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Clueless Users Are Bad For Debian
Helmholtz writes "I just got done reading a very interesting article about Debian and Clueless Users that appeared on the Debian Weekly News site. I think this article would be a very good thing for users of all distributions to read, as it touches upon what might become a very real problem. Now that the word "Linux" has been splashed around by such 'heavyweights' as CNN and NPR, everyone who want to be seen as a 'cool computer guy' is trying to get Linux up. This of course is done without any heed to the absolute requirement that some Documentation-reading. And then these same people get angry when they try to install Linux and it doesn't 'just run'. I'm not try to harass anyone new to Linux, but I really think that it isn't emphasized enough that Linux is great because it requires some learning to occur. This is a concept that the Debian article holds at its core, I believe. "
I've seen this problem in the Linux community - having recently started reading uk.comp.os.linux for the first time in 6 months, I have noticed a major increase in the number of 'clueless' questions being asked - often the answer is simple. Also a lot of the replies seem as equally ill informed.
However the entire industry has changed. For 9 years I have done second-line support for a major NOS VAR in the UK. Over the past six months or so the quality of the calls being logged has dropped dramatically. For example, last month I wasted 2 days attempting to replicate a particular problem - the prime cause was that the 'idiot' logging the call could not even give me the messages scrolling up the server console, in the order they appeared; Consequentially I spent 2 days looking into what I suspected was an odd file-system corruption problem, when instead it was a incorrectly configured device driver. In the end the was only one customer that called regularly that had staff that I classed as competant.
There are now too many people working in the industry that quite frankly do not deserve their jobs - and some of these are working on contracts earning up to 1000UKP per day. I should know - I've had to support them.
Urgently looking for a position in the industry myself. Can anyone help??
May I say something heretical?
Not all of the learning required to use Linix, or any UNIX-like system, is time well-spent.
The Linux command line is hard to use, not just because it IS a command line, and not just because it is terse, expressive and powerful, but also because it is arcane and inconsistent.
I've won my spurs in tech support too, and I could not disagree more. Whereas it is frustrating to me to have to explain to somebody what a modem is and how to find one (sometimes, literally, with both hands and a flashlight), the person on the other end of the phone bought a product, not a weekend project. If I buy a brand new house, and walk up to the second floor and fall through the floor, is it my stupid fault that I didn't know that the builder had assumed that only people who weigh 75 pounds are going to be walking on the second floor? Should I have known to figure out whether they placed the studs at 18" or 24" on center spacing? Of course not. Was it my responsibility as a homebuyer to find out what the structural capacity of my second floor is? I don't believe so. Would it have been prudent to do so? Arguably, yes. However, I'm busy. I've got a day job, and I pay the homebuilder to give me a safe, functional house that won't drop me on my keister because I didn't think to read the FAQ that says "Oh, we forgot to put a tread on the fourth step from the top".
Dealing with these problems comes part and parcel with being a tech support guy. That's one reason I want to stop doing it. : )
The nice thing is that the essay author's attitudes and mine, where they are totally NOT congruent, are compatible, in that his feelings about how distributions should happen do not impede me from doing what _I_ want to do (which is to make a highly-polished, easy-to-use, extraordinarily powerful, scaleable by user ability level interface. Kinda like Stephenson's Hole Hawg with a nice velvet lined case and a safety interlock). There's PLENTY of room for both of us, and I think that that's a pretty darn good thing.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
>Putting in dynamically alterable toolbars, menus, popup boxes, etc. puts a huge strain on the computer system (hard disk, ram, processor)
Bull.
>and the developer for anything but the most pedantic of applications.
There's a small additional effort on the part of developers, which the lazy/clueless ones avoid, but once the necessary techniques are learned it's not really any harder to implement a dynamic interface than a static one. A lot of the people talking about how users shouldn't get involved with stuff they haven't learned adequately seem to miss the corollary that _programmers_ shouldn't either, and part of the craft is learning techniques like this.
>WordPerfect 8 takes up 50 megs of disk, MS word takes up 140 megs of disk
I warned you about mistaking specific examples for general points. These programs are bloated for reasons having little to do with the customizability of interfaces. Poor implementation methodologies and graphics glitz are obvious culprits but, perhaps more interestingly, another culprit is the proliferation of useless "features" themselves independently of how those features are accessed.
