft hadn't given it away then embedded it in the O/S
I've used Netscape, on Linux, and even upgraded it to the latest version. But I got plain fed up of it crashing unexpectedly, or not displaying a page it had downloaded, or just taking weeks to do anything. So I went back to my W98 installation.
Yes. It's true. Microsoft in this corner have the better product. Linux machines make great web servers, but there is no really good web browser for Linux. Get over it.
onward to world domination
yeah that immature person would be you, karma whore
It's time to make a decision: World Domination or Elitist Bitching.
The average IQ of most people is 100 - 110.
The average manipulator (the word user has too many negative connotations in the UNIX world) of UNIX not only has an IQ of at least 130 but more likely 140. This is the equivalent of making all vehicles without power steering and power brakes, then bitching because those punks over there in the hospital ward are too weak to drive themselves in the ambulance.
IQ may be going up gradually, but without that old cliche "ease of use", Linux will not dominate desktops. That means a GUI that even a 100 IQ idiot can love and no assumptions that the user has even heard of vi, can rewrite a script or knows what a compiler does. Cars are not usually maintained by their drivers unless you are a high school student or a mechanic, nor should they be.
Most people don't want to deal with XON/XOFF or a complicated interface, which is why we have telephones and web browsers: most people "Just Want It To Work Without Reading The Manual"(TM).
The most common complaint with tech support is RTFM. Well, folks, that's not a bug, that's a feature! Most people will *never* learn to even read the manual, much less program, *NOR SHOULD THEY*.
Let's be very clear about this: UNIX is for smart people willing to learn. Most people are neither smart, nor willing to learn, and if we want that "World Domination", we better realize that a proper user interface will require us to design both for idiots and experts, clueless and clueful. Norton Utilities used to have a simple and an advanced series of menus. We need to do something more challenging: creating a user interface that allows idiots to be productive and have fun while allowing the clueful a way behind the curtain to manipulate the system in a more advanced fashion.
So, how about it?
The one thing I got out of this that was useful was the mention of Moneydance for personal finances. I had been looking for a good alternative to Quicken and it looks like I found it. Now if only Intuit would port TurboTax to Linux...
-1? Who gave Roblimo moderator access?
That would be MacOS X now...
Monitors don't have as much resolution as printers. If your monitor or your font is too small, WYSIWYG is impossible, even with Display Postscript.
You are missing the point. What takes a user three lines of VB code to do likely takes twenty lines of C code to do. For application extensions, C is no more or less powerful than VB, it just takes way longer to program and debug your code.
don't hate me because i'm first.
nor was it "News for Redundant, Bitchy, Hypocritical, Deluded Karma Whores"
Thank you, try again
Sure, you can stay with Windoze for now, but as more people clue up, do you want to be the last to leave a very large, and slowly sinking, ship?
a kiss.
Well, I have to take exception to your comments here. Afterall, what is 'doing one thing, and doing it well'? are you refering to checking mail, sending mail, and reading mail as being three separate tasks? If so, then your are out of step with what the majority of consumers and computer users want. That is to be able to check, send, and view mail from a single application. Outlook Express was far and away easier to install and configure than, for example, sendmail/fetchmail/mutt... although I only use these apps under Linux (I don't use win98 anymore) If the Unix philosophy is what you are striving for (namely one task, one program) then what place to programs like Star Office and Corel Office have to do with Unix philosophies? Star Office, while I love it dearly, cannot compete in speed to MS Office, and quite frankly, no application is yet to compare to MS Excel... It simply is the ruler of spreadsheet apps. I sincerely hope that MS comes to their senses someday and ports Excel to Linux. Either that, or some company develops a kick-ass program that can do all of the things that Excel can, but faster. Have you ever actually used Excel? or Outlook Express? If you can honestly state that mail programs under Linux are better and easier to use than OE, then I'll call you a liar! -just my opinion...
real men dont wear pansy suits
You are not a Linux GUI Czar.. You are, as has evidence has shown, a shill for MS.
You assumed RedHat would 'do the right thing'. I believe there are several warnings during the install that it will wipe everythign you have
No it doesn't. In fact it says that non-linux partitions will be preserved as long as I don't choose a server configuration. I didn't have to resize my NT partitions if that's what you mean - I had unpartitioned space on my drive for the Linux installation.
You are missing IE and Outlook express. What features, specifically? We have mail programs, and IE. IT sounds like, as the article said, you are stuck doing things the MS way.
IE is more stable, renders faster than Netscape, and has a more configurable interface. The screen doesn't keep flickering as you scroll it (I'm refering to the Linux version of Netscape here) - it's nauseating to read text that flickers as you scroll.
For one thing, NS messenger doesn't support more than one POP mail server. I like Outlook's interface, it works well (I can't quantify why exactly, but I like outlook's interface more than NS or eudora's interface). I don't mind using pine when I'm stuck at a text terminal, but I prefer something more visual when I'm using my personal computer (any recommendations?)
sco != licensing nazis. yeah.
Heh, sounds like you want something like SeriousVoodoo. Maybe it'll run under UAE?
I keep hearing about how the Amiga is dead and has no apps, and that I should see the writing on the wall. Then I look at what's available for Linux and Windoze and hear people spout opinions that Outlook is a good mailer rather than merely an average one?! That's when I realize that the Amiga is still the place to be, for now at least. The Amiga may have no future, but it still has the best present. I just hope my Amiga hardware doesn't die, because I don't know where I would find a replacement.
Yeah, I'll get a Athlon-Linux box for CPU-demanding things (e.g. Quake 3) but as a 'Net client (stuff like mail, news, and web browsing), the Amiga is still unrivaled.
Everyone knows that once KDE or GNOME offer applications with acceptable Word and Excel compatability - Windows is done for. And not a moment too soon. All of Windows' success can be attributed to these two file formats.
I'll bet you didn't even try to press at the LILO boot prompt, did you? If you did, you would have seen your precious NT partition there as a boot choice.
dumbass.
someone mod this up, pleeese
I never obtained a lilo boot prompt - just a screen of static at start up. I'm using ez-drive as well, so this probably contributed.
I did try to read the redhat online manuals, but I couldn't find anything that documentated what the installer would do when NT was present (I did read a howto on getting NT and linux to dual boot).
I'll take you suggestion and submit a bug report, thanks.
Gee....
Closer to 300 in reality.
http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience.php
With HTML rendering left - N3 was much more consistent in its rendering (remember the transparent GIF problems if it was a background image in the 16 bit version?) and was a clean trim app (4 was bloated misdirected tripe, argh!). IE didn't win until 4, and wasn't fast until 5. IE3 was shite.
My 40-year-old mother can't use Windows even with written directions. From all the tech support jokes, there seems to be a lot of people with that trouble. Does that mean there isn't a place in the desktop market for Micros~1 software either?
Perhaps the "mother metric" isn't the best measurment out there. There's a place for windows, AND a place for Linux, and a place for *BSD, and Be, and whatever else.
That's not a good analogy. A better one is "I want to drive, but I don't need to know how my car works." Which is totally valid. How does your microwave work? Do you still use it? How does your refrigerator work? Do you still use it? Do you scoff at those who actually use appliances without knowing how they work internally?
Yeah, more Suits!
grits?
31337
Broken Link: Try http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience.php Hey! I'm a suit and I love Linux. (I even have a dreaded MIS degree) I especially like it when I can fix something myself. (Like the script in RedHat 6.1 which points to "sound" instead of "soundcard"
Watch the Thing!
First Post!
Odd, I've had better experiences installing LILO on the MBR rather than the boot partition. LILO knows how to start the NT Boot Manager, but not vice versa, so putting LILO on the MBR makes sense.
Unmatched '"'.
BJH -- Naked and Petrified!
Jesus. This guy is a moron. ACs UNITE!
hah
so biased.
I haven't ever installed '98, so I don't know how it compares.
Using a boot disk and installing on a bare drive, the user must manually run FDISK and FORMAT. (The user must also be familiar with the COMMAND.COM environment and understand the concept of drive letters.) When I installed Win98, FORMAT crashed on me while "verifying" the disk. After that, the Setup program crashed on me several times, and never completely finished. The user is required to manually install drivers from another CD.
FIRST BIATCH!
You should upgrade your hardware to Packard-Bell.
Ahh, if styles could explain(and fix) things like random page breaks, or double spacing in the middle of a paragraph(that has no double spacing at all), neither of which we could get rid of. You would be my God!!! I would still dissagree that Word is more powerful. I've seen people try to use it for some things, which it (pardon the expresses) _really_ sucked at(e.g. legal work). But isn't that the beuty(sp?) of choice?
Well, It looks like Linux is finnaly making it into the Buisness desktop. =]
Huh?
here
Pancakes for all
MOO FUCKAZ
FIRST BIATCH!!!!!!
Nice read. One question though, do typical desktop users always post incorrect html code with their urls? -Charlie
You're right - Linux doesn't have the apps and hardware support for professional music production :( I still have to have a Win98 partition to do my modest composition work in Cubase. I would expect it's gonna be a while before we see pro music software ported to Linux/Unix. I remember when the Mac was the best music platform (maybe still is?) - it took a while for the Windows PC to get up to speed. Whether or not it happens on Linux, I don't know. I guess it will boil down to marketshare. My one nit with your post is the Linksys cards I have work fine in Linux. Best of luck.
The fact is Linux just isn't easy enough to use to be a desktop replacement. Even if the average user can install and (sort of) configure Red Hat to run on their hardware, they still don't know how to fix or change anything.
abiword ready? wtf are you smoking? its full of bugs... you should give me a couple months so i can fix some of them, then maybe it will be ready.
"...How does your microwave work? Do you still use it? How does your refrigerator work? Do you still use it? Do you scoff at those who actually use appliances without knowing how they work internally?"
Well if you do know a little about microwaves(a little learning), as opposed to knowing nothing (The I don't wanna know) then you'll know why you shouldn't put metal objects in a microwave. Or why breads get tough on the outside for example. With a little knowledge you can use (and get better results) from your microwave as opposed to it just being a coffee warmer. So the long and short is that the "I shouldn't, wouldn't, couldn't viewpoint" will come back to bit it's practicioner. One way is that eventually the world will be bi-polar. The ones who aren't afraid of exploring the world around them, and the ones who have been shielded ( by their own request?) from the world. One becoming dependent on the other. The have's and have-not's built by our fears. Enjoy the brave new world.
Roblimo once again forgets his HTML.
whoot
I think this qualifies as informative, don't you?
--
Sygnus 1
the link has an error in it
boring
That's all...
Botched link: correct link
Not Found
Slashdotted already??
First post fukkahs!
Why not read to see if you're redundant first? Really, it was pointed out enough. 2 other comments? You're not helping the SNR around here.
FIRST POST! FIRST POST!
What happened to all the messages here?
not being able to get to the article was a bit irritating - maybe it was /. 'd BUT the description of this story -> Sigurd Rinde, a typical desktop user seems a bit fishy already. What constitures "typical"? That's another one of those dangerous words, like "normal" or SANE... Gotta go try the URL again..
The correct one is http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience.php. For some reason your link had some odd tags in there.
A good read, even if we've all read thousands of stories much like this one.
really thought the link is borked up, there's an extra ' http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience.php/a
Maybe I have not met enough suits, but I've never met one that I believe would be willing to (learn / put up with) vi.
Is this what you were looking for?:
http://linuxtoday.com/stories/16220.html
if so, click here
remove the /a from the url
see ya soon :) ...troll...
What I've read is that lilo can't be installed on the mbr if you've NT installed. I forgot to mention that I'm running ez-drive, so lilo killed ez-drive as well, so this may have been the reason why things didn't work.
It most definitely does not work on my setup- the screen started snowing madly upon boot up. Linux does boot from the boot floppy, but NT can't boot up. It worked after I redid everything, using the custom installation and installing lilo on the boot partition instead (and then copying the boot image over to NT).
And then the Lord High Root sayeth: "Thou shalt always check the links in thy posts, and then check them again, lest though shouldst become naughty in my site" :-)
I believe the correct link is here
First post! Stupid trolls, I beat you!
"It is often good pratice to close a tag." --Book of the Wise HTML Programmer
yeah, right...
You need a > to end your /A HTML ref....
Can't be...I saw this an hour ago and still no replys? Tell me i'm wrong. ---the h is o
YeA yEah I GoT yO mOnKeY, BeEeEiTcH!!!
