Fighting FUD with Humor

Technophiliac writes to tell us MadPenguin in running a review of "Fighting FUD With Humor" Marcel Gagné's 2nd edition of "Moving to Linux". From the article: "The biggest obstacle is fear. Modern Linux distributions are easy to install and easy to use. Unfortunately, we are constantly presented with messages telling us that it's too hard and that the average person couldn't possibly grasp the complexity. That's rubbish. People aren't stupid and people who use computers learn new things all the time."

Comments

It's not that it's hard

[ankarbass]

People don't want to switch because they think they need office. Simple as that.

Re:It's not that it's hard

[mctk]

Screw office, I need games.

Re:It's not that it's hard

[agraupe]

Try Cedega ($5/month, minimum $15 dollar purchase) if there is just that one game you can't live without. Also, WINE has increasingly good support for DX9, so you might want to try that as well. I do admit, though, I do keep a seperate windows box just for gaming (but my main system is linux).

Re:It's not that it's hard

[JustADude]

People don't want to switch because they think they need office. Simple as that.

You're not kidding, I used to work for one of the big-box style electronics places, and just about every average computer shopper was convinced they needed MS Office. Supposedly, I should have pushed them towards buying said fantastically overpriced suite. Generally, I asked them what they'd use it for... 9 out of 10 just wanted to be able to type a letter.

Oy.

Re:It's not that it's hard

[seriesrover]

no, people don't switch because they don't perceive the need. To most people Windows does all they need to do and so why go to Linux? Why would they go through "all the agony of having to save\transfer data"? What would they gain? These are the questions Linux has to answer.

Now compound that with the notion that Linux is something geeks use, and thats why people aren't switching in great numbers.

Re:It's not that it's hard

[zootm]

XP Home is something like $60 (you'll need to excuse me, I'm not American so I'm guessing from a quick online search), and that'd be 12 months of Cedega if it's tied to the subscription like that. I'm still a bit hesitant for things like that, personally.

Re:It's not that it's hard

[agraupe]

You don't have to continue the subscription, but you will not be able to download new versions. There is also an experimental version released for free.

Re:It's not that it's hard

[Anonymous Coward]

Well try another distro. Windows comes only in one form wheras GNU/Linux doesn't.
Start with Knoppix or Ubuntu for instance - Configures it all for you automatically.

Heck, I started with Mandrake and it had a lot of bugs, but big deal - I tried out Debian, fell in love with it and stuck with it ever since.

Most people give up too quickly.

And I just have this extreme urge to rant this out: Why do so many people think that just because one GNU/Linux distro is crap that ALL distros are crap!?

Re:It's not that it's hard

[Auckerman]

I disagree, to put it simply. I see the following problems with Linux.

1. It has a need for package management. To me, this is a fundamental flaw with the design of the operating system. There are other techniques and ideas to handle how software is installed.

2. It requires user input for installing a simple desktop system. It should as simple as boot from CD, click install, walk away cause it will reboot and ask you to create an account when done. This operation should, by default both install and overwrite a previous install without losing/breaking a single application install. This install should also automagically install applications a user would normally expect his/her computer to come with.

3. The formal seperation of System and applications is not very good, see OS X for an example of how to do this properly.

4. It emulates Windows UI design and does it poorly. Configuration requires more knowledge than a traditional user has.

5. For "simple things, like Windows, it treats the User like a moron and does a poor job at it. It shouldn't be "easy" if and only if you find the proper wizard to do it and click the buttons in the right order, it should just work.

6. Any and all error codes should be written colloquial english. They should only notify the user if the User has a good reson to know the error happened.

7. Developing tools for Linux need more work and should encourage developers not use package management as a way to install applications.

8. Linux developers should focus on creating tools, not emulating tools already created. The cooperation of professional graphics artists and UI designers would be extremely helpful. Make whitepapers of the UI before designing the application. You'd be surprised how much it will improve the outcome.

8. Most people don't use Office at home, stop using that as an excuse. On top of this, the ability to read and write office documents, especially ones that newer version of Office can't even read has already been solved.

Re:It's not that it's hard

[mattjb0010]

I do need Office, sadly. It's not the best, I much prefer writing LaTeX in anything (including vi :) but I do need Word and Powerpoint for compatibility with the rest of the world (if you think OpenOffice will cut it, don't bother responding). I use OS X and get the best of many worlds, shiny toys and MS Office plus all the Unix goodies. I use Linux on one of my workstations and FreeBSD on a couple of servers I maintain. It all boils down to using the best tool for the best job, it's as simple as that.

Re:It's not that it's hard

[ThogScully]

I use Kontact, KOrganizer and KMail and all that. It connects to my company's Exchange 2003 server for calendar and address book and email and does it all better than Outlook.

What was your point?
-Neil

Re:It's not that it's hard

[jacksonj04]

My point is that Microsoft offers a tightly integrated solution (Exchange, SharePoint, Outlook, Office, Active Directory) which is ideal for a corporate environment. Not to mention the fact that perhaps they want to have a chance in hell of supporting it. Imagine the conversations...

"My email doesn't work."
"Okay, open Outlook for me."
"I don't use Outlook."
"Okay, what do you use?"
"KMail."
"Umm... Okay. Open that, then go Tools, then Email Accounts."
"It's not there."
"How the fuck am I supposed to support 500 different pieces of software?"
*Click*

Re:It's not that it's hard

[Tux007]

Doom3 (Legacy Doom for 1 and 2), Quake4 (3 and 2), RTC Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein ET, Unreal Tournament 2004 (and 2003), all have native Linux-clients, just to name some well-known games.

Re:It's not that it's hard

[orkysoft]

Neverwinter Nights more your cup of tea?

Re:It's not that it's hard

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, I had the same problem. That was a long time ago. It's 2005. Try Mandriva (formerly Mandrake). Its one of the easier ones to install and get working, and targets desktops pretty well. Linux has matured a lot in the past 6 years.

Another thing, I was reading an article, saying that OpenOffice had take 5 years to get where it is today, like it was a long time. Microsoft Office has been around since 1989. At that rate, OpenOffice will bet 10 times as good as MS Office in 3 years.

Re:It's not that it's hard

[purple pixel]

1. Package Management bad? You mean clicking on a file and having an entire app installed for you with no further interaction is bad? Yet you want the OS installed with no interaction. Would you prefer the user makes a mess of their OS by installing apps to wherever they like as windows currently does?
I believe we're talking primarily about switching to Linux from Windows here. Switching from OSX is a different story altogether since in my opinion the only reason to do that is to save money and have more control over the OS.

2. Its easier than installing windows. Never installed an OS that doesn't require user interaction - and I dont believe its possible to do that anyway. Imagine installing SuSE Linux only to get to the GUI and find that they assumed you speak German...etc. etc.

3. Separation of System and Apps? Works for me. Cant comment on OSX since haven't had enough experience with it. If you like it - keep using it - but understand that not everyone likes it.

4. Emulates poorly? Hmmmm, doesn't this mean its not emulating it? If you make it very different to windows, it will be perceived as hard to use. Keeping the look and feel similar and only improving on whats needed is just plain common sense.

5. not sure what you mean. Things are easy. Dont know too many people who "need" wizards that complain about windows even being too hard. People that dont need wizards may complain that it treats you like a moron - but in Linux you dont need to use wizards. Simple.

6. Pretty much how it is already in Linux - or would you prefer windows errors like "an error occurred".?

7. Development tools on linux are among the finest around. Syntax Highlighting works better, autocomplete works great, everything is integrated. When I use VS now I feel like its very lacking in features. Each to their own though. Package Management is the main way to install apps in most linux distros - it makes sense to use them. They work very well if used properly.

