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Roblimo Abroad: Pushing Linux' Prospects In Jordan
Last week, NewsForge editor and Slashdot poster Robin ("roblimo") Miller traveled to Jordan to observe, talk about and foment the free software scene there, in part by speaking at the Open Source Software Workshop held in Amman. How do you grow a software industry in a country with a 30% poverty rate, where water supplies are a bigger concern than ATX power supplies? At the conference Robin spoke at, clearly a big part of that answer is high-quality free software. He notes that "Two gentlemen from Microsoft also spoke. I was in favor of Linux and Open Source. They weren't." Aside from the software side of things (including another plug for the awesome demo power of Knoppix), the report is worth reading to anyone as ignorant of Jordan as I am just to find out more about the place.
There's got to be an easier way to get him to switch than pushing it in him. I bet that CD hurt!
That the route to mainstream approval and acceptance for Linux is through countries like this. The ones who can't afford to shell out the bucks Microsoft demands.
If enough interest can be generated in these countries then hundreds of thousands of skilled programmers will turn their efforts towards advanced applications for Linux.
Is it a fast process? Heck no, but I think it's going to be more successful then just trying to convince mainstream America they don't need Bill Gates.
I love it. From the article:
Indeed, casual conversations I had with several workshop participants lead me to believe that the BSA is one of the greatest forces behind the spread of Open Source Software in the Middle East. The group's representatives in this part of the world may not consider increasing Open Source popularity a primary part of their mission, but it is one of the most visible results of their activities.
And to the people saying "these people need drinking water, not Linux!," MS was there too. I am sure MS is at all these 3rd world countries pushing there expensive products. No, Linux will probably not solve such issues as clean drinking water, but MS products WILL suck very scarce funds that should have been used to address such issues!
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I am a computer programmer living in Egypt, the situations between Egypt and Jordan are much alike (despite the fact that Egypt is much better of both technically and financially).
The open source movement is gaining so much momentum here in Egypt, actually i am one of the people who tries to recommend Linux in each and every situation or problem met,and have managed to get some ppl to acyually implement it in more than one occassion, and performed some system devlopment on them and there are lots of ISPs running linux here in Egypt.
The bottom line is, that countries like Jordan, Egypt, Qatar,..etc... should favor the open sorce movemnt cause its in their own good to do so. Enviroments like these should avoid monopolizing companies (with out mentioning any specific one $$).
The lunatic is in my head
That the route to mainstream approval and acceptance for Linux is through countries like this.
I think the fast route is actually making Linux ready for the desktop.
Linux is NOT a viable alternative to Windows, and you're deluding yourself if you think it is.
It's a foregone conclusion that we need a comprehensive desktop environment like KDE. We need an underlining spellchecker in KMail. We need KDE not to be so slow that it takes half an hour to parse my MP3 collection every time I open the folder. We need people to match feature for feature every Windows product, instead of whining about "highly advanced math" like polynomial regressions. We need xine to work, instead of having their developers wandering around talking about changing the default logo to something which looks like it was designed by a 14-year-old Run Lola Run fan from East Berlin.
Is it a fast process? Heck no, but I think it's going to be more successful then just trying to convince mainstream America they don't need Bill Gates.I think most North Americans have no particular love of either Windows or of Bill Gates, and will jump ship to the (free/reliable) alternative as soon as it's really there.
Linux simply isn't ready for the desktop yet.
I run Linux on my primary desktop. While the kernel and system-space stuff is leaps and bounds above Windows, from a UI standpoint, it's still about as painful as going from Windows 2000 to Windows 3.1.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Oh, well. Let me do it for you: "-1, Offtopic."
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
I love to see people go out of their way to pitch Linux to those that will contribute to the project by only being the user base. Rob and the whole Slashdot crew have done a great job of going out of their way to accept linux users as opposed to Linux developers (this talk, TechTV appearances, etc..). In the end, you can only have so many programmers contribute to the project, but you can never have enough users. Perhaps there should be more pages devoted to linux users as opposed to linux programmers.
