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Rise of the 'Consumer' Linux Distribution
Hodge writes "Newsforge has an article discussing the potential for 'Consumer' Linux distro's, i.e. ones aimed at regular users rather than the Geek Elite. It's quite an insightful article, recognising that the vast majority of computer users just want a system that works and don't care about issues of open- or closed-source and don't even want to know about dependencies."
They don't want to know about dependencies!? What's next, a linux user who doesn't even know what make is?
Mass hysteria! Cats and Dogs living together!
Banished to the bottom of Boston Harbor by a shaman, the 'Consumer' had been awoken. Reckless scientists meddle in sediment matters better left alone. Making his way toward Tokyo, the 'Consumer' flatten student homes and workshops as he leaves a path of destruction accross the United States, consuming every consumable. Governments are left powerless to stop him. The 'Consumer' even receive help from a despicable group called the 'Consumer Advocates', and the EFF. But in the land of Redmond, Washington, a group codenamed 'the 1337 MSCE Microsoft Certified' go out to stop the 'Consumer'. Time is running short, but 'the 1337' will have to try to use their immense resources to save Billkind. In the American mid-west, the 1337 make their first attempt to stop the 'Consumer'. After laying waste to Idianapolis, and also destroying student homes and workshops, the 'Consumer' must face his noble enemies for the first time.
...Slashdot's own Roblimo! And linked to from Slashdot. Wow. A Slashdot editor posts a link to an article by another Slashdot editor from Slashdot. It'd be funnier if Roblimo submitted it :)
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
personally, if I can't perform polynomial regressions in my spreadsheet program, I'm just so at a loss I start to drift on an iceberg of uncertainty and fear.
What's even scarier is if Joe Sixpack knows what a polynomial regression is and I don't. And I can bootstrap Gentoo perfectly from a Stage 1 tarball in my sleep!
God, back to High School.
Yes you have to take classes to drive. Thats because a car can kill people. When was the last time you heard of not knowing how to print your MS Word document leading to a 41 car pileup on the highway?
I was trying to print a "Warning : ICE" sign for the highway...
"I assume the people you know are at least semi-tech savvy people."
They are just 15-16 year old kids.
That's amazing FUD. I've been running W2K on my main box for maybe 18 months, sure it has crashed every so often, sure it's insecure, sure it has many faults as an OS. Yet I stil use it - why? Because 99% of the time it works, and when it does it's easy. Install a new app? Download the setup file, run it, done. I install a lot of apps, and I can't remember the last time a setup program failed, or did anything kooky, or had a dll conflict, or any of those other nasty things which are supposed to happen all the time under windows. Install a new USB device? Plug it in, insert driver disk (if required), done. In fact I can't remember the last time my W2K box did _anything_ I didn't expect.
I've got another box running as a server with SuSE and KDE/apache/mySQL etc etc. That does a fantastic job for me, and there's no way I'd run windows for that task. The linux box stays up, is reliable and I trust it much more. But ease of use? I installed a DNS server the other night (djbdns - very cool app), but it's simple 5 step install process took me about 4 attempts and 2 hours to get working right (including configuration). It had me manually creating directories, adding users, untarring, compiling, installing. Then when it appeared to be happy but just didn't run, I poked around until I figured the 'make' had to be run as root - it didn't say that. The damn thing even came with it's own process manager (who wants init or cron or any of the other standards?) which required installing as well. Don't even get me started on installing USB devices - my DSL modem is USB and it works now, but I ended up sending SuSE fixed FAQ entries for that one, and still there I was adding rows of hex numbers to some config file.
None of these problems have anything to do with security - linux is not more secure because you have to manually edit config files. In fact, I'd suggest it's less secure because of that, as it makes it easier to make a mistake when configuring it. Sure the install had to run as root, that's a good thing, but it should have told me. Windows would have done ("You need admin priviliges to install this").
So please don't take this as a pro-ms rant, it's not that. Linux has come a long way and is in many ways a far superior O/S to anything else out there, but the "ease of use" arena is one place where it just can't compete IMHO.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
I can't believe I just read this on slashdot:
"...recognising that the vast majority of computer users just want a system that works and don't care about issues of open- or closed-source and don't even want to know about dependencies."