8. Copying the functionality of a similar app means it will be easy to adapt to and if another app is successful on another OS, why not base your app on the same model? As long as there is no copyright or similar infringement, it only makes sense from a usability perspective to follow the same guidelines.
Most Linux apps are written to fill a need, and they often do.

9. (9 comes after 8) Most people DO use office at home. I'd bet its the #1 reason people buy a computer - to type and print documents. The fact is, openoffice 2 is a great alternative. Still, there are reasons for sticking with one or the other.

Sorry to be so harsh in replying to your points, but there is a wider world out there. Personally I'm not into forcing people to switch, but I do often point out to people that there are alternatives to windows.

Windows often DOESN'T do everything people need - they are just unaware of an alternative or dont really know enough about the alternatives to want to switch. All just my opinion of course.

Re:It's not that it's hard

[CastrTroy]

1. Windows tries to manage programs that you install, but does a really terrible job at it, expecting the program to know how to uninstall itself, instead of keeping track of what the program installed so it can actually get rid of it when you want to, and tell you about anything else that depends on this program to work.

2. Installing windows XP asks you some questions too. Stuff like timezone is very important to set right, otherwise the time server will set your computer to the wrong time. Most people don't know what time zone they are in. Also, once installed, windows does very little, doesn't even have drivers for most of my hardware, and can't connect to the internet to download them, because my NIC doesn't have drivers either.

3. I'd much better go with the windows model, of lump everything together and let programs put stuff where ever they wish. Also, let the users put their files whereever they want to. Also, ensure that all the settings for both the operating system and the programs are in one big, easily corruptable file, so that if some program wants to wipe out the registry, then it can.

4. Nobody knows how to configure a windows computer either. The fact that you have to use a GUI for it means that all the useful settings are hidden in the registry, and the stuff that's in the GUI is just the minimal that it thinks people can understand, 80% of which they can't.

5. I don't ever recall my linux box treating me like a moron. It always asks lots of questions to make sure its doing what its supposed to be doing. Presenting the user with no options, and just doing a bunch of stuff you assume they want to do is a bad thing.

6. The user should always know when something goes wrong. To a certain point at least. Assuming the user has no idea what the error means, and therefore not tell them about it is just a bad idea. Sometimes computer errors require the use of computer terms to explain what went wrong. Also, I thought #5 just said linux treats people like morons. Now we are saying it is too complicated, and doesn't use plain english that everyone can understand?

7. Package management tools are the best way to install applications that require dependancies on other applications. If you want to code your own application, and include all the libraries that the application needs with the application, then you can go ahead and do that. Firefox, OpenOffice and Netbeans all use this method for installing, and they work pretty well. But it shouldn't be the only option available to all application developers, nor should it be pushed on them.

8. Pretty much all tools 99% of people need have been created. When it looks exactly like the windows counterpart we get bashed for not being innovative enough. When we do something like GIMP, we get bashed because it is too different. GIMP is a great interface. If you start out using it, all the other graphics packages seem weird and confusing to you.

8. I'm not sure what comes after 8 either. Anyway, reading and writing office documents is still a big problem, even with Openoffice. They are usually legible, but tables usually stick outside the margins, and many other formatting problems exist as well. Everyone I know has office at home, simply because that's what people expect you to use. Most of them don't pay for it, and frankly, I don't think Microsoft cares.

Re:It's not that it's hard

[Auckerman]

What? will the files just magically fly onto a person's hard drive in the right place?

You're saying your "packages" shouldn't be "managed"?

I'm saying packages shouldn't exist. Period.

There are not any other techniques for software installation.

Tell that to the millions of Mac OS X users. They will laugh at you as they merely drag Applications to the Applications folder.

What you're used to is just a really broken form of package management where any "package" is allowed to overwrite any library with its own (possibly vendor mangled or outdated version of a) library and do whatever it takes to get itself working. Screw any other things on the system. And no package is aware of any other package. And there's no liability for what package broke the system.

THere's this concept called "Bundles" where all shared libraries, language packs, and binaries for multiple architectures are stored in a single folder that appears to be a single application. Let me give you an example of what this allows. THe one time I installed Real Media player on OS X, Safari was running, I dragged it to /Applications and without restarting Safari and without Running Real Media, Safari was immediately aware of the Real plugin, loaded it, and used it. Welcome to no package managment.

Re:It's not that it's hard

[joeljkp]

My mother does spreadsheet manipulation of survey data. She got a new laptop for the project, but it didn't come with any office suite. So, I told her she could get OpenOffice for free, downloaded it and walked her through the setup, and told her a bit about how to use it. The next time I came home (a month or two later), she told me she got fed up with it after having to re-learn how to do some of the stuff she took for granted with MS Office. So she just dropped the $100 for the academic ed. and went with the tried and true.

In short, YMMV.

Re:It's not that it's hard

[gothfox]

I'm saying packages shouldn't exist. Period.

I like the fact that all software on my systems are completely managed, e.g. I can easily tell which file belongs to each package and vice versa. I like the fact that my systems are upgradeable by issuing one command over the internet. I don't like dll hell of Windows or base system/ports .so hell of BSDs, sorry. The reality is that Linux software world is comprised of miriads of libraries and small applications, not just dozen big names from posh vendors like Microsoft or Adobe. This situation requires advanced package handling tools. No, whining about it won't help, just man up and deal with it.

Tell that to the millions of Mac OS X users. They will laugh at you as they merely drag Applications to the Applications folder.

Tell these millions of users that I can upgrade my server park with one shell command and I see this kind of functionality as basic and required even for my desktop machines. Pray tell, how am I worse than Grandma Tillie, why my needs should be sacrificed for some very questionable usability ideas?

THere's this concept called "Bundles" where all shared libraries, language packs, and binaries for multiple architectures are stored in a single folder that appears to be a single application.

I don't know about you, but I don't want twenty versions of slightly different GTKs each in its own bundle all loaded at different addresses hogging memory and diskspace for the sake of some Grandma Tillie's usability. Sorry, just because Holy Apple does something doesn't mean it is best idea ever for any possible use case. And just because some self proclaimed usability experts (which always seem to come out of the woodwork in any Linux-related discussions, oh dear) can't spend 15 minutes to figure out the packages on their own doesn't mean that people who require functionality they provide should just switch off the lights and go home. Which, surprisingly, always seems to be the case, because those experts always know better for everyone of us.

By the way, even Microsoft recently began to reinvent package management, albeit poorly like they usually do at first. Even they begin to understand that dozen different incompatible installers is not the way, and bundles are actually no better either.

(Sorry, this came out somewhat rantish, I've got nothing personal against you, just needed to get this off my chest).

Re:It's not that it's hard

[cHiphead]

Warcraft 3, Steam (Natural Selection, CS:Source, TS, etc.), and Battlefield 2 are keeping my best box on windows xp. oh and the activex interface required by company for groupware/job invoice.

Cheers.

HAHA

[buttwidget]

People are smart... Someone doesn't deal with the public...

Re:HAHA

[Jim Hall]

People are smart... Someone doesn't deal with the public...

"A person is smart, but people are dumb, stupid and panicky." ~Agent K, 'MIB'

"'To start, press any key.' Where's the any key?" ~Homer Simpson, 'The Simpsons'

Re:HAHA

[KanSer]

I work at an employment center in a small-ish (10-15,000) logging and fishing community and I can state, as an absolute fact, that people are indeed stupid.