For example, if sites like Freshmeat and Sourceforge were set-up more like cnet's download.com we would see more people interested in the prospect of software from these sites. It is very intimidating to some to see project's source code, developers, etc... There is no lack of great programs on Sourceforge and Freshmeat(difference?) but there is a lack of information on how to use these programs. Many open source projects lack an easy to understand information page. Also, I don't think that it would be a bad idea to port some of the more important projects to other operating systems. A great example of this is the PHP and MySQL projects that offer IIRC an older version of the software complied in .exe. However, this was done out of necessity because most people develop php/mysql solutions on Windows machines to run on Apacche.
What does everyone think of this? Is there a way to make the Linux programs (as opposed to just the operating system) more accessable to non-programmers?
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
As if they need any more holy wars...
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
The "many eyes make all bugs shallow" Open Source development creed was refuted with comments (disguised as questions) about how it is better to have professionals with professional-quality debugging tools checking mission-critical code than it is to rely on all those rag-tag Open Source developers.
So basically the MS line was, "You guys in Jordan cannot hope to have the skills and smarts to possibly put together quality software, no matter how much you put your mind to it."
It sounds to me like this *was* a gathering of professionals, or at least, programmers coming together to become professionals in their area. Way to make a sale, dumbasses - alienation *always* makes buyers' pockets just a little deeper, doesn't it?
Did he go so far as to call the Jordanian programmer "ignorant towel-heads" too, or was that saved for later?
GMFTatsujin
Clearly not a programmer, but she is definitely much closer to the IT world than any other monarch, having working at Apple. She's babelicious too, we need more IT queens like her:
3 26 14.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/16
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Linux, just like every other operating system, is nothing more than a tool.
And a Picasso is just a painting.
I think good craftsmen and women appreciate good tools, even if they do not totally understand them.
Mod me as a troll if you want but this needs to be said....
The BSA is cracking down on software piracy in countries where the poverty rate is 30% and sysadmins get paid ~$300-$600 per month? How do they sleep at night? And do they REALLY think all those pirated copes of Office, IIS, etc. are going to be turned into legit sales once they put the pressure on?
I can't see this doing anything but pushing more and more people towards open source, because it is their ONLY option. The funny thing is that they really do want to use proprietary software, and if they could offer more REASONABLE prices they could probably capture more market share than with their greed-inflated prices.
But of course that will never happen, and when more and more open source software is used in its place I will laugh as they sleep in the bed they made.
Linux Macht Frei
(if you don't understand the above, go back to school.)
And open source zealots wonder why nobody in the business world takes them seriously. Come on. Linux, just like every other operating system, is nothing more than a tool. There is no possible way that it is going to be right for every single situation, every single time. That would explain my you haven't had success on every situation (and not even on "a lot" of situations, but only "more than one" occassion). Next time, try assessing the problem properly and tailoring a solution for the problem itself. Knee-jerking and screaming "Linux!" is not the proper reaction.
Its not quite that simple. Perhaps what you are saying can hold some weight in the United States, but in Egypt things are very different. The people as a rule experience the economic impact of huge American corporations like Microsoft much more than the average American. Or to put it another way, they are not as invested in the American corporate fascist system of life as are those of us who live in America. Many people in Egypt will not support large corporations like Microsoft soley because they are in fact large corporations.
The parent poster was probably not just some zealot but someone who is involved in providing business software or knows someone who does. For business, someone writing email, working with a database front end, or a POS system, Linux is sufficient. Egyptians would rather put their money in the hands of a young, struggling Egyptian than some Microsoft fat cat.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Once my sisters login, visitors act as if nothing is wrong. They go about their business. They check their email, write their paper, chat with gaim.
Agreed. It's great, isn't it?
Bet you've got a pretty fast computer to do that.
I find Windows 2000 to be perfectly usable on a Pentium II-233. I find a PIII-500 to be ponderous when running KDE.
The other problem is that perhaps I have higher expectations of functionality. I want an underlining spellchecker, and frankly, it costs us credibility that it's not there. Sure, that's not Linux' fault - KDE runs equally slowly on most other Unix variants.
Same thing at my workplace. We've started installing Debian desktops to replace the aging and incapable web browsing applications that work on Win 3.1 (our platform is DOS). Logins are authenticated against the main Netware server. People go about their business.Yeah. I considered doing something like that with over 600 computers for the Canadian federal government. Unfortunately, to be as quick as the users were used to, I would have to upgrade a bunch of Pentium III machines, even for users whose most taxing applications were their e-mail clients. (Remember what I said about Ximian's Continental Drift? Ahem... Evolution?)