>But, this is where Open Source shines...everyone is happy, with a maximum of code reuse
If you'd actually looked at the Linux kernel much, you'd know how absurd this sounds. The prevailing attitude seems to be that when you have access to the source you don't need modularity, and that's stupid. I've talked to dozens of other professional OS developers who have worked on both Linux and other OSes; the unanimous opinion is that Linux is the worst-implemented of the bunch. I can say from my own knowledge that it's a bigger mess than AIX, UnixWare, Solaris or NT - that "shining" you see is reflections off the water of a swamp.
>If you're too angry to argue, it might be time to rethink your viewpoint.
The source of my frustration with you is actually the very same as the source of your frustration with "clueless newbies": dealing with people who are too lazy to learn is a pain in the ass, whether it's a user who won't read the manual or a "programmer" who won't learn how to program.
What would be the point of a more detailed response? You're obviously not going to back down now, no matter how thoroughly I refute your arguments. I can't reach you, so my only purpose in responding is to reach the lurkers, and to assume that they need my help to see through your arguments would be to waste their reading time and insult their intelligence. No, thanks. I'm happy to respond to the few lucid parts of what you post, but I'll let the inanity of the rest speak for itself.
It can never be said enough: Dejanews is your friend!
The second to last line of your rant contrasts so ironically with your sig.
"Has anyone actually got something like that in the works, or is the open source movement still too hung up on its status as a fringe element to try beating M$ at their own game?"
"Who is more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him?" -- Obi-Wan Kenobi
While I agree with many of the points made in the article, I disagree with just as many, and with the final conclusion.
My biggest problem with the articles is it blurs all distinctions. It lumps new users who are trying to lear with new users who aren't. It lumps hackers together with sysadmins, users and power users. Because of this, its argument boils down to "Because there are new users who don't care enough to learn how to administer a system, we should ignore new users".
First off, I think that new users who want to learn should be encouraged, not frightened off. Secondly, I disagree that only hackers and sysadmins should be using Linux.
Linux is essentially Unix in structure. That means it offers good security to keep mere users from trashing the system. That means that it is far far superior to Windows or Macintosh solutions when it comes to giving users desktop machines to do their work without administration headaches. These users only need to know how to do their job on the machine, they have a sysadmin to make sure the security and configuration is handled.
He scoffs at GUI's, yet where I work, a GUI is critical. We do mostly CAD work, and I have yet to see a useful CAD system that doesn't use a GUI (The older AutoCAD for DOS doesn't count, they essentially made their own GUI). I am glad to see he is happy without a GUI, but he should realize that they are important to more than just the "we want an easy point and click interface" crowd.
I do, however share is viewpoint that distributions like RedHat are encouraging the same trend I have seen with Windows NT. They both let users who should barely be touching a computer think that they can be systems administrators, when they really have no idea of what is going on under the hood. At least with RedHat, the hood isn't welded shut.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
I find the author's anti-RedHat sentiment to be peculiar. The RedHat distribution hardly presents users with a "shell" that keeps them from ever interacting with Linux proper. Is he referring to RPM? Probably not, as other distributions have similar concepts (and many of them use RPM as well). RedHat may be popular, and some people resent that, but even RH 5.2 is still a raw presentation of basic Linux. It doesn't boot up into KDE as many people think (heck, it doesn't even install KDE by default).
Seconded! IMHO, this is the biggest threat to the proliferation of free/open source software: the inability of some of the programmers to react positively to criticism. Unfortunately, they often prefer leaving/dropping a project to improving it when the user's criticism is too harsh, so I'm not convinced that clueless users are necessarily good for projects such as Debian (then again, in some cases it might be better if projects which fail to respond to user criticism vanished altogether!).
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Hi,
Well, I must say I do not agree at all with this guy. Not because I am a newbie.
PART 1 : Introduction-whoami
I installed Debian 3 weeks ago. I had never installed Linux before, only NetBSD (and DOS,Win user for 10 years), and it was not a good experience. I encountered some problems during the installation process for CDs (the boot process was hanging after a few seconds) and asked for help in a mailing list. 3 persons answered me, very nicely, but I managed to install in a different way. No documentation, no FAQ could have told me to do what I did (it was too specific). I now run Debian on my computer. X works (my video card is an ATI 3D Rage Pro, which is a 'bad' card for Linux). I installed things with dselect, they work.
My opinion of Debian Slink. It is good, very good indeed. The community brought me some help. The docs (especially from Havoc Pennigton) are great.
My motivation were :
- using LyX (no equivalent)
- LEARNING Linux
- fun
Last thing : I boot with NTLDR has NT is still installed on my computer. I managed to do this, so I am not so stupid (maybe ?).
PART 2 : Who is this guy to say that ?
Look at mailing lists : Many people answer. I think they see this as a duty.