However, just last week a man who's on disabilities for a brain injury (He has little to no short term memory) came in and asked me if I could get him a free operating system. (He wanted Windows XP. He had bought a refurb p3-500 that came with XP, the hard drive bought the farm, and when the guy who sold it to him fixed it he wiped the OS. He said it was only a "trial version until you got your own system". Full of shit, I know.)

Anyways, on a whim I did a quick google for linux distros, caught a wikipedia page that seemed to make Ubuntu out to be what I was looking for.

Now, I've never touched linux, except for playing counter-strike and quake on linux servers. I downloaded an install image, installed it, and voila.

It was beyond easy and it came with everything I needed. I sent the man with the brain injury home with a disk and he came back the next day with a huge smile on his face.

It worked. First time, totally out of the box. Recognized all his hardware, and came with everything he could possibly want. He was acting rather cheeky about the presentation he put together with OpenOffice and was pleased as punch.

So yeah, if the unemployed and brain injured can install and configure and use with great ease a linux distro, I'd say they've finally made that first big step towards main-stream acceptance.

(And now my other Ubuntu box has become my baby. Too bad it won't run half-life 2. Oh well, worry about an install base first, the developers will follow.)

Re:HAHA

[Distortions]

Wow. Just, wow.

This guy has no idea how dumb people are, and how LITTLE they care what OS or computer they have.
%90 of them just want to check their yahoo mail and maybe browse a tiny bit.

Even that is hard for them, and seems time consuming and over complicated.
You are *way* off my friend.

Linux isn't anywhere near ready for the desktop. Hell, OS X and windows barely pass as it is.
Quit kidding yourself! I'm a pro and linux problems often baffle me.

Re:HAHA

[CastrTroy]

Linux is no less ready for the desktop than windows is. People who have no idea how to operate their windows computer will have no idea how to operate a linux computer. At this point, comparing windows and linux is like comparing a Ford to a GM car, and saying that a GM car is harder to drive.

FUD???

[Anonymous Coward]

Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is a sales or marketing strategy of disseminating negative but vague or inaccurate information on a competitor's product. The term originated to describe misinformation tactics in the computer software industry and has since been used more broadly.

Had to look that one up. Wouldn't it be nice if the editors or perhaps even the article itself defined these strange acronyms?

Re:FUD???

[spyder913]

FUD is the 4th most common word used on slashdot. Please refer to any Linux, BSD, Apple, or Microsoft article.

Re:FUD???

[MaskedSlacker]

They assume a certain level of knowledge in their readers. And in this case, its a damn reasonable one. Is this your first time on slashdot or something?

Clearly...

[fatcatman]

People aren't stupid and people who use computers learn new things all the time."

Clearly, this person has never performed basic tech support. I mean, come on. If you have that much faith in humanity, you've never done time as "The I.T. Guy" in a typical office. Turn in your geek card, sir, and report to AOL for further processing.

Re:Clearly...

[jpardey]

He has also never taken a first year compsci class. Not that the people in it were dumb, but to most people, computers ARE foreign. No one had really used Unix, while I had installed various Linux distros on home machines (I am no expert, I must add). It was a lot of fun to help out my fellow students, most of whom were going on to compsci degrees, while I was doing math and physics. Now I get the most awesome class ever, 251 at my college, systems and networks! Install Linux, secure it, etc etc... lots of fun.

Bzzzzt!

[rackhamh]

People aren't stupid

No, but they're easily confused.

and people who use computers learn new things all the time.

Hard to believe, given that most non-technical people (and some of the technical ones) in my building haven't even learned not to double-click URLs. When things don't work, it's attributed to gremlins, and when it does work, it's attributed to a higher diety.

I'm sorry, but the REAL obstacles (hint: fear isn't one of them) to adopting an entirely new operating system don't go away just by putting your fingers in your ears and shouting, "NAH NAH NAH, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!"

Re:Bzzzzt!

[Jack9]

People refuse to think outside their training. This is much the same as being stupid, to most geeks. While technically different, the fact we make a distinction is what makes us different! What happens when encountering something strange and new? MOST people IGNORE it. Linux is still too difficult for the average person to install and use. Yes, a LARGE portion of humanity (including these new-fangled-savvy-kids) still double clicks URLs. If you aren't going to accept that kind of mental lock, there can be no more rational discussion on the matter. This is a "self-flaggellating" article. next!

Re:Bzzzzt!

[antiMStroll]

This

"... people (and some of the technical ones) in my building haven't even learned not to double-click URLs."

contradicts this

"...the REAL obstacles (hint: fear isn't one of them) to adopting an entirely new operating system..."

If they don't understand double-click how will the OS make any difference? They aren't configuring hardware or apps anyway.

I'm the last person to ascribe extraordinary technical prowess to the general public and yet sucessfully converted a staff of 50 to what in effect is PC-based multimedia editing from tape without a hitch. One staff member just celebrated his 50th year in the industry and has never required our help. Step one: make them part of the application selection process. Step two: an orderly rollout with scheduled training. Step three: encouraging self support and establishing staff 'experts' outside of the normal support channels. It's not that hard.

On the other hand, we're also a distinct division outside of the normal 'MSCE' pool. If there's any group with finger in ears here it's the latter, imposing solutions on users as mandates and forcing them to work around bugs and unresolved system idiosyncracies from memory. 'Lusers' can do a hell of a lot more than most IT support gives them credit.

Let's be HONEST here

[Work Account]

I'm smart, most of us here are smart, but I'll admit that sometimes I run into the occasional road block where I can't do something in Linux that I can do in Windows.

I did spend at least an hour getting Quake III to work in Linux properly. It still doesn't quite work as well as in Windows.

I also took some time to get my mouse wheel working in Linux. Granted, I use text-only installs of Slackware or Gentoo where I build my own optimized kernels, but still, I had some difficulty.

Linux isn't easy and it's not a pretty shiny desktop OS. Let's just admit that. I mean heck, would we want it any other way? I enjoy the challenge and I enjoy the OPEN ness of it.

Re:Let's be HONEST here

[CyricZ]

Those are the types of issues you should expect when using distributions like Gentoo and Slackware. If you want stuff to just work right away, consider using Debian or a Debian-derived distro, or perhaps even SuSE. But stay away from Fedora. It's been nothing but problems for me, and the alternatives are far superior.

Re:Let's be HONEST here

[i_should_be_working]

I spent 15 minutes yesterday trying to disable autoplay (for all drives, not just the cdrom) in Windows. In the end I had search on the internet to find the solution, download a program and do some very non-intuitive stuff.

In GNOME I just go to System->Preferences->Removable Drives and Media.

Everybody has stories of how they have had a hard time with an OS. It's all just anecdotes which don't prove anything. For me, Linux is easy and pretty because it's what I'm used to. When I have to use Windows it's unfamiliar and illogical. And it sure as hell isn't pretty.

BTW, the reason I had to disable autoplay is because it was going crazy grinding the system to a halt whenever I connected a usb drive. Never happens in Linux. But again, that's just another anecdote. Doesn't prove anything. I just wish folks from the other side could admit the same thing whey they're talking about the problems they've had with Linux.

Re:Let's be HONEST here

[Coryoth]

I'm smart, most of us here are smart, but I'll admit that sometimes I run into the occasional road block where I can't do something in Linux that I can do in Windows.

I did spend at least an hour getting Quake III to work in Linux properly. It still doesn't quite work as well as in Windows.