Has this been slashdotted,
or is the URL just wrong?
Cheers,
Maset
Incorporate some of the fixes... this shit ain't workin'.
And all this bitching about the link is improving the S/N ratio? Not likely...
Woohoo, you posted as an AC, big deal - Christ, get a life.
Christ, who really gives a shit about karma? It doesn't mean anything - get over it already, will ya?
blablablabal. you screwd up. no.
First post?!? :-)
Heh Right...
I see linux taking over...
no blue screens!
- A boss who is close to retirement and not willing to give up MS Word. Not only does he need to read my documents but wants the ability to edit them. Conversion back and forth just don't cut it.
- Hardware: I never got my old pcmcia cdrom to work... Now I have a nice HP 820 pcmcia cdrw, and again no drivers for this baby. Hooking up my old logitech pagescan scanner? Forget about it. B/W quickcam: someone has a driver that MIGHT work, but it is definitely not straightforward. Oh, I have a Linksys network card that worked like a charm in RH 6.0, but now I can't make an FTP install to RH 6.1... (it's a bug and they know about it since october)
- Software: sure there is a lot of nice stuff out there, but some software simply isn't available for Linux. E.g Statistical DOE software (Design Expert for Windows is very nice), data analysis software that just doesn't exist for Linux, and software that controls various analytical machines in the lab... Nope the manufacturer just doesn't see a market for that (yet?). Then there is Sigmaplot for Windows for making graphs. Keeping in mind that my boss needs to work with these files as well, I don't have that much choice. Sure gnuplot exists for both platforms, but that lacks options, and I don't think my boss would appreciate the lack of a nice point and click interface.
Why don't I make all those drivers (assuming I could get the specs) and programs myself? I am not that much of a programmer, I don't enjoy it, and I don't have the time for it. Like dozens of other people, I simply use computers as a tool to get a job done, and I use whatever is best to do that.
It would be great if I would never have to see a BSOD anymore, but for now, it wouldn't work for me as a desktop OS 100% of the time. No doubt there are many others that have similar considerations.
I assure you, I wasn't trolling; I didn't make up a weekend of agony. If you can tell me how I could have gotten NT to boot again, I'd love to hear it. The lilo prompt never appears, I just get a screen of static on boot up.
I actually did manage to restore NT from my rescue disks, but it would keep blue screening at the logon prompt. If it doesn't work once, try again: I tried the rescue disk procedure again, and this time, it would blue screen even before the logon prompt appears. As I mentioned in another post, I'm actually using ez-drive as well, so it was probably a combination of ez-drive and windows NT that made things go bad, although somebody on a newsgroup had told me that it would work with such a combination.
I read the redhat faq (4.16), which says specifically to install lilo on the boot partition and not on the mbr if NT is present. I thought it would be reasonable to assume that the installer would detect the presence of NT and do the right thing (the right thing defined as what redhat specifies in its own FAQ). -I decided not to go with the custom installation the first time because I wasn't familiar with how the partitions had to be set up.
The point here being that the Redhat installer is too stupid to do something that Redhat instructs in its own FAQ, with very destructive results (at least for a Linux newbie like me).
P.S And yes, Outlook and IE are much better than Netscape - I think this is pretty apparent to anyone who actually makes an objective comparison.
Well, I installed Debian 2.1 (slink) a few weeks ago, not using the extra Resource CD at all, and the base install was 48 megs, which didn't include even lynx or killall. I downloaded everything I needed with apt-get.
I always thought Outlook Express was bloated to the extent of being pretty much useless... I never considered it powerful, just a memory hog that doesn't do things as well as the stand alone applications.
For that exact reason it is very much against the UNIX philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well.
~Chris
Here is a scheme for doing one thing and doing it well:
checking mail, one thing.
sending mail, one thing.
reading mail, one thing.
GUI that holds it all together, one thing.
Other interfaces (graphical or not), other single things.
This way, the other interfaces can make use of the checking, sending, and reading mail programs (and of course there are others programs too) to use them as they like. For instance, an icon on your desktop could alert you to when you have mail, and an icon built into an application can too. No need to poll the POP server twice, just have the check for mail program poll it once and send the result to whatever programs want it.
Plus, so you don't like the GUI that came with the mail program... write your own without having to rewrite all of the single applications.
Ignore that lpr is a nightmare and realise that to print in UNIX just about any program calls lpr... they don't rewrite the printer drivers because the seperate program philosophy leads to heightened flexibility (develop a brand new mail protocol? Just rewrite send and don't worry about ther repercssions), better code, and more choice for the end user (GUIs and such).
Star Office, I believe, uses a lot of Java code... of course it's going to be slower, don't blame the philosophy.
Yes, I've used Excel and Outlook Express... Excel I like, but as for OE, I used Netscape Mail because it ran twice as fast and did everything anyway.
~Chris
You're missing one thing: the self-congratulating people usually aren't the ones who actually write the code. A real programmer always have something that itches him in his code.
.ifo files are one of the most perverted format I've ever played with :-)
So leave 'em out of our way bragging, and let's go back to the code.
OG.
PS: The
My (67-year-old) mother is happily using Windows 95. She uses CompuServe for email, and has yet to explore the Web--she thinks it would be more complication than she has time to put up with.
My 61-year-old mother-in-law uses Windows, and complains about random crashes. If I was physically closer to her and had the time, I'd consider setting her up with Linux. The larger the market share for Linux and thus the more general support there is available for novice users, the easier the transition to Linux is.
The "typical" user turns off his computer, but leaves the monitor on--and thinks he's saving energy.
All the monitors I use on a regular basis go into a low-energy sleep mode when the computer is turned off.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
With an RPM file, you can see where its going to go, but virtually all RPM's can't be relocated. If you wan't the RPM to be installed elsewhere, you need to exract and install the files manually.
John
John_Chalisque
(Hypothetically speaking), since you have the imaging architecture in place for printing the file, why not just use that to obtain a WYSIWYYG display??
(This is what NeXT and anything DPS driven was able to do, and what, for similar reasons, the new MacOS X is able to do -- there is a single imaging model that is powerful enough for handling both dislplay and printing. X11 just doesn't cut it in this respect (drawing support that is on par with Windows 2, no useable scalable font support...)
John
John_Chalisque
Correction: typical user nowdays doesn't know what the heck "netscape" is. You should ask "what icon do you see in the top left" to say what browser he's using.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Well, I agree that Linux desktop is not for everyone. But I, as a programmer, have almost no problem at setup of Linux desktop nowdays. Put in YourFavoriteDistro, select GNOME/KDE and in an hour you have working desktop system.
As for NT - just spent 3 days 3 hours each trying to install NT on 10G disk. Still no success.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
As if... It didn't install neither on 4G, nor on 2G, neither with own NTFS, nor with pre-formatted FAT16 partition. And this seems to be well-known problem - I asked people, and they said they had similiar trouble and recomended me to byte-copy existing NT partition. And this was the only way to make it working.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Go to www.perl.com and browse the CPAN module listing. I know there are some graphing modules, but I'm not quite sure about the math functions. I wouldn't be surprised if more of the common ones were there.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Have you checked out freshmeat to search for any graphing tools? Or even checked out http://www.redhat.com/appindex/MathScienc e/ for opensource or commercial applications? While they certainly aren't free, MatLab or Mathematica should be able to do anything that Excel can and much, much more.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Though it might be possible to have some sort of wizard which would attempt to guess what the vb was doing and suggest some starbasic to convert it into, that might be possible, but it would be very difficult I imagine
Finally staroffice could just attempt to import in the vba as starbasic comments and allow you to manually convert it over, not a perfect solution by any means but it might be worthwhile for users ?
C.
I sometimes write stuff
Staroffice has starbasic, which is a vbalike basic based scripting language. It is supposedly of equal power and flexibilty to vba. So I suppose that answers that question fully. In effect there is a vba equivalent right now for linux. Though I havn't personally used starbasic or know much abount it yet. C.
I sometimes write stuff
The desktop metaphor is dead. Today's children use computers before they have desks.
Anyway here is an article on possible UI alternatives from Jacob Nielsen: The Anti-Mac Interface.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
nt
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
A favorable review of the Linux desktop, finally someone with a clue saying that we don't need 1e-6soft Office or anything...
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Oh, but SVG will kick VML's butt. Once they get the standard (er, Recommendation) agreed. It's actually supported by multiple vendors.
If you're sitting all alone in your home you are free to use whatever applications you want to do whatever you want. That's not the question. The real issue is how do you get something like this deployed in suit-world and how do you support it? The problem we stumble over again and again is support & commonality. You have to deploy something that won't break very easily or is easy to fix if it does and like it or not you have to protect folks from their own ability to break or change something. How would we recover from the people who routinely power off the machine while it's running just because that's what they do and they're never going to change. Next - we're still in the dancing bear stage. It's not how well, it's that it dances at all. Now folks have all sorts of expectations about what their desktop @ work should do: instant messaging, multimedia, hot swap.... that you can't take away from them just because Linux can't support it yet . Yes these are great strides but the first time some PHB can't read somebody else's Powerpoint presentation with embedded audio and OLE objects then you just look like an idiot who overpromised something.
I have a tip, never assume anything in computing. ;)
As for IE and outlook, try mozilla and balsa. However, pine + fetchmail is so slim and trim you may like it although it's curses based... the main thing is that you should try all the flavors out there and you'll soon find NT's one size fits all lacks the personallity of niche/pet linux software. Trust me, there is a window manger, editor, etc for every taste. =)
Good luck with linux!
Quite honestly, why?! Why does everyone who posted on this thread insist that Linux must be for the masses, that my grandmother must be able to use it, and that it must supplant every other operating environment? What is the gain?
Don't get me wrong. I like UNIX systems. I use *BSD on my servers, I use Linux on my desktop, and I am probably going to spend some time playing with HURD in the near future. But I honestly don't see why we need to convert the masses.
Do you think the masses give a damn about conceptual theory like Open Source (or Free Software or whatever you want to call it)? No! I guarantee that if you talk to the average buyer at CompUSA, they will have no idea that they are paying for Windows 95/98/2000 separately from the computer. I have yet to see a single vendor (barring on-line retailers) separately say to the customer, ``oh yeah, that laptop is $2500, and $150 of that goes to Microsoft.'' So the argument that Linux is ``free'' holds not water, not only from the ideological point of view, but from the practical point of view of the consumer, as well.
So my question is, why cast pearls before swine? You hopefully all realize that we use Linux because it is technologically superior, and it makes our needs different from the needs of the average user, because the average user does not give a damn about technological superiority. For the techie crowd, the UNIX-based environment already offers everything that Windows ever did, and we like it better. (I've been typesetting documents in (La)TeX for years, I can also use to make slides, there were spreadsheets like oleo for years, databases are taken care of by MySQL, Postgre, or Sybase and Oracle if you're willing to pay...) For John Q. User, Windows is exactly what the doctor ordered.
The UNIX user interface right now is exactly what it should be. A good command line, the best of any OS that I have ever seen, and a damn good window system (X). That's really all that's necessary---a window system. Let's face it: I'm sure most UNIX users mainly use X to have a bunch of xterms on our displays. I toss GNOME in for the extra eye-candy and to have a better mail notify program than xbiff around. I quite honestly don't give a damn about drag-and-drop and all the other excess baggage that people seem to be clamoring for ``so my mother can use it.''
We all think we are an elite crowd because we are UNIX users. So why the blazes are so many of us trying so desperately to change that?
The real world is starting to figure out how much can be done without paying $30 -$infinite licensing fees to Microsoft and still be able to interact with almost anybody and do just about everything better. All thanks to one suit who took the time to figure it out.
Onward...
I remember installing Linux for the first time in November 1998, it was slackware 3.6 and I downloaded the whole thing. It took me several months (I'll admit, I was a NEWBIE) to get X working properly, partly because there weren't any drivers for the i740 and because I was clueless. Over the past year I've learned a lot by doing it the hard way- configuring printer support, getting sound working (I bought an sblive), compiling new software. Now I can safely say I'm far from a beginner (though no expert). And still, what I praise Linux for is it's true beauty: long-tested, open source, quality programs such as latex, gimp, vi/emacs, gcc, perl, and unix utilities.