But this guy :
At the beginning of the text :
'I've been lurking on these lists for a while now'
and at the end of the text :
'I had written this document before subscribing to serveral Debian mailing lists.'
'in the week that I was subscribed to -user'
He is not so qualified to talk about this, and whatever he had seen in the list, his opinion was made before.
I'm sure he never needed to learn linux (or unix), and he never asked for help...
PART 3 : RTFM
Before installing Debian, I read a lot. I have read more now (Debian Tutorial 100p, Installing Debian 60p, Debian FAQ (?p), syatem admin. guide 100 p, users' guide 150p (not comletely finished), many howtos, shell and command user guide (not all, a few pages
I still have Network admin. guide to read (350 pages) and got many questions.
I don't think than reading about 500 pages is NOT MAKING AN EFFORT.
If many newbies have questions, it is often because they don't understand enough the problem to find out where is the answer, and where is their 'generic' question in a FAQ.
PART 4 : Conclusion
Thanks god, this guy is not helping. At work, some collegues ask me question about unix (we work sometimes with an alpha server for computations). I am helping them, with the few things I have learned. Even if the solution is simply a case sensitiveness issue (that was 2 days ago...)
That is all folks.
The comments posted by this dude, poor writing style included, are typical of minority of very vocal lusers who mostly cling to Slackware and a sickly attachment to proverbially "complex and difficult" command line interfaces that make them look more expert (should I say 31133t?) than they actually are.
These people seldom write any software, although they compile a lot, tend to prefer Perl to C (because it is more *difficult*!) and think that anything that contributes to make Linux more popular and mainstream is evil, because it will rob them of their exclusionary little club with arcane rites of initiation.
Guess what: not everyone is interested in compiling and configuring ssh when all they want to use their Linux to write software (in c, Perl, Lisp whatever). People far more knowleadgeable than them are interested in developing advanced user interfaces but are *not* interested in configuring X manually every time they install Linux on a new box.
It's not because you think of the computer as just a tool. It's not because you are a dumb newbie. It's just 'cause you want to do something new and interesting and not some config file mangling that is old news.
Been there, done that, as they say.
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
Thanks for the invite Mike. I will eventually take your up on it. (I found your site from LinuxRepublic a week or so ago. I really liked the info) My head is spinning and there are many questions that I would like to find answers to. First and foremost, What is Linux? Not the usual spiel that every site gives. But what is its purpose? How can I best use it? The article that this thread started is great. It at least has given me a direction that I can now research.
I have installed RH 5.2 on a spare 4 gig drive and I am dual booting it with windoze. I got my PPP connection working with no help from the RH manual. I manage to put KDE on the computer and found that Kppp was easy to set up. But as the article points out, all these help tools hide the stuff that I really want to know about.
I want to know where I should normally load programs. I want to know how I can set up accts that will automatically have access to these programs - Accts that will automatically have access to my Zip drive. I want to learn what shell is the best to use, BASH? I want to only load what I need - But I don't know what I need. I want to use the computer for web development. How much network stuff do I need to get started on web development (only need the cgi bin?). When I first loaded RH, I custom installed, loading every software package for both the network server and the work station. Certainly I don't need everything, nor do I want everything. I may reinstall with just the work station and go from there.
Sorry for my ridiculous rant. I might sound totally frustrated, but I am not. Linux is the best thing that has happen to me regarding my computer in years. I find myself forgetting to eat or sleep because I am so consumed by it. I love it. BTW, I once ask a question on usenet (cybergate.linux) about my PPP connection. I use CyberGate as my ISP. Judging from the article's author, I now understand why I never got an answer. My email addr is also @gate.net - the same ISP.
"Linux needs more clueless users to make the operating system easier to handle."
Hello!? It's a pretty simple relationship if you think about it: The simpler and easier an end-user interface must be, the more effort must be put into creating and maintaining that interface. Since computers themselves aren't exactly getting simpler as the years go by, this means that more and more time and effort must be spent by the programmer in an attempt to create interfaces that your average neanderthal, defrosted from a glacier, could walk up, scratch his brow, and figure out how to manage a file system.
So sure. Let's go ahead and make this operating system easier to handle by throwing clueless users at it. Part of the reason that Windows sucks is that its programmers are locked in a futile attempt to produce an OS and a user interface that people with no understanding of computers or interest in doing so can understand.
Linux is cool because it gives YOU control, because it lets you choose how things work, because it refuses to make the assumption that you're incapable of figuring out how to do something, given a bit of documentation.