It's been a while since I used Windows (probably around 2000 or 2001), but I used to run into roadblocks there too. You say you had trouble getting Quake III working on Linux? It took me quite some time to get a decent working TeX installation on Windows. Perl, I seem to recall, was also a little annoying: you could install ActivePerl but every now and then you'd run into hiccups with paths or environment variables. Nothing hard of course, but then there's nothing too hard about setting up Quake III on Linux, it just takes a little time to find all the hoops to jump through.

Of course I understand getting TeX, Perl, Python, a decent shell and terminal emulator (which believe me took quite some effort on Windows) is now a lot easier because Cygwin has matured (it was still a little young and quirky at the time I was using it, and TeX certainly wasn't in the package list initially), but then installing Doom3 on Linux was a hell of a lot easier. Everything has it's quirks and its difficulties - it's all about what you want to do, and as long as your expectations are defined by Windows then clearly Linux will look harder. In my experience, depending on what exactly it is you need to do, Linux and Windows turn about to be about as hard to manage as each other.

Jedidiah.

Re:Let's be HONEST here

[ajs318]

You are attempting to apply Windows concepts to Linux, which is why you are going to be disappointed. Linux is not Windows.

I'm sick of car analogies, so I'll try a dog analogy. When you are training a dog, you can't apply two-legged concepts to it. The dog won't get them and you will end up pissing yourself off. You have to think in terms a dog will understand. A dog doesn't get the concept of punishment except right after the event {in which case it is just another case of cause and effect, this time an undesirable effect of a cause which it will endeavour not to repeat}. A dog doesn't see you getting a tin of dog food out of the cupboard and opening it; it sees you catching something and skinning it. A dog doesn't think it's a person: it thinks it's a wolf and you {despite the leg count} are the alpha wolf in its pack. {If you give it the wrong signals, it thinks it's in charge. And it probably won't know what to do, living in a two-legged environment, so it will mess up really badly.} And so on.

Every Linux distro has its own preferred method of installing packages. With Debian and Ubuntu, it's apt-get; with Gentoo, it's emerge; with Mandriva, it's configure my computer->install software; with SUSE, it's YAST. You didn't state what distribution you were using. If you were using GNOME, I'd guess probably Fedora or Ubuntu. But that's by the by. Your distribution has its own preferred way of installing software. {There are many ways to accomplish this task. The people who set up your distro picked a way they liked, and expect everyone else to do it that way. They were there first and they had to make some rules for the sake of their own sanity.}

With Windows the standard method of installing software is to download a self-extracting executable archive, which contains pre-compiled binaries and automatically installs them somewhere. This is possible because (1) Windows only runs on Pentium / Athlon-type processors, (2) every Windows installation has the same kernel call points, and (3) Windows is actually a little more flexible than Linux with respect to the locations of libraries -- by default, it will first look for a library in the same directory as the program that asked for it. On the downside, (2) means that the Windows XP kernel is cluttered up with remnants from Windows 2000, Me, NT, 98, 95 and 3.11; and (3) means that the hard drives of Windows machines are cluttered up with copies of the same libraries, installed in different locations by different programs.

With Linux, things are a lot more flexible in general -- in fact, Linux is known to run on at least a dozen incompatible architectures. So the canonical method of installing software is to download an archive which contains source code -- which will compile for whatever processor is in the target system, extract it, compile the source, linking it against the installed kernel and libraries, and install the freshly-created binaries. Usually a script is included which will check that the build environment is complete, to avoid disappointment: if you know how to interpret the error messages you get from an abortive attempt at compilation, then you can fix things and it will work next time you try.

However, if you can make certain assumptions about the target system, you can actually install pre-compiled binaries on a Linux system. If you are a distro maintainer, you have pretty much stipulated what versions of libraries and other important base tier software are going to be installed. You can compile binaries against this setup and they will install and run correctly on another machine with the same setup. Slackware .tgz packages contain just the files which need to be installed: if the file is unpacked in the root directory, then everything will be deposited in the right place. Debian's .deb files, and others' .rpm files, go a step better by incorporating some metadata wh

Not easy to configure

[mymaxx]

Not for someone from the Windows world, anyway. If you need to configure anything that isn't out of the box, like latest graphics card support or wireless, you're left out in the cold. You'll have to spend hours Googling for people that have gotten it to work or clues as to how it might work. Then more hours editing configuration files, compiling, rebooting...sometimes all spent in vain.

If there is ONE thing Windows is good at, it is getting stuff configured. It may not be as powerful or flexible, but at least it is easy. Sometimes, you just need to get things done.

Re:Not easy to configure

[Tiger4]

"Sometimes, you just need to get things done

Not just sometimes. For most people in the tech services area, they like a challenge, more or less. Configuring things and solving problems is what got them into the field in the first place. But the vast majority of computer users just want to get the job done. They don't care how it works, or why, or what options are behind the command line switches. This thing is a tool. An appliance. More complicated than a screwdriver.

But basically it is a toaster.

Turn it on, it does something useful, turn it off. Anything that requires understanding what is under the interface is hard. Anything that requires thinking about how the interface works is effectively impossible. Windows lets users get away with that. Macs are great at it. Linux (so far) makes the users learn how it works. Or at least ask for a lot of help.

The BEST way to fight FUD

[Fermatprime]

I must not FUD. FUD is the mind-killer. FUD is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face Microsoft's FUD. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye upon its path. Where the FUD has gone there will be nothing. Only Linux will remain.

It's true

[Prof. Pi]

I knew someone who hand-coded HTML to make web pages around 1997, before HTML-authoring tools were common. And these were pages with graphics and menus. But she was absolutely convinced that she should use Microsoft products because you'd have to be "a computer genius" to use anything else. I couldn't convince her that writing a file in LaTeX was structurally very similar to hand-editing HTML. She had a complete psychological block, and would even get mad at me for daring to use anything else.

Re:It's true

[finkployd]

(1) That was the most erotic thing I have ever seen on slashdot.

(2) There should NEVER be a situation where the above sentence is called for.

Finkployd

not easy enough to install, not easy enough to use

[bcrowell]

Modern Linux distributions are easy to install and easy to use.
I'm a computer geek. There was a period where Linux was too hard for me to install -- I tried and failed a few times. Finally, about four years ago, the installs got easier (and I learned more) so I got a working install. But it's simply not true that Linux is now easy enough for most computer users to install and use. Most computer users are not computer geeks, and in fact, no OS is easy enough for them to install. They'd have trouble installing Windows from scratch too, but they never had to do it because Windows came preinstalled.

Just last week I installed the latest Ubuntu. There were two problems that it took me some time and hassles to work out: (1) The sound software I was trying to use didn't work in GNOME, because GNOME uses ESD. I had to do a "killall esd" before it would work. This took some detective work, because none of the software gave me an error message that told me this was what the problem was. (2) I couldn't install some libraries (such as libc6-dev) because they were in a munged state at the point where I did my apt-get update.

These were time-consuming, frustrating annoyances for me, but for someone who's not a computer geek, they'd be total showstoppers. The average person simply is not going to go looking for help on usenet or IRC (and my experience with posting on the Ubuntu forums has been that I don't get any useful replies, either). The average person will give up.

And BTW, Gagne might want to update the subtitle of his book, "Kiss the blue screen of death goodbye." I have to use Windows a lot at work. I haven't seen a BSOD in years.

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

How do we fight the FUD of the FUD fighters?

Can we be honest with ourselves for just one second?

Claiming that Linux is "easy" to configure is a prima facia falsehood.

Install is still only about 80-85% not the 99.9% that it needs to be.

Maintenence of a 6+ month old distro, any distro, is a nightmare as about that time updating no longer works because dependancies on updated dependancies reach an unmanageable threshold. And no, ignoring maintenence is not an option.