Sorry, that's unacceptable. I cannot justify buying new machines for e-mail drones.
Questions about Lotus 123 and Open Systems Accounting software are commonly asked daily - this company has been using this software for years! I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to explain to people how to move files, print old faxes, or download and print product datasheets.Yup. The Unix filesystem is easy enough for new users to understand, especially since most software defaults to their /home directory.
Perhaps I'll buy that free software isn't ready for the desktops of power users.If it takes a Pentium 4 running Evolution to get the same functionality as a Windows 95 box running Eudora, then surely even you will agree that something is wrong.
No one who needs to use a computer to get something done cares if a program underlines misspelled words when there's an obvious spell check menu or button.Excuse me? That's probably the single stupidest thing I've ever heard anyone say.
Here's an exercise for you.
Cut and paste a large technical document into KMail. Select "Spell check". Sit and *manually* acknowledge every correct or incorrect word.
Now compare the same task with any software package including a modern spellchecker. Notice how much easier it is to simply glance at an underlined word and see whether it's correct or not? (Oh, the spellchecker doesn't know my customer's 18-letter-long last name. Oh well.)
If a spellchecker is considered to be unimportant, let me remind you that misspelling costs credibility, which causes a company to lose business.
No one that only needs to do real work cares that the scroll wheel doesn't work - people know how to use page up/down, the arrow keys, and scroll bars.Of course they do. But that doesn't mean that they should. A computer is a tool. A tool should be designed to be as easy and efficient to use as possible. I bet I can scroll through an e-mail faster than you can mouse over and hit the elevator buttons.
In the real world, time is money.
But that's okay. If there's no scroll wheel support, users won't take your new operating system seriously and will resist your every attempt to supplant their familiar and functional (if unreliable) Windows.
You power users don't care that there's a legal liability in making xine work right.It's a legal liability to have a repeat button? And to have a GUI which doesn't include decorative buttons which don't actually do anything?
You want to play DVDs with free software or facilitate it? You need to be prepared to break federal laws in the US. I will never provide DVD playing software on my family computer. It's not worth breaking the law. Distributions and software authors are even more justified in this fear than system integrators.Perhaps you should read what I wrote at www.glowingplate.com/dissent. I never said that DVD support should be built into xine, did I? I understand the liability of DeCSS. Sure, the functionality would be nice, but I'm not asking for the impossible. I'm asking for a concentration on matching the features and UI of such defacto software as Quicktime and Windows Media Player before designing GUIs that are so tacky they'd only be enjoyed by empoverished European children.
I've migrated a considerable number of non-technie people to free software. I've seen how people behave when they've only been exposed to Windows.So've I.
Know what bugs them the most? Logging in and out.The users I've found haven't been bothered by this. You see, I've actually tried this in a corporate environment where users were already accustomed to logging in and out with their Windows machines.
Don't knock the idea until you have some more substantial experience than a webpage that harps on bugs in individual applications.You, sir, are an idiot, if you really think that a decent user experience isn't the *absolute* first step towards migrating users from the comfortable embrace of Windows. For fsck's sake, it's not like I'm even citing obscure applications.
Look at Knoppix. Yes, Knoppix is technically brilliant and the single best Linux demo out there. But if you were to show that to the CEO of a bank, he'd laugh you out of his office. The UI is tacky, it lacks comparable features that users are now accustomed to, and its only advantage is that it's free.
The cost of the software pales in the face of the cost of the employee which will be using it. I can't afford to pay employees to sit around and click through Ignore/Ignore/Ignore on their spellcheckers or wait 1/2 an hour for a Pentium 4 to parse a directory of 2,000 MP3s. I'd be out of business.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Finishing off your little essay by saying Linux is 99.8% or whatever ready for Joe Sixpack is like a kid in grade school ending a story with "then I woke up." It makes the savvy reader want to beat you with a sock full of quarters.
I agree completely with you, but I could think of no other way to put a positive spin on it. Without it, my little essay reads like it was written by a truculent MCSE.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I certainly consider my water supply a lot more than my ATX powersupply. And I live in the U.S. The post sounds as if its insulting the other countries for valuing life over power availability for computers which they likely don't have many of.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Fixed URL for your pleasure.