Now none of the configuration troubles I went through are needed- linux has progressed tremendously. KDE/Gnome (though now I use IceWM with no DE), the kernel, abiword, gnumeric, xmms. Hopefully soon we'll get a really good web browser (I'm sick of typing killall -9 netscape every 30 minutes) and DVD support.
However, I hope with Linux in the future you will still have a choice of what software you can run. Just in the last month I've discovered LaTeX, and being a long-time html coder, it was easy to pick up, and now I see it as a tremendous improvement to the wordprocessor philosophy. Now I can do all of my reports/letters in latex, vi, aspell (much better than ispell, btw), with some nice mp3s in the background, much faster than with windows. I'm also learning bash programming and soon perl/c. But anyway, I'll admit, forcing the idea of Linux on people just doesn't work. Linux is an OS for people with higher expectations of their computers (and no billy, crashing four times a day with just a simple file server running and a few apps IS unacceptable). I know I'm beginning to sound somewhat corny, but thank you everyone who made this all possible- the linux kernel hackers, kde/gnome projects, and even the thousands of people who write 0.1 software on freshmeat. I really like what Linux is today, and it's great to see an article with an average user embracing it.
Linux: Long live the source code.
What's really sad is that I have no idea what you were trying to say in that post. It doesn't parse - why don't you try reading your own posts before hitting that "Submit" button, huh?
"Spew more venom"? Yeah, right.
Look, I posted the link - big deal. Did it really require a dozen trolls to come out of the woodwork and jump all over me for it? No. Did it require anal-retentives like yourself to start counting links? No.
Just let it pass on by, and GET OVER IT ALREADY.
Read my post next time. I said "two other comments that...contain the correct link", not two other posts that refer to the broken link.
Sue me. I'm not the one that moderated it with "Informative", so what are you bitching at me for?
Strange, last time I looked this wasn't "News for Anonymous Cowards"...
Nice to see that there's still some reasonably mature people left on
You couldn't even say "myself" right, so I don't know what you're crowing about...
Try here.
Actually, you can get the NT Boot Manager to start LILO, if you try. You have to grab the first block from the partition and store it as a file under NT - see the NT+Linux HOWTO for details. I've tried it, and it works quite well (a pain in the ass after recompiling the kernel, though.)
Actually, ever heard of VisiCalc? That was the Apple II's killer app, prior to the IBM PC's appearance. Many people ran their businesses on Apple II's for quite some time thanks to that one application. I think that sentence just goes to show how old school he his. In a good way. He's seen apps before the advent of Microsoft, during Microsofts reign, and is now looking onward.
Just wanted to point out that 40% includes R&D. That's the margin that the DOJ repeatedly points to, and that's the same figure that Microsoft states in their conference calls when reporting financials. It's way over and above any other company in the industry, just about.
IMHO, it's all in the mentality of the person. WinXX is good for someone who wants to use a computer as an appliance, while Linux is great for someone who wants to learn what makes a computer tick, and how to use it effectively.
Hell, I learned more about computing in my first 8 months of using Linux than I had in the first 5 years of my computer use. And I'm better for it.
You have way more power in Linux. Most of the apps are open source. Why even bother with a scripting language, use C and fix the app itself. More power and speed. And fame too, if you add something really useful.
When Windows 95 was being reviewed one of the Microsoft project leaders defined a very simple metric: "can my mother use this?"
My mother asked me what linux distribution would be easiest to give a try.
Some people seems to assume that every user out there is an idiot. It isn't so bad, because most of the "idiots" know a helpful kid or something, and it all works out.
Those who can't do the simplest things in linux can't use the control panel in windows <I>at all</I> either. And registry editing is a black art they haven't heard about. So they get help - by paying or relying on "the guy in the office who knows about computers". I have seen the sort - he didn't believe he had a "start button". Uh - all I have is this accounting package...
So what if linux becomes mainstream? No problem for computer experts. The self-learned hobbyists will learn a new os. The bright kids who knows a few trick will know a few linux tricks instead. And the truely dumb will buy everything preinstalled and bring the computer to the shop in order to have a new printer connected, like he does today with windows. Or ask one of those bright kids for help, if he knows one.
Even suits have hobbies. Some play golf. This one seems to have a computer hobby. Unusual perhaps, but being a geek suit is possible - doing suit work for money while also knowing computers.
And what's so strange about ditching powerpoint? He got rid of it even before trying linux. HTML takes time to learn, but so does powerpoint. Suit types aren't born with powerpoint knowledge either.
Is Linux's customizability, especially in the GUI arena, a detriment for the average PC user, or is this just a hurdle people will eventually understand?
Not a problem. Remember the changes dos->win3.0 and win3.1->win95? Very different indeed. People were confused for a while, and recovered. A change to linux isn't bigger than that, provided that the user don't have to install himself. And you can get the close button in the same place as MS, pick the correct distribution or have the shop customize it in that direction. People use linux at work (in spite of the company "standardizing" on MS) and don't get in trouble as the boss don't see the difference when he walks by.
Linux isn't going to replace Windows in the near future to the extent that we would like it to, and the answer is simple: most people who use computers for everyday tasks simply don't care how productive it is, by that I mean that they don't care enough to learn something new. It's pretty pathetic actually.
Judging by the amount of suits at Linuxworld last week... I would have to say that you are wrong.
_joshua_
If you want to misunderstand me, please do it correctly. :-)
I don't believe that WYSIWYG is the best way to present information when you are using it. Maybe before you print it, but not while you are working with it.
Take a look at Engelbarts sessions at http://stanford- online.stanford.edu/engelbart/colloquium/main.html
Linux/GNU and the whole Open Source phenomena is for me one of the most interesting socioeconomic experiments ever! It certainly hints towards (or at least gives ideas about) where the society may go - in particular regarding work, organisations and intellectual properties.
I thought that line was interesting. I hadn't really thought about Linux and Open Source in that way. Will cooperation and sharing become dominant social attitudes in the future as it gets easier and easier to meet our basic needs? Is the natural progression of knowledge from hoarding and secrecy to openness and teamwork? For example, early mathematical discoveries were seriously protected, i.e. people got killed for revealing them. Now you can go on the internet and download preprints for free from around the world.
Maybe the free software movement is just a small taste of things to come. Maybe its about more than just software.
-Nathan Whitehead
Does PERL and TCl/Tk give you access to numerical functions of some pre-existing mathmatical functions (as found in a spreadsheet)? Does it have the ability to perform graphs similar (again) to what is in a spreadsheet? I ask only because I do not know. If they do, then maybe it is a viable alternative. I just don't have time to reinvent the wheel with my current job. I would imagine that PERL and TCl/Tk are fairly simple languages too (I had to teach myself VB, but I'm by no means a programer (although I've got some pretty big VB programs now)).
Thanks for the info!
I did try the starbasic. It has been a while since I tried it but I seem to remember it very lacking. I tried to record a macro that involved many of the things I tend to do in my VB macros (I typically record first and then go back through and modify to my liking (when that is an option)), and I seem to remember it just leaving most of it out (of the macro). I assumed that meant that the macro language did not support those options.
This was within the last 3 or so months, if someone has information to the contrary regarding a newer version, please let me know! Also, does starbasic convert over VB programs?
the HTML for the link is missing a ">".
The path to acceptance on the desktop is through the average desktop user, and that means interoperability. Microsoft and company have done an excellent job of using proprietary file formats and protocols to obfuscate their products. This works well against anybody who wants to try to build a product that interoperates with MS software while competing with it. It also guarantees upgrade revenue. Sort of the same idea as switching around the exercises in a textbook and releasing it as a "new edition". They're not going to stop doing it for a while, because it makes them money.
Harsh as that environment is, it's the environment we currently exist in. People are going to keep sending email as Word attachments for at least a while longer, and they may or may not understand what you mean when you try to explain why they shouldn't. Just remember that eventually, people are going to realize that there was NO reason for them to have problems opening documents that they wrote at work on their home computers, except bad engineering (and possible greed).
Even if Linux never takes the desktop, people will eventually realize that software should be have much better quality and things will change. The change is in the wind, and Linux is part of that.
"Those who will not reason are bigots, those who cannot are fools, and
those who dare not are slaves." --George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824)
"Doctor who?" --The Doctor
Read The Friendly Article before you begin spouting off. This suit actually had a positive encounter with linux./P
Actually, it is just the server install that wastes the entire hard drive. All of the workstation prepackaged installs simply waste your existing linux partitions.
The AC (who seems to be trolling, especially with that comment about Outlook and IE) is complaining about NT beeing whiped because he expected lilo to be installed "on the boot partition instead of the mbr". In other words, the NT partitions were not destroyed, he just had to RTFM and figure out how to boot NT (aside from with his rescue disks).
While he may have wanted to use the NT bootloader to boot linux (which is possible), it is far from obvious that that is "the right thing" for the installer to set up his machine to do. A person may want to use the (more flexible) LILO boot loader to bring up the NT boot loader, instead of having NT boot linux. Either configuration is possible, in fact I once had a machine set up both ways: My initial LILO prompt had three options:
- linux
- be
- nt
If you selected nt, the NT boot loader would let you select between- Win98
- Nt4
- NT4 (SVGA mode)
- NT5 Beta
- Linux
One last escape option before entering the windows world.I'm sorry I suggested you might be trolling (on the other hand, I'm glad I posted instead of vaugely moderating.
I misparsed your statement I'm missing IE and Outlook Express to mean that you expected IE and Outlook Express to be included with RedHat linux. Given the tone and content of the rest of your message (and the other messages claimed by you), I should not have made this mistake.
I agree, Outlook and IE are much better than NS. At work, IE is my second browser (after Mozilla, of course). IE5 is definitely superior to the Netscape 4.x series.
I'm sorry to hear that you had problems with the LILO prompt coming up. When I was setting up my machine with NT and linux, I didn;t have that problem (then again, no ez-drive). The only times I've had trouble with the LILO prompt is when I used partition magik to move my boot partition, then rebooted. Glad I had my rescue disk!
Again, sorry about the troll comment. Completely my fault.
I agree, this man does not qualify as 'Average Joe' (no offense to any Joes out there). This guy knows what network hardware he has ... does your secretary know that?
In my experience with customer support in the 'average' world, people don't even know what HTML is, and don't care about Postscript etc.
Whilst there are applications out there that can substitute the Windows desktop, to set up this environment initially still takes more than the 'average' user. Once the machine is set up, -then- perhaps a truly 'average' user could get away with it.
There is still work to be done in the base "ease of use and installation" category.
Ok, I'll correct you. It was Software Arts, Inc.
See http://www.bricklin.com/history/sai.htm for details.
It was eventually sold to Lotus, who decided not to continue publishing it.
-- Ryan Watkins vamp@vamp.org http://www.vamp.org/
Something programmers should study is Human Interface Design Guidelines. A lot of general principles are discussed. Why, for instance, sacrificing one pixel border of GNOME's start button would speed up the things drastically. Or binding the main menu to a mouse click on a desktop (alá AfterStep).
UNIX interface is notorious for user un-friendliness. AfterStep appears to be the fastest (in human terms) but still the default button positions are not perfect (close and minimize/maximize are too close together). Looks / feels save the situation somewhat.
What I would look for would be a correct (in a sense the above guidelines imply) user interface as a *default*.
God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ --1Thes5:9
This is why I all Linux distributions fail miserably for non-techie users.
But if you look at Windows, its too complicated too.
There are actually some versions of NT (earlier ones perhaps?) that will just crash during bootup if booted from at least some versions of LILO. This doesn't seem to be an issue anymore (likely either NT or LILO was fixed in some way) but it used to be a major hassle.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Yep, there is: Emacs Lisp.
OK, let's see, when did the Apple ][ come out? 1976/7? It was basically gone when the Mac came out - 1984.
That means that this so called typical end user has been using a desktop computer since at least 1984, or 16 years. On top of that, if you were using an Apple ][ you were either working for a small company that computerized EARLY (Pre 1980) or didn't follow the IBM PC trend, OR you bought the computer yourself. Any of these situations puts you in an self selected group of power users. This is NOT a typical desktop user.
You know all those "Joke" stories we hear about "End users". Part of what makes jokes funny is that the must have an element of truth
The average programmer is 2 standard deviations higher in intelligence than the "average" person. We literally can't understand why people don't get it.
Just remember, the average user finds the task of installing even Win9x well above their heads, and if anything goes wrong at all with their computer, needs help.