It doesn't anyone any good to spout platitudes about how "easy" Linux is when there are still huge gaping holes in it's ease of use.

The only way to fight FUD is with truth, not more FUD!

Re:At the danger of coming across as an elitist...

[AuMatar]

Remember- the average IQ is 100. And half the people are dumber than that. Its a truely horrific though. (Yeah, yeah, I know difference between median and mean. On a bell curve like IQ its a good approximation to say they're equal).

Individuals may not be stupid...

[SuperAbe]

People aren't stupid and people who use computers learn new things all the time.

Obligatory Men in Black reference:

Agent J: Why the big secret? People are smart, they can handle it.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.

Marvel Gagne?

[Otter]

Presumably this is actually Marcel Gagne, best known for his excruciating French chef-themed columns? Consulting him on humor is like consulting the Slashdot editors on spelling.

Incidentally, writing introductory books like "Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye!" seems to me to be a dead end. Seething haters of Microsoft (and even they haven't seen a BSOD in five years) don't make up a significant share of Windows users, and pandering to that mentality seems counterproductive.

Glad to hear they're anxious to learn...

[oahazmatt]

If Gagne's so sure the average user is more than willing to learn new things, then he can be the one to walk my mother through downloading ISOs for the latest Mandrake build, helping her pick which items to install, explaining why she needs a "gui" (and what it is) and then helping her pick between KDE, Gnome...

Re:amen to that

[merreborn]

how many times on IRC did you get responses along the lines of "sort it out for yourself, n00b, the rest of us googled our way through..."

Personally, I offer a lot of tech support on message boards. When someone comes to the board once in a blue moon with a really difficult tech issue, I'm more than happy to help. But there's a certain class of user who will continually post questions that can be answered with 30 seconds of googling. Questions like "Can I use this 1MB SIMM in my P4 box?".

It's rather akin to someone walking in to the emergency room with a paper cut... 4 times a day. The "experts'" time is better spent on those who have more severe problems. Learn to apply your own bandages, dammit!

There's a difference between needing help with a truly obscure problem after conducting your own exhaustive research, and being completely unwilling to learn at all. Believe it or not, if you're willing to take the time to research, and learn on your own, you can do just about anything. If you decide that you don't understand computers, never will, and shouldn't even bother trying... Well, that's a self fulfilling prophesy, and a waste of my time.

Re:Linux is not easy to use..... yet.

[lunchboxj]

I totally agree. While I spend most of my day in a research lab on Fedora machines, it is not very nice to come home to a suite of incompatibilites on a linux box. I mean, it might work well after a month or so of tweaking, but, if my buddy comes over with his new digital camera, I have to recompile my kernel to even have a PRAYER of seeing his photos. And don't get me started on scanners... there still is no support for like 90% of them.

It seems to me that Apple so far is the only one that's gotten this message. They made a beautiful operating system based on BSD, and managed to do so while still making a famously user-friendly interface. This gives all the power and flexibility that the most advanced techie could need, but also keeps things easy when they need to be so. I love opening up my powerbook wherever I am, knowing that I don't need to jump through hoops to connect to wifi, and then busting into the root filesystem when things get screwy. All my favorite unix apps work just as well as they do on a linux system (thanks to Fink), and absolutely any device can be connected to it without the faintest headache. Whenever I need to install something new, I just double-click on the .app inside any .dmg, and byu.

All I'm saying is that the linux community needs to keep more of these compatibility issues in mind when updating the features of the newest release. Stability is certainly an issue worth dealing with, but the os will NEVER be successful until it has the ease of use of os x.

C'mon... if I tried to put linux on my mom's computer, I would never sleep because of all the midnight trouble calls. I love the OS as much as anybody else, but it is simply not practical for the average person..... yet.

Re:not easy enough to install, not easy enough to

[shark72]

"And BTW, Gagne might want to update the subtitle of his book, "Kiss the blue screen of death goodbye." I have to use Windows a lot at work. I haven't seen a BSOD in years."

Me neither. That's the author's way of trying to spread a little FUD himself. Maybe it's an attempt at irony.

Yes there is FUD, but some of this FUD is true...

[TheNetAvenger]

Yes there is FUD, but some of this FUD is true...

There are severe exaggerations in Linux usability for example; but we can't be morons and miss the 'truth' in this.

On the computers at my Grandmother's house - True story(200mhz P, to a new 3.4ghz system now.) - My Grandparents have been able to drop an XP install CD in all their computers, type in the code and their computer works faster and better than when they first purchased it. No install problems, driver problems.

And that is a solid arument, sure most of US are smart enough to wrestle any distribution to install and run well on any piece of hardware, but for the people that surf the web, write email, write letters and video conference with their grandkids - Linux and FreeBSD is NOT YET THAT MATURE on the desktop.

We can argue it is, and it truly isn't. We know this inside somewhere, but hate to admit it.

There is NO distribution yet that has the driver support, or hardward support, or 99% success rate of install that WindowsXP does...

That is where we are failing, and until we admit things like this to ourselves, this will NEVER get better.

Re:At the danger of coming across as an elitist...

[KylePflug]

Ignoring the fact that IQ is far from a necessarily accurate indicator of intelligence, what's your point? Half the people are smarter, too.

People can talk about the "chaos that reigns the world" and attribute it to stupidity all day. Stick those people in a sociology class for a week and hopefully they'll realize that the world is not a damned simple as they think. To attribute a presidential reelection to something like national stupidity is just plain ignorant. Mostly because matters of politics don't correlate well to intelligence at all (and if someone quotes one of thoe hoax IQ maps of the US I'll punch him in the face. Through my monitor).

Yeah, the average person may or may not be dumber than you. Yeah, there are people even dumber than him. There are also people you'd like like a damn fool next to. I'll say it again: What the hell is your point?

Calendar extension

[tepples]

I'd love to move some of my small office clients to OpenOffice or StarOffice, but they require the calendar and scheduling functions of Outlook.

Soon, you'll be able to use Thunder and Lightning against Outlook. If you can't wait, there's already the Calendar extension, an implementation of the iCal standard for T-bird.

Re:amen to that

[conJunk]

no, you are absolutely correct... it's true... but, the one really unhelpful person is the one you remember... there are a lot of *really* helpful people kicking it on IRC waiting for questions from people doing their first install, but they don't stick in one's memory quite the same way

Re:not easy enough to install, not easy enough to

[Blakey Rat]

The Blue Screen of Death in Windows XP or 2000 is either a hardware error, or a faulty driver. Since the user got warned about installing unapproved drivers when they installed it, I think we have to chalk up Blue Screen as a solved problem.

Anyway, I agree with you completely. Trying to set up my Hauppauge PVR 250 video capture card in Ubuntu has been torture. After spending 10 hours following *WRONG* tutorials and how-tos, I finally went to the Ubuntu chat room (which was friendly) which directed me to the mythtv chat room (where one person was friendly, but everyone else was a jackass. From-memory transcription:

Him (after I've already solved the problem anyway): "This is for MythTV problems, not setting up hardware!"
Me: "I've been here an hour already working through this problem, and you never complained before."
Him: "That's because I wasn't here!"
Me: "Well, the IRC client didn't show you logging in just now, so you must have been here."
Him: "You have to leave. This is the wrong chat room."
Me: "Fine. Where do I go?"
Him: "I don't know, but not here. Try #ubuntu"
Me: "I did. They told me to come here. And they were right, because now my issue's solved."
Him: "Well, they're wrong and idiots."
Me: "You just told me to ask them for help, and now you're telling me they're wrong and idiots?"