Queen Rania al-Abdullah is one of the most visible first ladies in the Arab world, and has become a regular fixture on the society pages of London magazines.
Known for her affection for designer goods, she is also viewed by many as one of the world's best-dressed women.
But the queen who came from a family of Palestinian origin, recently came under fire for leaving the country at a time when Israel is stepping up military operations in the West Bank and Gaza.
King Abdullah II's family
The royal couple have three children
She was travelling abroad in May when her own family's home town, Tulkarm, was bombed to avenge a suicide attack on Israel.
"Her absence inflamed feelings in the [refugee] camps," a businessman from Amman told the UK newspaper the Sunday Telegraph.
Glamour
But to most people, Queen Rania is a glamorous figure and a champion for women and children's rights. She has founded numerous charities.
She is an outspoken critic of "honour killing" - the custom of men murdering any female relative found to have committed adultery or lost her virginity before marriage.
A doctor's daughter, she was born in Kuwait on 31 August 1970.
Queen Rania and French President Jacques Chirac at a state dinner
The queen is known for her fashon sense
She went to primary and secondary school in Kuwait, then earned a degree in Business Administration from the American University in Cairo.
From there she went on to a brief career in marketing at Citibank, before taking a job at Apple Computer in Amman.
She met her future husband at a dinner party in January 1993. Two months later, they were engaged and by June they were married.
The king and queen now have three children, including a one-year-old baby.
Jordan's first lady is an active woman. Her hobbies, according to the Queen Rania web site, include water skiing, running and cycling
Suburban home
When King Abdullah Bin al-Hussein and Queen Rania al-Abdullah ascended the throne in 1999, they brought a more populist approach to the Jordanian monarchy.
The royal couple have eschewed palace surroundings in favour of a suburban home outside Amman.
While her husband is known for mingling with his subjects in disguise, Queen Rania prefers to visit remote villages in the kingdom.
Her trips are unplanned and unannounced. She simply gets into her car and drives off with a pair of security guards in tow.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/16326 14.stm
Next time I'll check twice.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Did you even read the article? MS not only sent reps to this conference, they even co-sponsored it!
The BSA is basically a front group for Microsoft, and other proprietary software companise. Granted, it may or may not be doing much in Jordan, but MS is certainly worried about sales in Jordan and making its views known! If they weren't worried, why would they care about the conference?
Female Prison Rape in NY
I've never used anything like this myself, but I've heard some great things about bootable CDs with full distros of Linux on them. I think that a great way to bring linux to the masses is to make a "Knoppix wizzard" of sorts, that asks you questions about what you want to have done, then creates an ISO that will do exactly that. The idea is to be able to easily create CDs which, well, if misused could be dangerous, but if not misused could be handed out to anybody, potentially fit in a wallet in business-card size, and would when dropped in, boot to a fully working linux distro and start up a presentation showing off whatever feature it is you're trying to show off (Want your boss to use open office[.org]? Run the wizzard, burn, hand him the CD). If you wanted to, you could make a CD that when dropped in, would reboot the system, scan everything, install linux, and then eject the CD. That's what I'm talking about when I say "could be dangerous", but I figure a no-click installation is a sure way to give tech-shy users a chance. Even if you're savy, terminology used in installation can be needlessly obscure [Mount point? wtf?! You mean a drive is on top of another drive?!]
Of course, I just come up with these stupid ideas- I rarely impliment anything. Still, someone I mentioned it to said it sounded like a good idea, and I do think that something like it could be useful. I'm interested in making life for linux users easy, and would be glad to contribute to such a project in whatever way I can which does not conflict with my near-total laziness. No, really.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I'll take on the challenge.
/home/$USER. Therefore, the "Home" button on your web/file browser can take you to www.yahoo.com or whatever. If I configure Konqueror to do that, I have to manually type /home/myname or browse to it. That's stupid.
>Any alternative operating system has to expect to be run on the hand-me-down boat anchor before being promoted to the user's main workstation.
Why? This isn't going to get Linux anywhere that it isn't already. Nobody will run an OS on their trash computer and expect it to be perfect. Infact, the users that are stuck with windows already have one hell of a machine if they're running XP, so we should expect their machine to be one hell of a machine. Either that, or there's slackware, just like there's windows 3.0 for CGA video users.