If you don't want to learn how to use a tool, then don't expect it to do much for you. Linux returns usability and productivity in direct proportion to
how much time you spend building up your knowledge
of both how linux works, and *how to use the provided documentation*.
"The "Linux is for nerds and geeks and otherwise intelligent people" attitude irritates the heck out of me."
This isn't the attitude that I see; I see people willing to help those that will put out the effort to learn. Do *you* want to spend your life as unpaid tech support for someone who won't read manuals, who refuses to use online help, who will not read a man page? Fine, go ahead and do so. Just don't ask the rest of us to join your crusade, and don't come back crying when those you support come back with the same question next week, and seem ungrateful for the time you spent helping them.
Go read "The Marching Morons" and tell me if you really want a linux community modelled after that.
zeke
another reason windows installations are stereotyped as easy is that they are preinstalled. install it on a fresh box and you will run into more problems than you will ever encounter on a linux installation. that's why most of the big oems cds are actually a copy of an image rather than the installation itself. my experience with plug and play on all linux versions has been trouble free. on fresh installs of windows i usually end up in the irq-hell reboot cycle of death.
"The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."
--
And Justice for None
I loaded RedHat 5.2 on a VERY non-standard Wintel machine (BTW I love it). However, needless to say it was very difficult. I have spent about 175 bucks on literature as well as reading almost every HOWTO that is relevant. To date my modem still doesn't work right all the time. But thats why I like it. I like the idea of exploring new territory and exploring new concepts. Even in light of all of the complications, I have not bothered 1 of you so called 'Experts'. As a matter of fact this is my first post!
Oh yeah, go ahead and call me a newbie, I don't care, I am just proud to escape from the Nazi - Microsoft grasp. And... if you think that I am clueless then plz. explain how I have already wrote and compiled a few small c apps in an OS I have only been using for a month!
As Mick Foley would say "Have a Nice Day!"
Most people are clueless. Any successful world-domination plan has to include them.
What I see happening is a paradigm shifting to user-friendly applications that lose complexity and robustness in the same modification. A place where we remove some of the 'arcane' options of 'tar' so that the synopsis doesn't consume an entire page and scare off our lowly MacOS refugee.
That's a cop out. Is it impossible to design for both power and ease of use? It is possible to layer these things - the numerous "Control Panel" dotfile editors are a good example. You lose none of the power of a simple text file configuration system, but gain a nice point and click interface for the newbies. It's not necessary to gut functionality to make things easier to use.
I know that but how did it get its name?
You cannot use a bicycle without being capable of balancing it.
You can, however, use a computer without being capable of configuring it. In fact, millions of Unix users who do not have root access do so every day. And so do millions more Windows users, which is the point the previous poster was making.
the Macos is a beautiful os , and linux is powerful but if you can make it easy , it would rock .
Uhh, take a look at that article. It was written by someone not even assoicated with Debian.
Including you, it would seem. "Average" means
three things:
mean: the sum of the elements divided by by the
number of entries.
median: the middle element when the elements
are considered as an ordered set.
mode: the most common element value.
The average can be any of these.
--
nathan wagner
nw@hydaspes.if.org
"The elite will always whine about their "private club" being taken and used by the masses.. I mean, we saw that
when the web took over the internet (from gopher). We'll see it again when real users interfaces take over the unix
kernal. Yes, there will be die-hards who deal with the system on a text level (just like there are those who think
the beast way to surf the web on a fast connection is with lynx.. go figure), but the majority will use a *real*
browser-- er, I mean interface. "
Hmmm. Well, I don't use Linux because I don't have a computer at home. At work, I'm forced to use M$ products(I do *NOT* have to like it). But I would like to add my $0.02 anyway.
Let's say I'm buying a car. And let's say I have two choices:#1 a brand-new shiny Jag or #2:an air-cooled VW('66 VW Squareback, like what I drive now).
Let's look at the Jag. It's rather like Windoze:shiny, powerful, easy to use and drive. It's also in the shop every other week. What can I do with the car? Add gas, change a tire(if I happen to have the correct wheel lock), maybe add oil. And this is on a good day. If I'm driving to the Grand Canyon from Texas and the car dies, (fatal exception OE in module 1283df148; Registers x, y, z)I have to call AAA to tow my car to an authorized repair shop. They then diagnose the problem and overcharge me($35.00 per Tech Support call) to do something that I probably could have done in the first place, had I not needed prohibitively expensive equipment(i.e. the tech support at Stream) to work on it.
Now, for the VW.