I logged off. But you get the point. The guy was an asshole. The 'official' site of the Hauppauge open source drivers (at least the one Hauppauge linked me to) had blatantly wrong (and internally inconsistant) documentation on how to install it. And, after all that, I can't get any of the TV viewer apps in Ubuntu to actually work!

All I'm trying to do is get a VHS tape and put it in a mpeg2 file so I can burn it to DVD. VHS -> mpeg2. You'd think it was the hardest thing in the world.

(Psst, anybody willing to help, pop me off an email: blakeyrat at gmail)

Re:amen to that

[bcrowell]

Personally, I offer a lot of tech support on message boards. When someone comes to the board once in a blue moon with a really difficult tech issue, I'm more than happy to help.
It's very nice of you to help people out like that on message boards, and of course if you don't feel like answering a certain question, you can just not answer it.

But there's a certain class of user who will continually post questions that can be answered with 30 seconds of googling. Questions like "Can I use this 1MB SIMM in my P4 box?".
There's where you're wrong. The average person wouldn't even know what to Google for. They wouldn't have the framework of background knowledge to know what search terms were relevant. I teach physics to community college students, and I think in terms of intelligence and education their bell curve is probably pretty similar to the bell curve of computer users in general. Most of them have an extremely hard time figuring out technical information by reading. Most of them, although they're in college, have a reading level somewhere around 9th or 10th grade. Many are immigrants, and English is difficult for them. Many of them just don't have the background to understand lots of technical stuff that would be obvious to a geek, e.g., they don't have any feel for whether the Earth's atmosphere is 10 miles thick or 1000 miles thick. They don't know the metric system, so "1MB" doesn't immediately imply a million bytes to them. They're not stupid, but they're not ubergeeks either, and that's the way most of the population is, too.

Re:Why don't you explain it to her?

[OzPhIsH]

Oh, of course I have Thunderbird set up for her. But the thing is, I'm not the IT guy for everyone else in the school district. I'm not going to go around door to door installing another e-mail client on everyone's computer. My point is that I shouldn't have to go correct this moron's incorrect assertion. It's simply wrong for people in the positions of a degree of trust regarding computers, like your IT guy at work, and especially one in our educational system, to be feeding this kind of misinformation to people. It's the behavior of people like this IT guy, telling everyone you must use Outlook at home to get your e-mail, that further propagates the myth that you can't get away from Microsoft. I'll bet if our public institutions started using free software, like OpenOffice.org and Mozilla, while it may not spark a migration away from MS, at least it would start to get people comfortable with using other products.

Yeah, no one's ever used a command line before

[thirdrock]

because a text command is scarey.

Phew! Because for a minute there I thought that Microsoft sold 6 million copies of DOS.

Re:Yeah, no one's ever used a command line before

[drinkypoo]

Eskimos don't eat whale blubber because it tastes good. It's the only thing on the menu at the arctic buffet.

He probably has his reasons.

[CyricZ]

Have you considered why he might recommend they use Outlook? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that it's already installed on many desktop PCs. So that saves him time from having to install it on basically every teacher's home system. Then there's the fact that he can give everyone one set of instructions on how to configure it. That also probably saves him time.

You paint him as some awful villain, as if he is trying to intentionally destroy all those teachers' systems by using Outlook Express. Perhaps he's being the opposite of a "moron," and rather just doing what makes his job easiest. That's not stupid. That's a smart thing to do, from his perspective.

If you truly want people to get away from using Microsoft products, then you'll have to make some sacrifice. Yes, you may have to help those particular teachers install and configure Thunderbird. It'd be even better if you could create and print up a single page that'll tell them exactly how it can be done. Give them pictorial instructions about what exact server address, etc., to enter, and where to enter them.

Re:He probably has his reasons.

[OzPhIsH]

He's not making a recommendation that people use outlook at home. He's saying "you must use outlook." And I know that's not true, as I have my mother set up with Thunderbird and it works fine. What he could say is "I recommend and can only give support to outlook." That would be another story all together. That would make his job just as easy. In this case, he either he doesn't know you can use another e-mail client (he is an mcse moron), or he blatently lied when he said you had to use outlook (He's a liar). But whatever, I guess that makes him perfectly qualified for a rank job in the public school system.

My whole point however, which we've drifted from, is that this reliance, or just perceived reliance on Microsoft products is institutionalized. People hear this kind of stuff every single day, much of it false, from people who are supposed to know what they are talking about. This everyday experience drives the notion that Microsoft is a necessity.

Re:He probably has his reasons.

[needacoolnickname]

Chances are what he said is: "We only support Outlook." For all the people who want it through their AOL mail and bother the Tech Support with why they can't get it at home that way and want Tech Support to fix their home computers after they tell them how to get their work mail through the AOL client.

We used to give away old computers. This was until people wanted us to support the old giveaways at home like they were still on the premises and like they were still being used for work. That is not our job. That is our job for our families, like it is yours to get your mom's email on Thunderbird at home.

Now, if all the district used was Thunderbird (etc.) would you help someone who wanted to use Outlook at home for it or would you tell them it was not supported?

Re:He probably has his reasons.

[Guignol]

Or perhaps he plans to do simple things like scheduling meetings, sending contacts and doesn't want to hear things like "I don't understand your attachment file" or "your proposed schedule is unreadable".

Re:At the danger of coming across as an elitist...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to break it to you, but you're going to die lonely and bitter.

Re:not easy enough to install, not easy enough to

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll do you one better: I'm an embedded systems engineer. I work with Linux all the time. I write Linux drivers, as well as applications (for embedded products). I work in a Linux environment every day.

A couple of years ago, I talked myself into using Linux as my one and only desktop at home. I was sick of Windows, I still am. After 2 years, I am utterly disgusted by it and am planning to switch to Windows at the next convenient time or maybe a Mac. Why? Because things don't just work.

I have a kernel with all the drivers compiled into an initrd. I have hotplug and coldplug loading drivers to all the hardware. That's half way. The userland doesn't match. Let's use sound as an example. If I play something with mpg123, Arts (KDE sound) can't play audio and buffers it until /dev/dsp is released. My soundcard has a hardware mixer with two separate sound sources (in fact, there's a /dev/sound/adsp that I can use another OSS app with at the same time). And yet I can't hear an mp3 and the ding from my WM at the same time. Is it the driver's fault that ALSA and OSS can't operate at the same time? I don't know. I don't care. It's broken. Half of you reading probably just thought to advise me to set up some sort of other mixer daemon, something about adjusting realtime priorities, something about device files. No, bad user. This is not the right answer. The right answer is that it's 2005, and that Microsoft has had sound figured out for 10 years and Apple for 15 and it does not involve the user mapping device files to driver interfaces. Don't even get me started on timidity and MIDI, that whole process is obscene.

The same argument can be made for dozens of others. XFree/XOrg (although it is getting a little better). Desktop managers: why are KDE and Gnome slower on my 2.4GHz P4 than Win2k on a 300MHz Celeron? Don't say "bloated, try XFCE", that's the wrong answer. I could run FVWM and it would be fast as hell, but I would not have all of the features I need. Why is dynamic linking on Linux so damn slow? Firefox takes maybe two seconds to launch on my slower Windows box at work (when not loaded in memory). It can take upwards of 30 on my faster Linux machine with no load. Those who complain about Windows DLL hell, take a look in your /lib directory one day, won't you?