>In Red Hat 7.1 - not that old - there's no support for my mouse's scroll wheel by default. I don't care the reason, scroll wheel mice have been popular since 1998. Four years is a lifetime in Internet time, even with a recession.
Reasonable. However, in windows XP the second button (on a real mouse) does nothing. These mice have been popular since, oh, 1986. In internet time, this is about 4 lifetimes. I can't believe that OS still can't support it.
>Xine is arguably the best multimedia player for *nix, but it doesn't have something as simple as a repeat button, from what I can tell.
Agreed, however, mplayer is still better. But the UI sucks. And trying to get it to run on a machine that doesn't have it already can be a bear (especially with xine).
Yet you go on to say:
>Microsoft and Apple have millions of dollars being invested in sitting people around in focus groups to see what end users want.
Suggesting that windows media player is the hottest thing on earth. I have news for you, from a usability standpoint, end users who I know that can barely turn the machine on go insane when windows XP constantly hides the title bar in the media player, hate it when it dials out to get "media info", hate it when it locks up because they tell it to quit downloading the titles of their albums, and Microsoft STILL doesn't know how to handle VBR media. Users can't figure out why it is that skipping to the end of their media brings them to the middle of it instead.
WiMP is a usability NIGHTMARE. WiMP is to even the CLI mplayer as ed is to vi or emacs.
>Speaking of mere credibility... The (apparently but who knows anymore) predominant mail client, KMail, for the (apparently but who knows anymore) predominant GUI, KDE, doesn't include a spell checker which underlines mistyped/misspelled words.
Okay... So you want the underlined words, and you insult KMail as such for not supporting the feature you so desparately need:
>I have to manually invoke it like I did with DaVinci's spell checker back on a corporate LAN in 1996
Then you go on to say:
>UPDATE 20021123!! Apparently, this afterthought will be added across all of KDE 3.2's text editors. Wow, only 5 years behind Microsoft, and we wonder why the public hasn't embraced Linux faster.
To which I respond:
UPDATE TODAY!! Apparently, windows didn't originally have a spell checker, yet in Unix the spell command has been about since, oh, I guess about 1970 (I don't know exactly since I wasn't born at that point). Wow, only a few decades behind Unix! And we wonder why the general public thinks MS sucks so hard.
>KDE or Gnome? Fine, they're really only libraries and can coexist, but the division is counterintuitive, confusing, not relevant and off-putting to new users.
Uhuh. How about Fisher-Price XP mode to "classic" mode? I upgraded a client's win98 machine to XP yesterday and forgot to set the theme to classic mode. They couldn't even figure out how to turn the machine off!
The only difference is that when MS changes something, they make sure all their employees pretend it's the best thing that ever happened to anybody. Too bad that in chaging the XP interface they got rid of Favourites shortcuts and Recent Documents shortcuts by default, two of the most used features I've seen in older windows versions.
>Konqueror as a file browser: This is poorly thought out. Want to combine web browser and file browsing functionality, like Windows 98 and up? No. There's a Windows way of doing things, and a Unix way of doing things. The Windows way doesn't involve the user's life being based around
This argument seriously doesn't make any sense to me. Can you clarify it? Seems to me the home button does exactly as it is expected to, take you to your home directory. You would rather the browser take you to a webpage, though. Seems confusing to me. If you want a hotbutton for your homepage website, I'm sure that isn't rocket science to get the KDE team to add it. Why don't you ask them?
>Konqueror's other great flaw is the single click to open a file. It's as stupid as Windows 98 with Active Desktop turned on.
Millions of Mac users disagree. And so does my mom, and everyone else's who can't figure out when to double or single click.
> I navigated to Mozilla's cache directory, chose "Select All", then right-clicked in the file browser window to choose the Delete option. Whoops. Even though I didn't release the key, it acted like I did, and it managed to open over 5,000 image files before the machine exhausted its RAM, then swap space, then my patience. Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.
You should know windows reacts EXACTLY the same. Try it some time with 5,000 programs. It's great fun to push CTRL-A on the desktop of a co-worker and press enter. They'll be swearing at you for hours.
>XMMS: KMail gives me the "You've Got New Mail" beep, and XMMS crashes. "Audio device is in use."