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Didn't Microsoft write Visicalc? Correct me if I'm wrong.
Hands in my pocket
With NetBSD or OpenBSD, you'll know exactly what's installed- the default installs are tiny. And since almost all utilities are BSD-derived, configuration files are consistently organized and easy to find. Maybe give one of those OSes a shot.
Hands in my pocket
I must've been thinking of Multiplan (which apparently they did write from scratch, just like Microsoft BASIC).
Hands in my pocket
Ok, I'm a long time Linux advocate, and if you don't believe me, just check out my previous posts. But last night was a Nightmare. But I do claim that this is largely my own fault.
/usr/bin and /usr/lib and other directories were missing! But the 'df' showed that the /usr partition was almost full. When I checked the total file size (with ls -Rla and an awk script) it didn't match up. It seemed that it messed up the file inodes or something.
/usr partition. After spending several hours installing rpms by hand (reminds me of my old slackware days) I still don't have text when I bring up X. My xterm is missing the word "xterm" where it should be. And the menues are ok until a run the mouse over them, and then the text goes away?
With a RedHat 6.1 CD I received at LinuxWorld, I tried to upgrade my current 6.0. But since I have a Quad boot (Slackware/Redhat/Win95/NT) and a NTFS partition, the upgrade died on the scanning. I checked with bugzilla, and it is known that the upgrade doesn't work if you have an NTFS partition. I still wanted to install from the CD so I rebooted and continued.
After one attempt, I didn't have enough diskspace for my custom install, so I went back an chose not to have KDE (I'm more a GNOME person). Then I let the installation go. It seemed to work fine, but after I rebooted, I had a ton of error messages. It seems that my
So I got brave and reformated the
I've been using Linux for a few years now, and if this is bothering me, I can't imagine what a newbie would do.
PS. If anyone knows how to fix the xterm problem, please let me know. I've installed every font I can think of. Is there something that I'm missing?
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
Note: this is NOT a flame.
-------
CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I would absolutely love to have a really good Outlook Express clone. Why, you ask? Well, here's my setup:
POP Server: I just want to be able to enter my pop3 server, username, and password. Bang! I can download my mail into a nice, graphical inbox folder.
SMTP: Again, enter my smtp server, and there ya go, you can send e-mail.
Auto-view window: click on a message and read it, press a few hotkeys to delete it or move to it's respective folder.
**Graphical** filters: Click on a menu option, click "add new filter" use dialog boxes and scroll-down menus to enter, e.g. "When" "Sender" "contains" "spam" "move to" "/dev/null... oops, I meant Trash"
Simple address book: Just name, alias, and e-mail address... only have to type in the alias, and there ya go. As an optional bonus, perhaps it could have an auto-complete feature for e-mail addresses I've previously sent to.
And maybe a built-in usenet client on the side, though Pan pretty much fills this niche for me.
There ya go, e-mail is ready.
Now, show me a currently available mail client for linux that can do all that without involving a cryptic (for a complete newbie like me) interface like Sendmail, and I'll be eternally grateful. Until then, I'll stick with Netscape Mail.
Just a simple, "Thanks!"
I think someone needs to add a > to the end of that /a tag. dontchathink?
Windows installs perfectly most times, even on laptops. It detects most hardware.
My experience with trying to get a functioning Linux/X system up and running is as follows:
Micron Pentium laptop with 16 MB:
Red Hat 5.2, Suse 5.2 -- console worked but no X;
TurboLinux 4 -- X and Console worked after configuring.
IBM Aptiva K-2 desktop w/ 32 MB -- Suse 6.3 worked perfectly and recognized my modem AFTER I bought one of the supported modems from the approved hardware list SUSE maintains.
COMPUSA P2 Laptop w/ 128 MB --
TurboLinux 4 would not install at all;
DragonLinux 8 beta 1 (Slackware derivative) installed except that TinyX displayed multiple images of the same screen. Cursor would appear and reappear.
Suse 6.3 does not run X
Caldera 1.3 -- still working on it.
I would be the first to admit that I am probably doing something wrong in every case, but still, my mother is not going to be using Linux on her laptop anytime soon.
Marjo Wycam, Master of the Programming Arts
Lets see:
PERL (already mentioned).
TCl/Tk should do as well. (Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong. Just a TCl/Tk newbie)
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
Or the reference to slashdot on the first line. It looks to me like this article was very much a lets-see-how-long-it-takes-to-get-slashdotted article.
; }return(0);}
just my $0.02 (add GST if in Canada)
#include <signal.h> \ #include <stdlib.h> \ int main(void){signal(ABRT,SIGIGN);while(1){abort(-1)
OFTC: By the community, for the community
Sorry, worng answer. If you RTFM you'll notice that the RH prepackaged installs waste everything on the disk and then set up the partitions to cover the entire disk. If you had win/BE partitions they'd be gone unless you did a custom install.
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
I swear this is my first time and I'll never do it again
I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus
Linux is a splendid operating system for advanded computer users who understand how their systems work and want to control it better. Linux has yet to replace Windows for playing 3d games of high quality (OpenGL).
Linux is however a good operating system for a first time user who is not use to any particular system and an experienced user who understands the under lining of their computer. Linux is still just slightly short of replacing Windows in every area in my opinion.
abstraction is 2 keep the weak from knowing the truth. show your source code && always seek the knowledge within
There are already tons of -free- Suitware apps available. StarOffice is nice, but quite heavy (takes hours to startup, and I don't like 150 Megs installs on my tiny 600 Meg equipped laptop); KOffice is moving in the right direction. And some apps like KOrganizer are very impressive. And wasn't Corel's beta Office suite free to download ?
Only one thing am I missing : I have not yet found a decent project management tool. KProject has not moved along since almost 2 years, and Xopps is too leightweighted. If you happen to know one, please let me know.
Kristof
Well this guy seems to be almost right on the mark. Honestly, if my 77 year old Mom can use Linux to send her distant relatives, anyone can. Software reaches a point where it really doesn't matter what OS it is on. As long as it does what it is supposed to, and does it well, an OS will suffice for the majority of people.
Repeat after me MS copies, copies, copies, copies, copies, copies. Read your history books. Hmm... No one writes history books about consumer products, only wars, fancy that...
Bottom line: when MS says Linux is only good for Word Processing it's because that's all they know considering they keep copying, copying, copying, copying, copying.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Microsoft just dumped the sales responsibility to the hardware makers.
Gah I hate hearing the biggest noninnovator (DirectX was stolen like all else) get credit. But I a coder not a flamer. hehe...
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Your in Christ,
</i>
Sorry, but I don't own an "in Christ". What is it?
This is an article that will ease the mind of people who are intimidated by the techniness of linux even _before_ trying it. Of course, the author sounded slightly more technologically aware than a regular suit (able to set up home network, tried vmware, started with Apple II and not a M$ junk, knows html, etc. ) and I am sure he had problems setting some sticky stuff up. But, the overall result is, you end up with even better tools at your disposable. .docs suck. all hail ASCII.
once attempted, never to be tried again
About time... what Linux needs to truly take off is support from the average desktop user, not just the techies and power users. I just hope we see more favorable reviews from "average" people and that these reviews encourage other "average" users to run Linux on their PC. It's important to recognize that Linux isn't just a server OS, it can work well as an office platform too.
I hope reviews like this will dispel the intimidation that is keeping the average PC user from even trying out Linux. And perhaps an increased user base will encourage more badly needed software support... definitely a good thing.
Oh and by the way, the link is broke. try this
At the last BLU meeting I attended, someone said the desktop queston (whether Linux will ever replace Windows) was irrelevant. I can't help but disagree.
I've been running Mandrake 6.0 since November '99. I've found software to do everything I used to do with Windows except file my taxes (WebTurbotax doesn't like my browser). The only things I miss from Windows are certain plugins (like Quicktime and Shockwave). Plus, my printer(an Okidata) and ex-modem aren't Linux compatible.
Promoting Linux for non-techies is a good thing. I'm a techie, and I'm still learning a lot. My sister, who is definitely not a techie and uses my computer for web surfing, is getting the hang of Linux. It does what she wants it to (except printing), and she's happy.
As far as using computers as an "appliance", both BeOS and Linux are being used in "web appliances" . With their ease of use compared with Linux's stability, Linux may come out on top in a few years.
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
I was all set to rip this guy (NOT a typical user, crediblity shot as soon as he said any WP under Linux is comparable to Office, etc, etc), but Slashdotters have beat me to it. Bravo!
And just when I was just about convinced that any positive article about Linux would get a huge pass by the majority of the Slashdot population.
My faith in geekdom is restored. :)
--
Follow me
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools
Until Linux gets a standard component architecture going, it will always lag on the desktop. There is no integration.
I'm still working on a clever footer.
I have the full overview in a 'left side' frame. What happens during slide five? Somebody has a question that you are about to answer in slide 14. I 'click' forward to 14 and then back again. (try that in Powerpoint).
OK, I will.
1. Start powerpoint
2. Add some slides
3. Click from slide 5 to 14 in the left pane and then back again
Granted, the above is using powerpoint 2000 and I don't know if that's what he was using. But I do get tired of people claiming a product (microsoft or not microsoft) doesn't have a feature when it really does.
Use citrix terminal client to a server that has outlook on it. Or use Netscape to access your exchange server via Outlook Web Access. Both options of course rely on your admin to set them up for you...
I think "invested" is the key word. I've found that the time I
spend setting up Linux really is an investment, in that I get
back more than I put in. It's true that setting up a desktop
machine a couple years ago took a lot of effort; but nowadays,
with a modern distribution (I'm using SuSE 6.2), it's really
fairly effortless.
Now, I haven't had a whole lot of trouble with Windows95
(which I use at home for playing games) either, but it has
what I consider a much more irritating way to waste my
time: application bloat. It's rare to install even the simplest
Windows program without getting a good half-dozen
entries filling up the "Start" menu. And often, the software
that you need to run a new piece of hardware, like my
scanner, installs a couple dozen entries that are mostly
useless. Sure, you can delete the excess; but it's sometimes
tricky to figure out what's safe to delete.
My other big gripe with Windows apps. is that they often
install big parts of themselves to my nearly full C: drive,
even when I tell them not to. At least with an RPM file, I
can see in advance where it's going to go.
Sometimes they run at that resolution because at least one of
the crappy Windows programs they bought doesn't run
otherwise. This includes the typing program we got a couple
weeks ago, which displays a black screen if you aren't set
to 256 colors.
Back to the topic, I think a typical Windows user would do just
fine with a pre-installed Linux system, especially if he wasn't
told the 'root' password.
Ever eavsdrop on a couple "suits" in a computer store? Usually,
I hear one recommending the best Windows "fixit" program for
the other to waste money on.
So the other day, I was almost shocked when I walked down
the software aisle at Office Depot, and heard a woman (in a
suit) explaining the differences amongst various Linux distros.
to a fellow.
There have there have been a number of different philosaphies over the years which have threatened it, usually at a more intense level, from Communism through to restablishing Barter. I see OSS in just the same light. The difference is, this time, a worldwide following, a (generally speaking) peaceful purpose, and the ability for OSS models to greatly out-perform a commercial or closed one.
Ancient Wiccan Tradition : An It Harm None, Party Like Wyld Thang
This is interesting. I'm part of a LUG and most of linux users I know are computer geeks or student in a computer related field. I think that making linux more accessible to people that doesn't know what a partition is is great and it doesn't make linux less powerful neither than versatile. Please don't start a dump KDE vs Gnome debate on this...
For the typical user as you describe, I would argue windows is _certainly_ not ready for consumption. The people that are oblivious to resolution (which is a great example) have _no_ idea how to cope with the things windows does, even when it works relatively properly. Not a sniff. I've seen it, I've dealt with it a lot. Even with hewlett packard's make-it-easy software, a true newbie (or even someone that's used a machine at work for a while) will have a helluva time installing drivers...it's amazingly inconsistent how you _actually_ get drivers to work.
Sure, usually you can just plug something in and insert a disk..and I think every user should know how to do that (or equivalent sort of thing) under any OS. But some people just have no time/interest/ability to learn that. I'm a windows user, and extremely comfortable in my environment. I've tried linux (probably installed it 20 times) and every time I have a megabig problem during install, and I just don't have a tolerance for it. My win98 is "rock solid" for a windows machine -- it crashes perhaps once a week, which is better than I saw during _several_ of my linux installs.