Linux is not user friendly. Linux is not ready for the desktop. If anyone tells you otherwise, you have my permission to stab him (or her, but let's not kid ourselves) in the neck.

posted anonymously to stay out of my Google permanent record.

Re:not easy enough to install, not easy enough to

[i_should_be_working]

I saw a BSOD today.

At this very moment I am typing with my monitor on it's side. Why? Because my mp3 player crashed windows hard. Never does that in Linux. When trying to perform the 3-key salute to do a hard reset I accidentally pressed some combination that put the whole screen on it's side. Upon reboot (which included a lengthy disk check) the screen is still sideways. So now, my mp3 player doesn't work (with Windows) and my screen is sideways. Great. I sure am glad Windows is easy to use.

One more thing: I had to search for and download the drivers for my sound and video card for the Windows installation. Not for Ubuntu.

Whatever!

[shumacher]

Linux could be easy. My mother, who had expressed pride in never having used a computer, recently discovered, quite by accident, just how much stuff was available on eBay. I had a surplus IBM 300GL sitting about, so I loaded it up with Mandriva 2005. There were the little problems: hiding toolbars accidently, moving the mouse while clicking (accidental drags), not recognizing interface modality. The vanilla hardware on the P3 based desktop installed easily for me, and after setting auto-login for her, setting up her email accounts and bookmarks, Gnome was easy for her. She found a few challenges, so I tried giving her a Macintosh. We went back to the Linux machine quickly.

That having been said, I've used linux before, I've used Windows. If you want to install something not included in the distro, you're in for some work. I tried installing FreeNX on Mandriva over a SSH terminal. I never did get it working. Apropos hadn't been set up by default, and install was failing on a file whose package I couldn't find.

So, here's what I want in Linux:

Be better than Windows. Where windows wants to tell you every five minutes that your wireless connection is down even though you're working on a wired connection and your laptop's wifi switch is off, be smarter. Tell the user once, if you must, then leave them alone.

Install all the docs by default. Never assume that your user doesn't need man pages.

Label each program with a name that describes what it does. Look at Windows accessories. Most of the program names are much less abstract. Backup, Address Book, Notepad, Command Prompt, Backup, Security Center, Disk Defragmenter, Disk Cleanup. So, what's easier, drakxconf or Control Panel? Let's also map some commands to likely alternatives. man is good, but what if help worked too? Maybe if help pointed to an overview of man, apropos, lynx and some docs?

Usabilty testing by non programmers. I like vi about as much as the average person. That is, not very. compared to the MS-DOS edit.exe, vi is pretty weak. Or rather, it's very strong, but it makes what should be a 100% intuitive task for anyone familiar with a computer into a series of random button-pushing and man-reading sessions.

Build a roadmap.So, this distro wants the config file here, and that distro wants it there. Super! Fine! But if you want to put this sort of thing all over, how about building a map? I'd love to be able to download a single installer, run it (in the gui!) let it figure out where everything is, what needs to be downloaded, what dependencies need satisfying. Fix it all, and exit. I hate installing software that didn't come with the distro currently. Windows does this well, Mac does this well, why is this so hard for Linux?

Welcome your users. Sure, you may never click through the overly-animated Welcome to Windows intro. Some people will. Just a quick tour of the nifty little features of your OS, some quick pointers to the help, the configuration, the browser, the email, and most people will be fine. Add a world-class tutorial. Back in the days of the classic Mac OS, there were tutorials that included clicking, double clicking, dragging, hovering, typing, text entry fields, dialog boxes (modal and non-modal) menus, powering off. The basics that most of us nerds don't remember learning have to be taught to some people! Linux should teach them, by default.

stupid

[Cyno]

People aren't stupid

Either people are stupid or all the Gods they believe in would exist here in reality.

It all comes down to authority. If you believe that there are forms of authority you should always obey, you might be stupid.

stupid stupid stupid

[Schwarzgerat]

Most people don't know what they are doing in windows, even kids with good marks at school and college continually do and say really really stupid things. people are stupid.

Re:I'll second that...

[i_should_be_working]

1st paragraph: Maybe that's just you

2nd paragraph: I have a hard time in Windows. Explain that if it's so intuitive. And GNOME has a graphical way of doing your startup program example as well.

3rd paragraph: Wow, that just.. everything you said was wrong.

In Windows, I can just right click on something and choose 'open with' and I'm presented with all of the possible programs that can open that file. In Linux...???
Yes I can do that in GNOME

The other big, big problem is the lack of standardised menus and behaviour for ALL PROGRAMS AND OS COMPONENTS.
Actually, there is a standard. The vast majority of programs follow them especially if you use one desktop envirionment like KDE OR GNOME. And to say that all Windows programs behave the same is garbage. Most programs have their own look and feel and do things their way. Or did you think Winamp and itunes have similar interfaces?

what does a right mouse click do in Windows? It always, always brings up a context menu of available actions. In Linux.. something, nothing, who knows.
Actually it... brings up a context menu of available actions.

Fourth paragraph: My girlfriend uses my computer without my help with no problem. She had never heard of Linux before she met me.

Maybe you and parent post aren't as smart as you think.

Can't agree more on the usability testing

[Sycraft-fu]

There is just a different mindset between geeks and non-geeks for many things. Take GREP for example. What you have is a geek's idea of the ideal search tool. You specify queries in a powerful grammar so you get just what you want. You can do very complex searches with it to get refined results.

Wonderful, however if you write a regular expression for a non-geek, they will look at you as if you are speaking a foriegn language, which youa re in a manner of speaking. It is toally incomprehensable to them and NOT something they want to learn. To them the ideal search engine is one where you type out, in English (or whatever their native language is) what they want and the computer disambiguates it and finds things.

In other words, geeks have learned to think like computers, and so want tools that are like htat for maximum control. Normal users want computers to learn to think like them, so they have the lowest learning curve possible.

Re:Outlook and VBA are the real killers`

[eosp]

Then there's the ironically named FirstClass.

Elitist you are NOT, sir

[Z34107]

90% of people *are* total asshats, as well as idiots. But remember, idiots think that we are idiots. In fact, if there's no difference between the two groups, how do we if we're idiots or not? I mean, if we were idiots, we'd have no way of knowing by virtue of our idiocy.

As for dying sad and lonely... People who despise humanity congregate. As, ironically, do anti-social people. Just remember that most people are best avoided and the trick is to surround yourself with those both likeable and compitent.

Yeah .. Easy

[All Names Have Been]

I love Linux and have run it for years. Official Slashdot disclaimer over.

Linux will be easy for the average user when I don't have to download a source package, compile it and install it, extract Windows drivers for ndiswrapper using another tool I had to compile from source, and then fiddle around with rc files to make sure my SSID got set on boot all so I could get on the local network.

Yeah, sing me the song of vendors not releasing drivers. I hear and understand, brother ... But the average user doesn't give a shit. All they know is it doesn't work, and the learning curve is so steep it's more a learning cliff.

Give a user a pre-configured Linux box with everything working, fine - for most uses people will get along fine. Anyone trying to tell me that an average user can install Linux on their home box and walk away happy most of the time is living in a dream world.

Interesting Introductions

[bobbuck]

Ever met someone with an IQ of 100.

How many times do you meet someone and get an IQ score with the introduction?? Or other pertinent metrics? For example: "Hi, Bob, this is Bobbi Jo. She has an IQ of 117 and a 36C chest..." Just curious.

Oh, look at the idiots jump all over it!

[Hosiah]

"people aren't stupid", well, what about the people who scream, "I REFUSE TO LEARN ANYTHING!!!!!" ? You *can* be stupid if you absolutely devote every fibre of your being to completely attaining that state.