Ok. You win on this one. Send a bug report, whydon'tcha?
>Buggy boxed distros.
Virus infected boxed software.
This is like shooting fish in a barrel...
>Mind-numbing slowness.... like, oh my God, how long will it take for KDE's file browser to show me the list of the 2,765 MP3s in my directory?
Mind-numbing unresponsiveness. Ever seen how long it takes for a windows machine without what was (a couple of years ago) ungodly amounts of RAM to go from logging in to opening the start menu?
>As allegedly fat and slow as Windows 2000 is, it installs off only *one* pirated CD (not *three*, like most distros),
So how is that Win2k preloaded typesetting, word-processing, emulation and source-code suite going for you, anyways?
Just wondering, since obviously that Win2K CD had everything those Linux CDs had on them.
Not to mention you could always run slackware if you just wanted one CD.
>Why, despite KDE's advantage of optimization, is Windows Exploiter still faster?
Because you didn't run as root? Because in Linux the web-browser isn't embedded into the kernel?
Sorry. Again, why don't you ask Linus to embed Mozilla into Linux? If he doesn't, I guess that sorta sucks. You could either do it yourself, or you could pay someone who is willing.
I do understand the pain, though. Perhaps a note to the nice folks at Mozilla 'bout implementing quick-start for Linux would be in order.
>An application crashes. Nothing responds to mouseclicks. I've waited a few seconds and need to get back to work.
I was wrong. Seems you are running as root... That was a bad idea.
You do realize that until 2k and XP windows basically reacted identically to Linux in this regard, no matter who was logged in, right? And that "nasty" applications can still do this if they want to, even if you are a user in XP or 2K (try SiSoft Sandra at 100% utilization burn-in if you don't believe me).
>As a minimalist alternative, how about a key combination which, when pressed, renices the application using the most resources?
Would be nice, but then it wouldn't be the same as your beloved windows, no? Because I don't see anything like this in windows. Infact, what I see is that you have to manually adjust each task's priority in the task manager, which, itself, when windows software screws up (like it often does -- I've had permanent 100% utilization with ping when pinging a non-existant domain, for example), tends to take about 2 or 3 minutes to open, never mind respond.
>should, in any way, offer better management of crashed processes than a first-order derivative of a mature mainframe operating system.
Now that's a thinly veiled FUD attempt.
>Some *nix users. Most will give you the shirt off your back to help you out and I appreciate those, but there's a distressing and non-trivial number who will mock nonconformity within an Anime/Star Trek environment.
Yeah, I know, it does suck. But this is a geek thing, nothing more. One could say the same thing about Sports Jocks and windows, but it's all silly. Most people on both sides of the fence are pretty reasonable.
>Speaking of Mom and Dad's computer, we need advocacy and an installed user base of kids who can't necessarily afford their own machines.
Now this I can agree to totally.
Sorry if you feel I've punched some holes in your arguments, but honestly, I think this is what Linux needs to get windows users to use it:
It needs people to port the best of the linux apps over to windows. When windows people get hooked on them, they'll feel right at home when they switch to Linux. This is going on right now with projects like cygwin, but there could be more.
And the same thing for open-source windows apps. These need to be ported to Linux. DVD2SVCD, VCDEasy, and VirtualDub are strong examples that come to mind right now. There's many more, though.
Once the free software on both environments converges to the point that it's reasonably hard to tell which you are running (apart from proprietary software, and the overall UI experience) users won't care which OS they are running. And at that point, they'll choose Linux because it has something Windows never will: Total freedom (price and libre).
Holy hell, that was long...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Your discussion of green-screen applications is a complete tangent, and does not address the inadequacies of which the original poster complained. Yes, banks have many people interacting with centralized computers via terminal apps. But they also have many knowledge workers using Windows and Office. Those are the ones who could be transitioned to Linux if it were ready. Therefore, the reason the bank executive would laugh is not because you propose a GUI in place of a green-screen, but because you propose a less functional GUI in place of the existing GUI.
To be clear: it doesn't matter what kind of terminal the drones at the counter are using. The decision-makers all run Windows and use Office. That's not just executives; it's a whole pyramid of workers that starts immediately above the terminal-using drones.
I find Windows 2000 to be perfectly usable on a Pentium II-233. I find a PIII-500 to be ponderous when running KDE.
