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."
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
·
· 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
·
· 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.
---
-- 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
·
· 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
·
· 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.
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.
Some thoughts on Sigurd's conclusions
by
Chalst
·
· 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.
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).
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
·
· 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
·
· 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
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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).
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?
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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.
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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?
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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)
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Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Computers are supposed to be appliances
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?
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
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.
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.
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....