No he probably believes it

[Sycraft-fu]

I'm amazed at the number of non-Windows people that seem to think BSODs are still a normal occurance. They honestly believe Windows boxes crash all the time and that's just how it is, nothing you can do. I attribute it to 3 main things:

1) The last time they used Windows was a long time ago, when they converted. They haven't touched it since 95 and thus haven't seen any of the improvements.

2) They dislike Windows and so remember bad experiences more than good ones. No matter what the OS, you will inevatibly run across someone who screws it up and it's never stable for. These people usually complain loudly about this. Being as there's lots of Windows users, and many are the "L33t ovacloka' gamer" types that push their hardware too much, it's not hard to find. They remember those whines, and forget the hundreds of people who just use it and don't complain because it doesn't crash.

3) They badly want Windows to be unstable, since that's been such a cornerstone argument for so long. Sometimes I'll challenge people to try and convince me why I should convert and I'd say at least half the time stability is one of the first things they try.

All sides of the OS wars engage in FUD and the Linux users are just as bad as any others. They are quick to scream foul when people bash Linux, but come right back with equally unsubstantiated things.

Re:Why don't you explain it to her?

[Decker-Mage]

Then your head IT guy has selected the wrong products, probably without testing them, for your company. My system (Windows Server 2003 Enterprise as my development desktop, 2.8 GHz P4, 1 GB RAM, 256 MB nVidia FX5700,...) is wired up like a pinball machine here with everything from virus checking, spyware protection, even packet monitoring and logging and CPU load runs 1-3%, period. Heck, SQL Server doing absolutely nothing at the moment usually grabs more CPU than the rest of the system combined. What's interesting is that for individual use every product I use is free and pretty durn cheap for a business license.

The problem here, as I see it, is far too many IT types don't bother to test everything, especially vendor claims, against realistic setups before committing to the dotted line. Furthermore they don't make the case to management about the total costs, including all factors, to upper management. Lastly, upper management doesn't trust the average IT department to speak the truth, let alone deliver on their promises. I see all of this over and over in the field, when I'm called in to consult, and in the industry journals day in and day out. Actually it's sad that I have to be called in to (sometimes) give the exact same information and recommendations as an IT department simply due to the fact that I refuse to lie and I have always admitted immediately when I don't know something (but I'll go find out). I guess that makes me weird but engineering doesn't usually let you get away with BS. As I keep saying, nuclear meltdowns are sooo messy.

RED HERRING ALERT!

[Crayon Kid]

"How the fuck am I supposed to support 500 different pieces of software?"

Insightful? What are you people on? What does MS specifically have to do with making sure that the client who needs support uses (tada, drum shot) supported software?

Obviously, sane people who offer technical support (and want to remain sane) will make sure first thing that the clients will be using only stuff they (the support) know about! What exactly that thing is (MS products or a KDE suite) is irrelevant, as long as both the client and the support person know what it is.

So there's no inherent advantage to using MS products, unless you're already locked in because your support contractor only supports MS products.

Dangers of humor in the workplace

[mnemotronic]

My experience with humor in the workplace is a tale of cultures, political correctness, and caution.

I began using humor in my work many years ago. I worked for a high-tech company doing software tools, which requires (on my part) some level of user support in the form of documentation, web pages, and email - the end-user in this case being the other engineers employed there. Technical documentation is such a droll, dry medium, and I wanted to make it more interesting, and help hold the reader's attention. There is nothing funny about the X3T9 or 1394 specs. I also felt the need to extend my personal creativity beyond the realm of interesting code comments.

Things went ok, even fine, for a few years. I received lots of positive feedback from users, indicating how they always looked forward to my next group broadcast email, or how funny a web site was. But such feedback encouraged me to "push the envelope" in terms of content. Our company is multi-culture, multi-ethnic, and multi-national. What might be funny or innocuous in American English can be mis-interpreted by people in Thailand or Singapore. Eventually I crossed an invisible line, and the Political Correction department, sometimes ironically referred to as "Human Resources", came down on me like a ton of diarhea. With my future at stake, I retracted my email and publically apologized. My job had been saved, but my manager's reputation had been compromised. He was in trouble for not "keeping the reins tight enough", as if any manager can effectively herd cats. Of course, while my actions caused problems for my boss, they caused greater problems for me. My future with that company had suddenly grown much more circumscribed, a fact I was not to learn for some time, when raises and promotions sailed past me like leaves in a nor-easter.

After several years, that incident was forgotten. I glided under the radar during subsequent management shake-ups and re-orgs, and ended up working for another manager. Our company policy forbids managers and HR personel from officially discussing individual employee records, so I felt that my past was behind me - safely locked away in the depths of HR. I could relax and drop my guard, which I did but, as you can probably guess, this led to another lapse in judgement, which resulted in the "final warning" from HR. My manager at that time issued an edict demanding "no more humor, no more creativity" in all my work. At the time, it felt like a knife through the heart, but it actually inspired me to redirect my energies and intellect for my own gain, not the company's. The company would survive.

Or course, I accept responsibility for what I said. I could have kept my keyboard locked, toed the company line, and been a happy drone. That company is ancient history, so all I can do now is reflect, and use my talents elsewhere.

Bottom line? The HR department is no longer the "personel" department. It's geared toward protecting the company, not representing the individual worker unit. HR's primary task is protecting the company from harrasement and defamation lawsuits brought by current and former employees. This is extremely difficult in America, with it's current "Politically Correct" atmosphere - an attitude that people are not responsible for their own feelings, thoughts, and interpretations, combined with a "get rich quick" lotto mentality.

Re:amen to that

[nine-times]

I once saw about the most frustrating post I could possibly imagine along these lines. I had been working on setting up a web server (and I'll admit, I'm no huge expert, but I can set up Apache), and I wanted to find a way that I could let people log in remotely for file transfers, with encrypted passwords, but not have access to the whole file system. FTP would have been fine, but I didn't want plain-text passwords. SFTP would be fine, but I didn't want them browsing my /etc.

After searching the internet for a while, I came across a post that was posted on some OpenBSD focussed site, and I was in luck. Someone had posted almost the exact question I was looking for. The exchange went something like this:

Guy1: How can you jail someone in ssh?

Guy2 (who was apparently a recognized OpenBSD developer): You can't.

Guy1: What do you mean? Can't I chroot someone?

Guy2: No.

Guy1: Well, I just want a way to keep people from browsing my file system. Is there a way to do that?

Guy2: No. You should be using FTP.

Guy1: Ok, but I don't want plain-text passwords. What do you recommend? SSL?

Guy2: No. That's too hard to set up. Don't bother trying.

Guy1: Well, what do you recommend then?

Guy2: Look, you obviously don't understand security.

And it pretty much ended there. Now, maybe there is some security theory that I'm ignorant of here, but the whole thing just seemed... absurd. The site seemed to be set up for the sake of discussions on OpenBSD and such, the guy asking the questions was polite, and the guy answering was supposed to be an expert. I'm not an uber-geek, but I'm not exactly computer-illiterate either, and it seemed like, even if it's a dumb question, it's not so dumb that it doesn't warrant addressing.

Ok, so I guess I'm not adding anything to the discussion, except to say that I know what you mean. There are lots of good, helpful folk out there. Gentoo forums come to mind as a place where I've looked for problems, even on a non-Gentoo machine, and just thought, "god, this is a lifesaver". But sometimes, it's just hard to find answers, even when you know the answers are out there. I've secure shelled into servers that've jailed me before, and yet I've never gotten an answer to this question that actually made sense and worked.