Open-Source Software and "The Luxury of Ignorance"

Bootsy Collins writes "Using the recent experience of trying to configure CUPS on his home network, Eric Raymond has written an interesting new screed on poor design of user interfaces in general, and configuration interfaces in particular, in open source software, entitled The Luxury of Ignorance. A sample quote: 'This kind of fecklessness is endemic in open-source land. And it's what's keeping Microsoft in business -- because by Goddess, they may write crappy insecure overpriced shoddy software, but on this one issue their half-assed semi-competent best is an order of magnitude better than we usually manage.'"

Comments

Re:Why aren't macs more popular?

[Not The Real Me]

I can get a white box Intel machine for about $300. The least expensive Mac is about $1200+. Do the math -- it's been this way since at least the P200 days.

Re:Why aren't macs more popular?

[1u3hr]

About 5 years ago I was deciding to buy my first home PC (after working with them for several years). I was strongly leaning towards a Mac, even though it did cost considerably more. I decided on one that included a DOS card with a 486 that could run my Windows software too. So I said I want that, with a bigger hard disk (I think it came with a 3GB disk, pretty tight for two OSs). The answer was no. I could buy another hard disk and install it myself. So I took my money and had a PC built to order. That arrogance and inflexibility lost them a costomer.

M$ fanboys just blame the user.

[twitter]

Hats off to Fedora and Debian based distros like Knoppix or Mepis for making networking work out of the box. Can you say that about Microsoft? No, you can't. The average user can not install a basic M$ desktop. Networking, especially network printing are way too difficult for the average user too. Those are "Advanced" topics for "Admins" who will take $75/hr to fix it in some way the user will never fathom. When it breaks, and it will, they take more money and blame the user for not spending enough on virus protection.

Free software is not perfect, but you have to compare apples to apples here. Any user who can figure out M$ networking can do just as well with free software.

At its current rate, there won't be a "big year"

[bonch]

We still have crap like Kroupware, Kallery, Xouvert, and a GUI system that still requires you to configure mouse buttons and specs through an awful text file (as someone else succinctly put it, it's like answering essay questions).

Microsoft has already moved on and is creating virtual machine run-times and a DirectX hardware-accelerated desktop. Linux is still trying to get a desktop off the ground with "cute" names like KDE and GNOME, each with their own sound servers, their own configuration formats, neither with a proper method of installation/uninstallation (because to Linux users, registries magically = bad because Windows happens to have something called the "registry"), neither with a proper interface (though Gnome is the closest), and neither having the snappy responsiveness OS X and Windows XP have.

I finished compiling KDE 3.2 today on Gentoo, using Pentium 4 optimizations. It still took 4 seconds when I first loaded up my Home directory. Loading My Computer in Windows takes less than a third of a second.

These are all the endless things that need to be fixed, but won't be. Instead, things will be forked, people will obsess over something "M$" did, and meanwhile KDE and GNOME will continue living in their own little worlds making pretty desktops that make for good screenshots on the back of the distro packaging, until you actually grab the mouse and try to use them.