And moreover, a linux install that lets me ignore everything and just let the installer do everything installs an amazingly bloated system. Way more than my current win9x system. And there's no way to trim it down that's readily visible without flipping through every package.
So there's my linux wishlist, I guess. I don't need a gui - I was a DOS boy for a long time. I need to know what I have on my system, where it is, how to change it. And there just doesn't seem to be a resource for me to learn that...It's perhaps a flaw in the decentralized nature of linux development.
There's some thoughts.
-Rob Ewaschuk
help should be helpful above all. Many help files, especially those of the context sensitive kind, contain a lot of help on the obvious things (an explanation of the GUI) rather than any help on functionality of the app in question. I usually prefer a well organized pdf-file or a man-page over the offered context sensitive help, where in the best case I have to check 5 boxes and toggle a similar number of ok-buttons, before I get close to what I want to know. In the worst case the things I want to know about are not in the context sensitive help at all, and I have to look for the manual anyway (provided it exists).
Maybe the writer wears suits, but he's hardly a typical non-tech user. As soon as he talks about compiling and vi v. emacs, he's disqualified.
Gee, I'm a suit, a middle-aged lawyer suit fer chrissakes, but I've been known to fool around with vi and emacs.
A lot of posts on this story take the attitude that this guy can't be representative, that the "average" suit wouldn't know that emacs has little to do with a Mac, etc. That may be true, but while I make no claim to being a spokesmodel for the entire suitworld, let me tell you that the suits are paying a lot more attention to Linux now than they were even 10 months ago, let alone a few years ago. This type of article won't convince millions of suits to switch, but as I see how suits react to Linux on various suitlists I'm on, I can be fairly sure that it will influence a few. Then those influence some more, and some more
Some here don't want the suits to invade the Linux world, and that's fine. But for those who would prefer that The Word of Linux be spread, rather than getting all elitist about it, articles like this one do help.
And the fact that I'm a member of The Censorware Project does not make me unsuitable to know what suits suits.
'PC experience started with Apple II and visicalc'
That, in itself, makes him an atypical user: he has a lot of experience and began using computers quite a while ago. He owns two computers (not to mention that his 10 year old son has his own computer), he owns a scanner, CD-RW, and a zip drive. The computers are all networked. This doesn't sound hard-core techy to most slashdot readers, but it is a cut above the typical user. The fact that he installed linux himself makes him atypical: nowadays OS installation isn't hard, but it isn't something that the typical user does.
Still, it obviously means that Linux is getting to be more of a mainstream OS. Just today I saw it mentioned in Foxtrot, which, while it is nerdier than some strips, is still not User Friendly.
Of course, I'm not saying that this guy is a linux-pro, and I'm not saying that the typical computer user (which is a pretty blurry term: how do you define it? someone who uses computers? how often do they have to use them to qualify?) is a clueless newbie: often, the typical user is a newbie for a week or two, but then gets into the competent-but-not-knowledgeable category: they can drive the car expertly, but they still have no clue what goes on underneath the hood.
It seems like Linux is still testing the waters of the mainstream. But, according to me at least, that penguin still needs some swim lessons.
Then again, I could be wrong.
How come when you say it, it gets a 5, and when I say it, it gets a 0? =)
Oh well, no point in whining (I've done enough by now, and I'm not eager to lose a few more points for being troll or something). But I pretty much agree with what this post says. So in other words: Yeah, what he said.
Then again, I could be wrong.
Just some quick food for thought. Maybe he BECAME skilled by USING Linux. My brother-in-law partitioned, installed, and within a month recompiled (with the odd e-mailed question) on his own (he lives an hour away so don't think I was driving over every night to fix stuff). Sure it took a while to get a dial-up connection working but that was the MAIN stumbling block for him.
People who are intelligent and resourceful pick up stuff like this quickly.
--8<--
Definetly a postive thing to see 'normal' users examining Linux. Chocobo219
A screen of static at start up????? I don't get it. Your display runs through the bios on bootup right? or does it just go from nothing to linux?
it's funny how many people like to bitch at people who post redundant links. Making lots of assumptions as to the poster's intentions. Perhaps it is more revealing of their own motivation.
Or he turns the monitor off, but leaves the computer on, thinking the whole thing is off
Am I on crack, or did the parent of this post have html tags that weren't rendered, just displayed?
I've notices this a lot lately. Maybe everyone else has flashed their brain so they can autmatically convert tags on the fly and just see the italics.
I use a SS7 board. ETEQ Chipset. Aka VIATech. That means a lot of the hacks or adds that allow USB do not work for me. Also, I use a TNT2U board so I need my quake3 and I tried so hard and I could not get it to run. Sigh. Also, I have USB perfs that that NO USB = BAD! Also -- DVD and I love movies. I am a big uptime freak so rebooting switching, etc etc etc just does not work for me. Sure win98 crashes dont either but I dont have to reboot every hour when I get a hickering for some q3. Also, SB Live no worky for me. Sure this is a personal bitch session but those are MY reasons why I HAVENT replaced. That shouldnt stop you though. I have had Red Hat since version 3.something. (Thats a flame war waiting to happen) but for above mentions that are adjusted over the times -- thats why I cant switch -- YET!
-- Whee
Doesn't seem to be working...
Life is just a bowl of All Bran - Small Faces
Setting up a Windows machine is not particularly easy, particularly with Windows 3.1 and '95. (I haven't ever installed '98, so I don't know how it compares.)
In fact, installing any operating system on a bare computer and getting all of the hardware to work properly is not easy for a novice. Most Windows systems come pre-installed, with the hardware designed around the available (Microsoft) software.
The average user installs new hardware either by taking their machine back to the shop and paying a tech to do it, or (in the case of Modems, Zippy drives, etc) plugs in the new hardware and sticks in the CD labelled "Hardware Setup for [Company Name]"---which has been specially prepared to make one particular piece of hardware work under Windows. Often, hardware (or software) problems render this useless, anyway.
> Why even bother with a scripting language, use C and fix the app
> itself. More power and speed. And fame too, if you add something
> really useful.
I can think of many reasons. You don't know C and have no intention of learning it. You just want to get the job out. Fixing the hardcode is a great way to make a program non-configurable. One of the neat things about VBA is that you can pretty much make any app using a core engine - similar to MOOs, MUSHes, etc.
Eric
> 2. I'm missing IE and Outlook Express.
For an Outlook replacement, the following is cool: http://www.tarball.net/postoffice/
It works like Outlook, but it knows what standards are, what a clue is, and so on.
Missing IE? Well, any good graphical browser would be nice... Netscape sucks, Mozilla needs like 700M diskspace if you want to compile it, ...
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Linux is rapidly becoming THE force in servers and high-end machines, but it has gained very little ground in the desktop machine's territory. Corel's distribution was great for improving the desktop usability of this OS, but perhaps it is still too complex for the average user. I have found people flounder when presented with anything other than Windows. They don't understand the concept of multiple desktops unless you explain it for five minutes, and they can't comprehend the close button being anywhere other than where MS puts it. Is Linux's customizability, especially in the GUI arena, a detriment for the average PC user, or is this just a hurdle people will eventually understand?
Hehe your attitude towards the spell checker is the attitude he was talking about! Its that eliteist notepad doesnt do it! type stuff. It was semantics and just an example and yer nit picking about it! *grumbles* Maybe im just to tired to say something smart?
Well, nothing we ain't heard anymore, but I suppose it might be good info for any other "suits" stopping by slashdot...
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
So this comes as no surprize.
(About time though)
___________________________________
Linux by Libranet - The TOP Desktop
Libranet GNU/Linux
I think it's time some company came together and made a sort of "WinLinux". A linux that, in theory, can operate just as user-friendly as windows can, but with the power of linux backing it up. Imagine a user-friendly OS that isnt so unstable you have to restart every 30 minutes! The future is here. :)
-- We should kill all the intolerant people in the world.
XFMail does all that and more (no built-in USENET reader, though). Multiple POP or IMAP boxes, powerful filtering, PGP integration, threading, auto-view, address books, etc.
That's funny. I did the same thing this weekend, but with Storm Linux 2000. I downloaded the ISO file from their web site, cut the CD (On my NT box), dropped the still hot CDR in the #2 computer, booted to the CD ROM and was up and running in KDE in about 15-20 minutes from first boot.
What was Cool: The install was cake - could have done it blindfolded. This has to be as easy as it gets.
What sucked: During the install, if you instal networking, DHCP is not an option. You have to hard code an IP, then go back and switch to DCHP after the system is up. Once you do switch to DHCP, you have to specify the DNS servers as well (it won't pull these from DCHP like MS products do). My last complaint - Every time I log out, the network setings are lost. I have to setup DHCP and specify name servers EVERY TIME I LOG IN.
All in all it was fun, and I finally got a Linux box up and running. I tried out KDE and Gnome and I think I like Gnome better. As was mentioned before, Nescape sucks and my Evil MS Intellipoint mouse scroll wasn't supported. I was told on the Linux.com chatroom to try Mozilla. I went to the site and it tells you straight out that it's not stable enough for every-day use. No thanks. I had my fun Saturday, and by noon Sunday that same box was running NT. I'll build another box for Linux, but it'll be a low end box. Until it provides more than web browsing functionality (and even that is questionable with Netscape), I won't have it as my primary box.
HAve you ever tried using Sun's Staroffice. It offers compatibility with word formats through word 7.0 (95), and I'ce been transferring documents back and forth no problem.
Midwest is Best
Not exactly the most informative article, but a good one nevertheless.
Please add two important factors: formats and applications.
I'm a Windows user now that I'm out of the programming world. Windows was there when I needed a cheap and functional GUI. Nobody else was. I've got no universities or big companies behind me. I'm an individual person with a family of computer users, and numerous clients.
Unlike our "suit" friend, I don't have time to explore document properties and chuckle at others' ignorance. I've got to exchange documents with sometimes a dozen colleagues or clients at different locations, all of whom expect a Word or Finale or Cakewalk document for the round-robin editing. I had to teach all (read: every one) of them what FTP was because the documents were too big for email! Some couldn't even get the hang of that, so I had to create web links for download/upload.
Would I like Linux? Personally? As a person who likes to have a machine configured to my taste, probably yes. But -- call me unimaginative -- there's not a whole lot of non-technie stuff that I haven't been able to do in Windows.
So what about format exchange? As a composer, I'd love to use other scoring applications, regardless of the computing environment. Why can't I? Because I have eight years of score production, representing over 30 years of compositions, in one file format. Even Windows applications have trouble importing/exporting readable files -- Unix has, what, Lilypond? It reads nobody else, nobody else reads it. Last I heard I couldn't even export a Midi demo with it. At least the major scoring programs come with Win/Mac file exchange and Midi output. So will a niche OS get attention from a niche field like musical scoring? Not likely, not until the niche OS is mainstream.
And applications? Even after 15 years in machine/assembly programming, I decided on Windows in 1992 because I had to get work done. I know Linux users hate that Neanderthal-sounding argument, but folks, I have a complete DAW running so I can do music production and scoring. The applications are install-and-run, with very little configuration, which most of them do automatically. Manual configuration is available for the tweaking. It's stable. It never crashes. That is what I need ... and it runs under Windows.
Example: I have an upcoming piece for string orchestra. From a single keyboard and screen I'm running four computers (all Win95b) with the desktop-in-screen (VNC Viewer). Each computer is running different sound/scoring apps (Finale, Cakewalk, Cool Edit, Audiomulch ...) and hardware (one with two 24-bit 96KHz sound cards, another with a 32-channel Midi card ...), graphical apps (Photoshop, Paint Shop, screen recorders ...) Most of the hardware doesn't even have Linux drivers, by the way.
One computer is also being used by my wife, another by my stepdaughter. So -- back to the example -- in a single day I produced the score and parts from my pencil sketches, output from it a General Midi demo which was then massaged by using audio samples and sequenced, produced PDF files of the score and parts, burned a CD of the demo for the reviewers, created an mp3 file for the conductor, edited my web pages to make the score and demo available, and uploaded it all. The conductor could then download and print the PDFs while listening to the demo, as I continued working on the score for another composer whose music was to be premiered in the same concert. The only time I had to leave my keyboard was to take a break or load a CD to burn into the machine in the next room.