Really? I have a 486 laptop with 12 MB, and a PII-233 laptop with 144MB. Win2k is out of the question on the first, and makes the second a real dog. Both are running Debian Woody, and both are completely functional. I use blackbox on the 486. I started with KDE on the PII, but eventually switched to Windowmaker, not because of speed but because I like its style. I still use many of the KDE utilities. The PII is fast enough for daily use on the job. That simply wasn't true for Win2k on that machine. I wonder if the difference reflects our different levels of experience with the two?
Look at Knoppix. [snip] The UI is tacky, it lacks comparable features that users are now accustomed to, and its only advantage is that it's free.
Which features are lacking? The BSODs? I use Win2k at work, and have booted up Knoppix at work when I need to run something which is Unix-only. The only thing Knoppix doesn't give me is a client for the MS email server. That's available for Linux, but not libre so not on Knoppix, I think.
The UI is tacky, ...
This is not a valid criticism, if you accept the idea that MS products are ready for the desktop. One of the few unprompted opinions which my non-technical friends have expressed about WinXP is that it is UGLY. No one I work with likes the MS user interface, though all have grown accustomed to it. Or perhaps you meant that since KDE is so Windows-like, it is tacky and unusable?
See what I've been reading.
correcting a minor point here...
:)
">Konqueror's other great flaw is the single click to open a file. It's as stupid as Windows 98 with Active Desktop turned on.
Millions of Mac users disagree. And so does my mom, and everyone else's who can't figure out when to double or single click.
On a Mac, you double click to launch a program or file when navigating through the file browser. Only items placed in the dock can be launched with a single click. Just thought I would point that out... besides that minor point, This is a pretty good debate going on. keep it up!
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
Ignoring the rest of your comment because it looks like it could easily become a circular argument, let me just stick with your single most telling comment:
Hmmm, I just loaded up my directory of MP3s and Oggs. I used the xmms "+DIR" button to add the entire directory of 2808 songs. It took 62 seconds. Over NFS on 100mbit ethernet. From a 200MHz pentium with PIO mode 4 disks. Moreover it took less than a second to sort the entire list by filename. And I haven't been listening to my entire music collection this week (Christmas music)- so except for 25-some songs, none of that was in the buffer cache of *either* machine.Okay. What you're suggesting is that I use another application (xmms) as my file browser, because the file browser built into the leading desktop metaphor is so krufty. You're advocating a work-around which bypasses one of the most fundamental features of KDE, and you apparently don't see a problem with that.
Even so, the speed is too slow. In my case, it does take me over 2 minutes to use the +DIR button, and that's using a PIII-500 with 512 megs of RAM and the MP3 collection being on a separate drive from /. Both drives (/ and /mnt/mp3) are running at UDMA/66 with ext2fs. There's no NFS involved, the MP3 collection is local to that machine.
One way or another, I'm not sure how your workaround would upset my expectations of being able to choose a song and play it immediately when I feel like it.
You see, from my experimentation with your workaround here, it seems that I would have to open xmms, choose +DIR, then wait 2 minutes before I can scroll through and choose the song I wish to listen to.
The alternative is, of course, to save the list as a playlist, but opening large playlists takes as much time as using +DIR. And the list gets stale; music which I've just downloaded isn't available in my playlists until I've updated them - which takes 2 minutes.
By contrast, I'll move over to my Windows 2000 machine (PII-233, 128 megs RAM, NE2000 network card). I hate Windows, and I resent using it, but it does still have a better UI than KDE or Gnome.
Okay. I'll start Samba up on my Linux machine with the MP3 collection. SMBD: [OK] NMBD: [OK]. Now, I'll navigate to my MP3 collection through the Samba share... there. Now let me click on the folder and open it.
One mississippi... two mississippi... three mississippi... four mississippi... five mississippi... six mississip
There. It's done. About 6 seconds, and all 2,751 MP3s currently in the folder are visible. I can click on and play anything from Arlo Guthrie to Warren Zevon.
The moral of the story? Windows 2000 on a slower machine and with an ancient network card on a 10Mbps network will still browse a directory of 2,751 MP3s faster than KDE 3.01 will browse the same locally-mounted directory of MP3s.
By an order of magnitude.
That's a usability problem which cannot be ignored.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.