The rest of the family continued working, writing, doing homework, browsing, checking email, etc., never noticing that I was using their spare CPU time for audio processing. I have a full four-track sound setup (no Linux drivers), a networked Palm V, and in the background I'm running SETI at Home, as well as FTGate mail server and Wingate networking over Linksys (no Linux drivers) cards. I run IRC, telnet, FTP, chat, and HTTP servers on a sporadic basis when friends or clients need stuff. Only one application -- the Java chat -- needs command-line configuration.
Some of this may be no big deal for Linux power users. But when I got hot for Linux, I went searching and couldn't locate even a fraction of the applications and drivers I'd need to do my daily work.
My point is this: Our "suit" was a clever and computer-savvy business user calling on commonplace applications. I could do what he does. But my day involves much more than text and spreadsheets and even images. I need easy movement from application to application, file to file, and client to client -- and I mean people, not software. My family and clients have never seen a command-line process!
I would love to get out of the MS world. MS is distasteful to me as a company. But those of you who are pioneers have much to do -- including making Linux (or any successor OS) work effortlessly (yes, appliance-level), and enticing companies (read: payback) to create drivers and software for it ... beyond a few commonplace applications.
Dennis
http://maltedmedia.comOne word, perl.
// zyqqh
Time will change this, but not too fast.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Once Diamond releases OpenGL drivers for the Savage4, then maybe. As for now, I need my Quake 3, so Winblows it is.
hahahahahahaha
I'm afraid ol Rob has fallen into the "Read The Good Caption about Linux and Post" problem. If Rob had actually taken the time to read the full story and had a good idea that typical users know not, this wouldn't have been posted. Here's hoping to seeing a correction on this.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
I read this and thought that he was far more that he said to be, and expected the response from everyone else to be one of 'finally they get it'. I am glad it didn't turn out that way.
I am not a fan of MS, but it is true they have done a lot of things right. Ease of use as well as apps that actually help users are things they did right. Until we address those issues on the client and home user sides, Linux and BSD will not become a fan favorite.
I still use windows for browsing the web. I use BitchX for IRC chats. I use StarOffice and Office2000. I see Windows as a great client, and good print server, and I also see Linux as a great server and router. I can't answer on the developmental side as I am barely out of the starting gates:-)
It's nice to see fellow users let their guards down and admit Linux isn't everything-- cause it isn't. My guilt level of having a windows box at home (and a linux box) is lessoned.
I've been able to run Linux at my office without trouble. The only integration problem I have is with the Exchange server. I'll be looking into some solutions with my partner in crime but I am woundering if this is already underway?
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
Please, no one take offense at .sig It's a joke, from "God is just an idea in the mind of man".
He who fights and runs away,
I've just installed RH Linux 6.1(yesterday in fact), so I'll share my experiences so far. Here are the ups and the downs (more downs than ups).
Ups:
1. Surprisingly easy to use. KDE is a generation beyond the Unix desktops I'm used to ( CDE, or just plain vanilla fvwm)
2. It's fun.
Downs:
1. The redhat installation wasted my NT partitions. Very very nasty. I went with the default installation (instead of custom), thinking that the installer would automatically "do the right thing" i.e. install lilo on the boot partition instead of the mbr, but it didn't. I ended up having to repartition my entire HD (luckily I'd backed up most of my data, but it's still a big hassle). This has to be fixed, quickly.
2. I'm missing IE and Outlook Express. I think I'll stick with NT most of the time because of this. Netscape just doesn't cut it.
3. Video seems slower than NT. Netscape flickers as the screen scrolls.
There have been a couple comments that this guy isn't an average user. This is true, but it's not because he knows the difference between a CD-ROM drive and a coffee-cup holder. There are two revealing comments he makes which don't even have anything to do with the main thread of his article:
-> Learning is fun
-> Changing one's habits is good
90%-99% of the people in the developed world (a) actively avoid learning anything unless they absolutely have to and (b) actively avoid having to do anything that is the least bit different from their normal routines. Trying new things instead of running in terror immediately marks this fellow as Different.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Python is a nice, lightweight, embeddable, easy-to-learn scripting language that you could take a look at. I've read your other comments; it appears to have some sort of numerical modules, although I'm not sure what level they're at. (most of what I do is non-numerical..)
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I recently gave up on a Linux desktop. Got sick of having to upgrade 5 libraries every time I wanted to install a new app. I also gave up on win98, it just gets flakier with the age of the installation, until one day it does not boot and you have to reinstall.
Uh, you realize, do you not, that these two fascts are related? The reason (well, one reason, but a big one) that Linux doesn't bitrot is that (a) there are mechanisms in the operating system to keep you from running programs with mismatched version numbers (sonames and so on), and (b) most distributions make sure that you have the correct libraries for your programs. Windows has essentially no such safeguards, which leads to a lot of the chronic problems that you see with it; the phrase, I believe, is "DLL Hell". In fact, many programs *do* install new versions of base libraries on a Windows system; they just ship with the program, never mind that there's no way to guess how overwriting random files in c:\windows\system will affect other programs on the system. Easier for the user -> more bitrot.
If you don't like downloading the libraries manually you should try a distribution with better autoupdate tools than yours had; Debian springs immediately to mind, although with your low frustration threshold something else might be appropriate.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Well, I think the default Debian install includes Emacs and all of TeX (!). But aside from that I don't think it's too bad.. :) And it does make it fairly simple to strip the system down to its base components.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I don't see any indication that it will - that's similar to expecting that a new x86 processor will cause the operating system world to settle on a single standard and API for all OSes that run on x86 processors.
XFree86 4.0 will not, as far as I know, come with any particular toolkit, or desktop environment built atop it blessed as the "single standard", so you'll still have KDE/Qt vs. GNOME/GTK+ vs. .
Please be advice that the correct URL is http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience.php
The hotlinked url is incorrect.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Well, M$ finished their last fiscal year with a 42% profit according to Cnnfn. I don't think there is a more profitable Fortune 1000 company. Most in the Fortune 1000 have ( my quick mental averaging) about a 15% profit. That profitability is the main reason that M$ is running a stock valuation of about 400 times annual sales. Seems high to me. If you don't mind paying their ( constantly increasing) prices, then good for you.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
In fact there is even a port of VB to Linux. See, for instance, Gnumeric.
...
OTOH VB itself is a language that I hate. I can understand how someone who had never dealt with a real language could be impressed by it, but personally for scripting I am much happier with Perl or Python than I ever was with VB.
Think of them as VB except easier to really learn, cross-platform, faster,
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Other industries think 10 or 15% pre-tax margin is good, the computer industry thinks 10-15% post-tax is good, but M$ consistently reports 40+% post-tax profit. Got nothing to do with R&D.
--
Infuriate left and right
Sure, you can use Linux and StarOffice in a wide variety of desktop situations. Guess what -- you can still use Windows 3.1 and a circa-1994 copy of Office or SmartSuite in a wide variety of desktop situation. Sure, it'll crash more than Linux -- but if the buisnesses were worried about crashes on desktop machines enough to accept the disadvantages of a minority platform, they'd have bought OS/2 Warp 3.0 instead of Windows 95.
Linux won't be able to compete with Microsoft on the desktop until Linux doesn't just have an adequate office suite, but a suite with complete feature-parity with MS Office. Even then, it'll be an uphill climb...
Steven E. Ehrbar
If you use redhat, Caldera, or SuSE use rpmfind. If you use debian use dselect. They'll find all the packages you need to install to support and application.
Hurray!!
Someone has finally figured out what I've griped about in regards to Linux: the lack of a consistent user interface and API.
Say all you want in vitriol about Microsoft, but at least you have to give them credit for maintaining a reasonably consistent user interface and API. This makes is FAR easier for programmers, and also, you instantly have a market for 85% of the world's desktop computers anyway.
If the Linux crowd can settle on a single standard for graphical interface and API (HOPEFULLY, the upcoming XFree86 4.0 will help this idea along), then we can talk about Linux becoming a large-scale desktop corporate standard.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I suppose if you define "suit" as merely being someone who isn't like most slashdotters (e.g., a financial person, doctor, lawyer, etc.), then you might say that. If that was true, then I and many others would be considered a suit too. However, the word "suit" describes a lot more than just a job description, for me atleast. Such as indifference, a certain mentality...incestous, flock like, lack of willingness to really drive at the fundamental issues, aloofness, etc.
But even if "suit" doesn't necessarily carry these associations for you, he is 180degrees off from the typical personality in the financial community. Please don't assume that suits (or even Joe Schmoes) are just a few lessons/hours away from being able to make practical use of Linux--never mind preferring it.
Powerpoint, though not ingeniously designed, was purposely built for whipping up presentations--it is easy to use and quick. Not only does HTML (manually) take more time to learn how to use it efficiently, but also the per presentation time is significantly greater than what it takes to whipup, say, a 20 page presentation. Though I suppose the efficicies of a better designed presentation might make HTML desirable for someone who is presenting the same material over and over (e.g., a salesman), enough to make them willing to spend the extra time at it. I doubt HTML's practicality for embeeding and altering spreadsheets and the like. In any case, your typical "suit", even if he were computer literate, would be petrified of his presentation failing while doing something so different than the rest (HTML).
Heh, and who might you be? =)
What Linux Distribution are you using?
I think that Debian has answers to most of your concerns. I am sure most the other distributions work similarly - Debian is just what I know.
The default install is not all that bloated, depending on which options you choose. And the much maligned dselect will let you see exactly what you have installed. Dselect's interface may take a little getting used to, but its a really powerful tool for figuring out what you have installed, and trimming bloat on systems that are short of disk space.
As for finding out where the package has stuff installed: dpkg -L package_name will tell you exactly what files are installed by with a given package. You can usually configure the package by fooling around with the files under /etc. Just look at the man pages and the documentation under /usr/share/doc to figure what to do.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
The author of the original article does make a passing reference to the lack of file format compatibility being a huge and largely overlooked weakness - only a passing reference.
What bugged me about the article is that what went unspoken was the huge amount of time this guy must have invested in his setup. Admittedly he has a nice setup, but knowing what it took to get to a similarly nice setup for myself, I could recommend replacing windows with Linux to only the most dedicated geeks. It takes a lot of time, and a lot of perseverence, and it is still not as good.
I recently gave up on a Linux desktop. Got sick of having to upgrade 5 libraries every time I wanted to install a new app. I also gave up on win98, it just gets flakier with the age of the installation, until one day it does not boot and you have to reinstall.
I have migrated to NT, which (for a desktop) gives me the same stability as Linux. I am not upset about having to pay a little bit more money for apps and the OS - I get it back in time not wasted tweaking stuff. And when Window2000 hits the streets I will shell out the $200+ for it, its well worth it.
But Linux will still stay on my file server. Windows2K I fear would bring it to its knees.
-josh
>I recently gave up on a Linux desktop. Got sick
>of having to upgrade 5 libraries every time I wanted to install a new app. I also gave up on
>win98, it just gets flakier with the age of the installation, until one day it does not boot and
>you have to reinstall.
Uh, you realize, do you not, that these two fascts are related? The reason (well, one reason, but a big one) that Linux doesn't bitrot is that (a) there are mechanisms in the operating system to keep you from running programs with mismatched version numbers (sonames and so on), and (b) most distributions make sure that you have the correct libraries for your programs. Windows has essentially no such safeguards, which leads to a lot of the chronic problems that you see with it; the phrase, I believe, is "DLL Hell".
Well, NT has no such protections either, and it manages to be rock solid, even with nasty windows installations overwriting DLLs. I don't have any problem with having new Linux programs requiring new libraries, but I do not enjoy having to hunt them down on some random website, only to find yet deeper dependancies that require further updates.
If you get an application install in Linux it should be entirely self-contained, out of the box. This is my largest gripe with Linux apps.
Sad day... when someone recognizes you on /.
I guess you'll be quiting this next huh?
hahahahahah!!
I think the mere fact that he uses vi and does all his work "alternative"-style makes him exempt from the suit genre. To be called a suit, first you must be with the mainstream suit population. This guy deviates from the mean.
I consider this guy a Linux guy who felt like writing about the dent he's put in the suits. Truth is, suits don't even know wtf Linux is, let alone how to use vi, or even what "root" is.
Seriously, I think both sides are right here.
It remains to be seen if the programmers will finally develop something as "easy to use as a telephone", or if people will get so used to telephones with neurosurgery attachments that a typical PC will seem like a joke.
There's something to be said for living inside your editor.
But it's not as though there aren't problems with mh though. Okay, so all the messages are stashed in ordinary unix files, one message to a file. Nice and simple, right? But it uses arbitrary numbers for file names (1, 2, 3...). So let's say you tar up your ~/Mail/Linux folder, and stash it on tape. Six months later you want to get some old messages off of the tape... Oops, those numbered filenames conflict with each other now, don't they? How do you make sure your old message number 5 doesn't blow away the new message number 5?
Also, using these commands in shell scripts is kind of arcane. I mean I've got dozens of shell scripts like this:
These days most people just learn to use procmail (which is perhaps even more arcane...), which seems to be the last nail in the coffin for the utility of command-line mh.In general, the "do one thing and do it well" thing is pretty much history. It's more like "do one thing kind-of-okay, and provide two hundred flags to do everything else, plus enough really verbose POSIX alternates to make the man pages incomprensible".
Only right before you print it (assuming that you're going to print it at all -- I've seen people email MS-Word documents, send them to other people on floppies, and even put them up on the web for download). And even then, it should only be necessary in the rare case where you don't trust the computer to do a good job formatting it. If you still don't trust the computer, is the solution to ask for WYSIWYG, or to ask for better/smarter software?
A reason against WYSIWYG? It is wasteful and inappropriate for editing. For example, can you think of any reason why, when editing a document, that you need to see the margins?(!) Did you buy a 19" monitor just to throw away 25% of the screen area? And heaven forbid that you have a small monitor -- I have seen people print things in large fonts simply because that's what they had to use in order to be able to read the document as they edited it on the screen.
Here's a real life question someone asked me: "Is it really going to be this hard to read once it's printed?" I reassured them that, no, the printer has much better resolution than the screen. So much for WYSIWYG -- we pay the price and don't even get anything for it.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
IMHO is Gnus far more powerful than Outlook Express. It can be configured to do exactly what you want it to do. Of course it's not as beginnerfriendly as Outlook, but far more userfriendly.
When it comes to Word, I will like to repeat something Douglas Engelbart said (from my memory): "Here we have a computer and it's capable to present us the information the way each individual want it. And what do we do? Reinventing paper on screen (WYSIWYG)!"
As users we have to learn to see beyond the fancy user interfaces, and and focus more on the usability of the information we are producing.
Every time I see one of these articles, I'm amazed at how very little what I consider essential computer usage ever gets mentioned. I use Visual Basic ALL THE TIME in the Microsoft Office apps.
Is there something in Linux that can provide the power and flexability of VB in something like Excel? I'm not talking about a macro language like what use to be in Excel (circa 1991 or so), but something that you can program to adapt to certain situations? What I spend hours on now would take weeks without visual basic. This is one of my PRIMARY reasons for not being able to make the switch to Linux.
Matthew has produced a suite of Oracle on Linux tools at http://www.orasoft.org. ... stay on target
He doesn't have a replacement for Schema Manager for database synchronization, but his tools are catching up on SQL Navigator and TOAD (free version at http://www.toadsoft.com/toadfree.zip).
I saw an MS Outlook Client at the Mandrake booth at LinuxWorldExpo. Gotta get that one. I've been using StarOffice since I got my new machine in Dec 99 instead of MS Office.
Almost there, stay on target
Got that demo disk of VMWare - going to run that on RH6.1 for awhile.
Paul
.
when i first read the headline to this story i thought it said "A Slut's Experience With Linux". I had to re-read it and then i realized my mistake. I wonder if any sluts use linux though.
For the most part I agree with you. Until the last sentence. I think the occasional self-congratulation is appropriate as long as it doesn't cause the community to rest on their laurels, which is what your point was as I see it. Linux has come a long way and it doesn't hurt to see someone from the "suits" category learning to use it and do productive work with it. Hopefully stories like this will just make the developers that much more committed to improving the software.
I think it is imperative to stop and take a look at what you've accomplished once in a while.
Interesting article. Personally I don't think Linux is `there' yet
for office apps, but it is at least a viable option. Some thoughts:
Latex: if you need to write up scientific equations, then Latex is
indispensible. If not, avoid it, because it is a user-unfriendly
nightmare. Scientific users use in becuase there is no alternative,
not because it is pleasant to use. Now that MathML is coming, maybe
we won't have to use LaTeX for much longer.
PowerPoint: About the non-linear presentations: nice thought, but
I have to disagree. Telling a story is a linear thing, and giving a
presentation should be like telling a story. If you want to jump
around all the time, then it sounds more like brain-storning than
presentation to me, in which case I don't think there is a good
electronic rival to the flipchart yet. This is one area I think MS
has a decisive advantage over anything on the Linux desktop.
Excel: it is the de facto standard, but it is also a buggy dog.
I haven't seen the Office 2k rivals, but I think the free software
rivals have a chance of displacing it.
Heck, all it took was the "I got started on an Apple II". I true suit wouldn't know what an Apple II is.
Still, he seems to give a practical reportcard for Linux as an office machine. The things he suggest would be approachable by a suit.
Sigurd makes some very thought-provoking points in his article and really highlights what I believe are some of the key issues that are helping Linux make its way into the mainstream -- even the corporate one:
As a recovering Windoze junkie (I'm in rehab), I can pretty easily recall some of my key arguments against moving to a purely Linux world. It boiled down to Games, Application Compatibility, and GUI.
Games. While my current workload doesn't allow for as much gaming time, this used to be the #1 thing preventing me from using Linux all the time (or at least from nuking the Windows partition.) Loki has done and is doing a great job of changing that. I imagine the number of games ported to Linux is growing exponentially, and no longer will people be able to cling to that aspect of the M$ world.
Application Compatibility. Sigurd pointed this out in his article: Everyone in the corporate world uses MS Office - Word + Excel primarily. It sucks but it's true. People get upset when you send them PDF files or plain text (and, as a matter of professionalism, it doesn't look too nice when you send a plain-text business plan to a Venture Capitalist) With the arrival of Linux-based apps to handle and create these documents, one can at least easily communicate with ones peers (even if via a primative language!)
GUI. I hate that this is a reason, because I think the command line is quite elegant most of the time, but try telling that to a legal assistant at a major lawfirm or a secretary at a large company and they'll laugh in your face. GNOME, KDE, and sleek windowmanagers like Sawmill are making life MUCH better.
I think there is still a bit to go before more people are willing to make "The Switch," but it's getting more compelling every day.
Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
Or he turns the monitor off, but leaves the computer on, thinking the whole thing is off :).
:D.
<br><br>
That's so true
A while ago, I had the librarian tell me off when I closed "program manager" on the library computer (to her, it meant the computer was broken). So she promptly turned the monitor off, waited 15 seconds, and turned it back on.
Ahhh ok :).
Seems a bit on the high side, especially since OEMs can buy windows at significant discounts (as can other partners/developers etc).
As users we have to learn to see beyond the fancy user interfaces, and and focus more on the usability of the information we are producing.
Uh, so you're saying it's not useful to see on the screen exactly what will be printed? It's just useless flash?
--
Learn about styles. They are the reason you're having so much frustration with Word. I've seen this a lot when someone comes from Wordperfect (I did too).
Once you understand how Word works, you will find it far, far better than Wordperfect. It's extremely powerful.
--
There's no transcript, so what's the essence of the argument why I wouldn't want WYSIWYG while I'm working with a document?
--
First, my idea of a UG needs to be updated... because when I was younger a UG consisted of kids who've never kissed a girl pirating software, so imagine my surprise when this UG had only people in it who were 45 years old and up. I saw more grey hair than I had in a while.
They seemed to enjoy the Corel Linux demo, but I finally got a real view of the typical computing world when the Corel woman asked, "Has anyone here ever installed an operating system?", and only 3 hands went up. Me and the 2 other youngest people who happened to be in attendance. This shocked me because in my little computing world, everyone I know has done dozens, if not hundreds of installs of many OS's.
She then asked, "Who has installed linux?" and of course mine was the only hand to go up, and people were looking at me as if I had 3 heads (I don't).
Once she had convinced the people there that Corel Linux looks EXACTLY like Windows she bothered to point out that you could even open up a terminal window "if you ever felt like typing MSDOS commands." (At that point I think several people shuddered and at least one person dry-heaved).
She also forced me to say that I frequently "mount my CDROM drive" and that made some people laugh and confused the rest. This was all part of her way to show that corel automounts the CD.
Why am I rambling you ask? Because like many here I also do not think that the fellow this thread is discussing is a typical "suit" user.
Hell, I haven't even networked my house yet.
Ignore Alien Orders
Note: Scheme is MIT's dialect of LISP
Not surprising. At MIT, the intro Computer Science course is in Scheme. While an Intro course, this isn't your typical intro course, we do cool things like write relational database engines and primitive (non-optimizing) compilers in it (a fake assembly language, but close enough).
One of the weeks is spent on the "Meta-circular evaluator." The meta-circular evaluator is a Scheme program that interprets Scheme code and executes it. We also discussed (and worked with a sample of part of) a C interpretter.
The power of scheme/LISP is that it handles all objects the same. Whether it is a program (lambda function), list, or atom. This is EXTREMELY powerful. We were able to flesh out the shell of an Object oriented version in a weekly problem set (I did it in one night in like 8 hours).
If you base you systems in Scheme/LISP, you have TREMENDOUS functionality. I'm flashing back to the paper in my architecture course on how the inferior C won out against LISP. It actually made some compelling arguements, but I don't know how much I agree.
Alex
The correct link for the store is below.
http://linuxguiden.linpro.no/experience. php
Enjoy.
They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen
Fish! LipHo
nm is a suite of programs, each of which does one thing well. There's comp to compose mail. It calls your favorite editor and then hands the message off to send, which sends it. When you receive mail, you call inc to move the messages from the spool file to mh's mail directory, where each message is one file. Inc will show you a list of new messages. You can get a list of all your messages with scan. Use show to read a message, repl to reply to one, forw to forward. These can take a message number as an argument. All these are normal shell commands that you can type interactively or put in a script. Since each message is a file, you can also use normal file handling commands like mv and cp to organise your mail and you can script those operations as well. Configuration is distributed. If you don't like how mh sends your mail, you configure send; nothing else. For someone who prefers the UNIX way, mh is heaven.
I still prefer a really good integrated client to mh, though. It's just that there aren't any really good ones for Linux. (Yes, I'm actually saying that Outlook Express is better than any mail client available for Linux. Sue me. (Yes, I've used mutt)
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
He ain't no suit, for whatever that means. Though I suppose the definition and connotations of the word "suit" can vary somewhat, it certainly involves more than just having the computing IQ of an Ape (which this guy certainly doesn't have). Beyond his relative adeptness with computers, there are some other non-suit like qualities to him. For example, he dropped Powerpoint for HTML and a browser? Think about what this says about this guy. He is willing to diverge from the rest of the herd (powerpoint) -- definetly not a "suit" like quality. In addition, he has the time (real or percieved) to not only learn HTML sufficiently, but also to use it instead of Powerpoint. While I hardly think Powerpoint is a particularly good product, it is certainly faster for your quicky presentation. Again, if you're going to generalize, "suits" value time; a "suit" would not waste time in HTML. More time/value points: He uses vi (while it's a great text editor for those who have the time to learn it, it ain't a suit tool). He doesn't seem to mind, or atleast makes no mention of, having to track down and download all of these various programs (e.g., vmware, IglooFTP, Klynx, etc.), nor the compilitation/installation processes. He is obviously familiar with slashdot, enough to refer to it as "/.". I could go on, but you get the point...
While my intent is not to deride him or the person who posted, lets be real here. There is little value to his article. He doesn't speak for the financial community in general or "suits". Nor does he attest to Joe Schmoe's view of Linux. What he might have been able to do, he did not do. He did not provide slashdot with a window into how his comrades, the "suits", would or have (not?) approached Linux. Instead, we got a not particularly well written commentary of an individual with a professional job outside of computing (perhaps not your typical slashdotter), yet he has time to burn, and nothing to lose. The mere fact that he finds Linux acceptable doesn't mean most will. We (you) can't pat ourselves on the back for doing a great job. Being both a student of finance (not a suit) and working in and around IT and technology, I can tell you that Linux/Open Source has miles and miles to go.
The only thing a reasonable person could draw from this, is in regards to professional (e.g., Doctor, Lawyer, Financial people, etc.) people's possible use of applications--there are some applications out there that they can theoretically use (not true even 2 years ago)--he found them sufficient. Though having tried using most of them extensively, I disagree with much of it.
On the whole, I do agree with your post- but I would like to take an exception to this particular part of it. If the spell checker is all that you care about, hell, even kEdit and gEdit can use the (default in most linux distros) ispell program, and they do. Does notepad or wordpad include a spellchecker? I didn't think so.
But on the whole, as I said above- you are mostly right. We don't need to keep patting ourselves on the back, we need to bring things up to par- and Outlook is a damn good example, as is IE. Mozilla's not there yet. It's getting closer every day (I'm downloading the latest build as we speak) and I think that it's great, but we don't have a great web browser yet. Nor do we have a great mail client. We still lack the one thing that Microsoft can claim over us- unification and easy drop-in replacements of parts. KDE is doing great things in regard to this- KParts is a great stride forward in this field (as also noted in another post) but it's not perfect and it's not even public yet.
Just give us time...
On the other hand, it doesn't have that stupid dancing paper clip.
The thought of using TeX in the year 2000 leaves me completely cold. That's the last gasp of the programmer-oriented word processors. The line that began with Runoff and went through nroff, troff, and ditroff ends with TeX. And it's time for it to end. Macros are just the wrong tool for that job. (Whatever happened to math formatting for HTML, anyway? There was a working group on that, but it seems to have been lost somewhere along the way, probably because everybody's off doing electronic commerce.)
MS dominates because it got their first. Period.
Even if Linux becomes just as easy to use as Win, that's not easy enough. Why? Because the easiest system to use is the one you already know how to use.
What will make Linux dominate? In the short run, nothing. Open Source tends less to innovate, and more to emulate. So when the OS becomes a commodity product with little room for innovation, the Linux price point (0) will then drive people to Linux. This is already starting to happen.
Of course, when the OS is totally commoditized people will care as much about which OS they use as they do now about what kinds of circuits are in their TV sets. Not even geeks will care by then. Commodity products are boring. Hopefully something new and exciting will come along to replace the OS as something for geeks to work on. It will be nice too if that something is difficult to emulate so that the true innovators can have time to make money on it before people copy it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Maybe the writer wears suits, but he's hardly a typical non-tech user. As soon as he talks about compiling and vi v. emacs, he's disqualified.
Still a really interesting write-up, though. Just don't point to this as proof that your PHB could survive in a Linux world yet.
Yes! I love it when I see someone get a system shipped to their door with a 19" monitor and the screen settings are exactly that, 640x480x256.
The Start button is roughly the size of a house on a 19" monitor in that resolution. I don't switch them to 800x600 or 1024x768 because it's likely a better resolution for them with that monitor, I switch them because I swear that once the huge start button tried to kill me.
One day, before Netscape.com was a portal, I was asked by a cousin what search engine I used, "Yahoo or Netscape."
It was difficult helping him to understand the difference.
Ignore Alien Orders
While I respect the opinions of the author of this article, I have to say that in my experience the apps for Linux just aren't up to the same caliber as those available for Windows yet. I mean, can you show me a mail client as powerful and easy to use as Outlook Express? How about a word processor with the feature set of Word (and I know a lot of /. readers think of a spell checker as "bloatware", but some of us like having a lot of options we can configure).
What's more irritating about articles such as this one is that they don't really serve a productive purpose to us as a community of developers. It glosses over the failings of Linux, and this is a Bad Thing(tm). Remember the "Jihad Tux" icon on Suck back a couple of months ago? It was funny, but it was a bad omen as well.
I suppose this article in particular is just serving as a final straw to me. Lately I've noticed a really disturbing trend towards self-congratulation in the OSS movement, and especially on this particular discussion board. Criticism of Linux is less and less welcome while this sort of wanking is on the upswing.
Look, sitting around patting ourselves on the back while ignoring the deficiancies in our software is the exact same behavior that we love to flame companies like Microsoft for. It feels good to convince ourselves that Linux is finally "there" and that anyone who can't use it is just an idiot. It feels good to think that even a "suit" can use it now. It feels good, but it's not true -- not yet.
When I first installed Slackware (waaay back when), it was nearly impossible to deal with as a newbie with no previous UNIX experience. Linux has come a very long way; I won't dispute that. It's not a replacement for Windows yet, however, and we as a development community aren't doing ourselves any favors by pretending (as an example, not a flame) that the GIMP can hold a candle to Photoshop yet.
I am conviced that the OSS development paradigm will lead to a better product that any closed paradigm. I am also convinced, however, that if the community loses their focus that the OSS paradigm breaks down. Flaming the "non-believers", trolling about "suits", preaching to the choir and pretending that flaws don't exist are all symptoms of this loss of focus.
Now, I'm not trying to discourage discussion. I'm not trying to sell short the efforts of the people developing Linux and various OSS apps. I'm not trying to suggest that the whole community is one way or the other, nor am I forgetting that Linux kicks ass in particular areas. I'm not saying that the people who developed the OSS paradigm or who work on the software don't deserve a vast amount of credit.
What I want to point out is that self-congradulation (which is how I view this article) is inherantly dangerous to the future of the paradigm from a Big Picture point of view. It should be recognized as such, and should be avoided whenever possible.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
About time... what Linux needs to truly take off is support from the average desktop user, not just the techies and power users. I just hope we see more favorable reviews from "average" people and that these reviews encourage other "average" users to run Linux on their PC. It's important to recognize that Linux isn't just a server OS, it can work well as an office platform too.
No, it's not. Whatever you do folks, don't get complacent. Linux is NOT ready for the average user yet.
Roadmap:
1. Forget skins. They're bullshit. Concentrate on UI design - flash can come later.
2. Make your UI consistent across apps. Someone needs to come up with a "Linux UI style guide" - preferably have some kind of library that does standard keybindings and mouse handling - eg. for context menus. These things vary so wildly between apps right now (heck, even cut & paste varies wildly between apps right now) that it makes using the computer a jarring experience.
3. Design GUI apps for the GUI - that is, don't think in terms of command-line apps. Too many GUI apps (heck, look at KDE & the basic bits you get with Corel Linux) look and feel like someone decided to switch to a command-line app at the last moment. Developers - try coding the GUI first, and then work on the internals - not the other way around. The GUI should NOT be tacked on at the end.
4. Do usability tests on your granny. If she can't get it (and if she can, she musn't be related to Ada Lovelace), then you're doing it wrong. Take notes, and go back to the drawing board.
5. Try running Linux without editing a text file for configuration / using the keyboard for anything except data entry. If you can't, it's not ready yet.
6. Provide:
a. Duhhhh-level install. That is - you insert the disk, you hit OK, it does it.
b. User interviews (find out their needs and provide them a list of options based on them) for the medium level install.
c. Techy level install - that is, you let them customize to the nth degree.
d. Provide a,b,c in all your apps.
7. Help should be context sensitive, and never more than a STANDARD KEYBOARD SHORTCUT away.
8. If it looks like an idiot could use your app, you've not made it easy enough. You've designed it for a pretty smart idiot.
Simon
[... wonders if anyone would be willing to take me on as Linux GUI Czar.. hmmmm... have to look into that]
Coming soon - pyrogyra
You know your market perspective is skewed when...
Roblimo calls a guy with a three computers at home running over a lan he installed himself, and who waxes nostalgic for his old HTML editor a "typical desktop user".
Wake up people! The typical desktop user doesn't understand the difference between "netscape" and their operating system! If you unplug their keyboards in the night they will call tech support in the morning! They run their monitors in 640x480x256 because they don't realize there are any other settings!
If you're planning on marketing Linux to the masses, at least get the character sketch straight. This guy is at least what you could call a "power user". Hell, I'm sure some of the people on this board who call themselves "geeks" couldn't do have of what he's apparently done.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
First of all, good for him, it'll no doubt save him money in someway...but I have a few grumbles with what he says anyway...
:P
;).
:). I've heard phone support is pretty crappy, but web based support is good. I've always had personal responses from my emails to Microsoft.
Have to admit that I was inclined to do my best to end my relationship with MS (costly stuff that, forty percent plus margin kind of makes me uneasy in the have-I-been-taken-for-a-ride department)
Where does he get 40% from? How does he know how much Microsoft spends in R&D?
Word can easily be replaced by Wordperfect, Staroffice or Abiword. Quite satisfactory, and MSWord files are no problem.
Yeah, if all you use words for is just typing up stuff, Word has MANY features, most people only use 5% of the features, but not everyone uses the same 5%. In many areas, Staroffice and Wordperfect fail (good antialiased fonts is a BIG area). Table support, integration (eg. embedd other documents like excel/pdf/ etc are lacking. He probably does use these, but then, if all he needs is 'abiword', then maybe he would be just as happy with a simple editor like notepad or wordpad.
Somebody has a question that you are about to answer in slide 14. I 'click' forward to 14 and then back again. (try that in Powerpoint).
Uh, maybe he should look at PowerPoint again. Linus likes PowerPoint right?
This is where I see a glaring gap among the Linux applications. Netscape is useful (but unstable), best solution I guess is having a Palm Pilot in conjunction with Kpilot or Jpilot.
On the dot
And the few times I needed a helping hand both Mandrake and Caldera did their best without sending me through the hoops of four levels of interrogation before support - MS style
Oh, I dunno, I've found Microsoft to be the best support company (in my own experience). But then, I deal mostly with developer support where they ship you like service pack cds by courier to your door
I think a lot of what the guy is saying hovers around the 'correct' mark, but it depends so much on your personal needs. A lot of the reason why everyone uses Office is because there's a huge 3rd party market for plugins and applications based on Office. I mean, you can write a (small) accouting system using Excel and macros alone, and heaps of people use Excel for exactly that. Unix is damn good for shell scripting, but Windows is damn good for business/producvitiy app scripting and integration. Want to reuse IE in your word document to render VML drawings, with vector data coming from an Access database? No problem. COM. Want to play an MPEG video in your power point app using Windows Media Player? No problem. COM. Want to add your power point presentation into a word document, and also display an excel sheet inside your powerpoint presentation? No problem. COM.
etc. KOffice/KDE is making huge strides towards this, but still has a way to go.
If all you need to do is to type up letters, then spending money of Office is stoopid. But just don't think that that's all Office does.
There are two problems with this post. The first problem is that the HREF tag is incorrect--the closing is not formed correctly so the link doesn't work. The second problem is that the bitmap doesn't correctly identify this post as a joke.
This guy is a typical user? You're joking, right?
He indicates that he's presently using three different distributions of Linux, and has recompiled (at least one of them) 3 times. He has a home network, with a full-time Internet connection. He "naturally" chose KDE over Gnome, and prefers vi to emacs.
He's a "typical" user. Right.
I don't like to see "end luser" comments, because those end users are the people who pay us. (If half of my clients had half a clue, I'd be looking for a real job....) But to suggest that this guy is anything like a "typical" end user is too much--way too much.
The "typical" user turns off his computer, but leaves the monitor on--and thinks he's saving energy. Or he turns the monitor off, but leaves the computer on, thinking the whole thing is off. The typical user carefully types his password on his notebook when he boots it up on the airplane--otherwise that heavy-duty security won't let him into his files. The typical user hopes that someday the computer support geeks will stop giggling about the time he demanded immediate onsite response, and the "critical problem" turned out to be that the monitor was unplugged.
All joking aside, how typical is this guy? Would any of us pass this article along to "typical" users at an employer's, or at client's? How many typical users that we know would be able to read through the first paragraph and understand what it means? If this is any realistic notion of a "typical" user, ESR (et al)'s dream of "taking over the world" is a joke--because the vast majority of the world simply can't read that first paragraph.
When Windows 95 was being reviewed one of the Microsoft project leaders defined a very simple metric: "can my mother use this?" You can prate all you want about the stability and reliability of *nix or *BSD--but until all of our mothers are chatting on Linux boxen there simply isn't going to be a place in the desktop market for Linux (et al). My (67-year-old) mother is happily using Windows 95. She uses CompuServe for email, and has yet to explore the Web--she thinks it would be more complication than she has time to put up with. Would I expect Mom to recompile Mandrake 6.0 3 times to deal with "Level 5 problems"?
You must be kidding....