It's a bit more like Linux. Powerful, effective, infinantly customizable and upgradable. Yeah, so the body(GUI) isn't as pretty at first. So what? I can work on it in my spare time at home and make it pretty. Oh, you mean it doesn't make enough power? No big deal! I'll just get a bigger set of pistons(new kernal, new module, write a script, whatever...). And when I take that trip to the Grand Canyon from Texas and it breaks down, I can look at it and tell the generator belt is broken. I can then fix it with my spare(which I am *never* without)and be back on the road in no time, for no money.
In closing, it's not about or "private clubs". It's (IMHO) about the freedom to do what I want/need/like to do. This has very little to do with "elitists" . It has to do with pride in what is yours and in your ability.
Wasn't it Ben Franklin who said, "Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither."?
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
I started using Linux in college because there were no "server" applications available for Windows. I was a computer science major, and a life long geek who loves to RTFM. However, the manuals available for Linux were/still are imprecise, scattered everywhere, and largely dated before printed. I had to have my roommate install it for me the first time, as he had had someone install it for him at first. Linux is a tool, if I didn't need it, I would not have wasted my time learning how to install,use, and maintain it.
This guy appears to see Linux as his private castle, from which he can throw stones at those who have yet to find the hidden entrance. The beauty of Linux in tha past has been it's community. This guy has gone way beyond insisting that new members be Hazed into the community, to insulting those who may NEED an x86 version of Linux.
I have been programming computers for 20 years, and I understand how frustrating it is to help someone who wants to be spoonfed, but really, newbies are by definition, the people who need the linux community the most, and will help future newbies because of the help that they recieved.
Making a system overcomplicated reduces its usefulness. Insulting those who need to use it, and don't know how is arrogant. Debian users generally are in my opinion, and i hate to generalize but.. egotistical, arrogant, complexity freaks, who probably have no need to use linux anyway, except as their escape from the real world, where real problems get solved.
-ken
my apologies to the few Debian users who are "using the tool" and not "living the identity", there are some out there.
I once said to my mother-in-law that half of all people in the world were of average or below average intelligence. She disagreed, which identified her place.
Of course, you have to be careful with this. You can really only say that half are at or below median intelligence. Using average assumes a well behaved distribution.
More penis-wagging newbie-bashing. This attitude has been the bane of technical fields as long as they have existed. Standing on top of the mountaintop enjoying the fruits of his achievement? Give unto me a $#@! break. If you want to play that game, I guess I should point out that we were all newbies once. You may think you're a member of some elite club, but 99% of you are as far below the real elite as you are above your grandmother sitting at a computer for the first time.
The difference is that the _real_ gurus aren't threatened by the arrival of "new blood". If your greatest technical achievement is installing Debian, then there's a good chance that some of those new arrivals will one day equal your accomplishments and dilute their supposed value, but if what you've done is something truly difficult (e.g. writing a kernel or a compiler) then that ceases to be a worry. Heck, in many cases you'd appreciate the help, because while there are millions of perlmonkeys producing eye-candy there are still too few doing the hard things that really contribute to better, faster, more stable complete systems.
Sure, answering the same question a gazillion times is annoying, especially when (you think) it's a stupid question and (you think) the person should have been able to figure it out on their own. Even more annoying are the ignorant people who won't even recognize or admit their ignorance, or who expect programmers to be their slaves. Just remember, every time you encounter such a person, that there's probably someone else somewhere (perhaps the author of your favorite free software package, who has unfailingly responded to your last dozen "enhancement requests") who sees you the same way.
The day Linux becomes as easy to use as Windows is the day it becomes as useless as Windows.
Additionally, AppleScript on the Macintosh and COM on Windows allow you to automate a lot of things inside of other applications, both in "do this one task lots of times" and "put an easy or automated front end on this complicated series of actions" forms. Find someone who uses AppleScript, FileMaker Pro, and QuarkXPress to do automated catalog layout to show you what I mean...
It seems like CORBA is going to provide this same sort of functionality in Linux applications. I look forward to it, especially if there's some integration with GUILE; after all, "Lisp is the only computer language that's beautiful." (Well, for me, there's also Smalltalk, but that's better for building full-fledged applications than for scripting...)
Hm. I always thought it was Read The Fine Manual. [grin]
But seriously, sometimes I just don't know where to look. Man pages aren't exactly the panacea of understanding either. Even O'Reilly says that using man to learn (uni|linu)x is like trying to learn English by reading a dictionary.
My 2,
Jason
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
The only thing I object to is the licensing program for computer usage. I am sure that if you think about it for a while, you'll also shudder in horror.
Imagine: Department of Computer Usage. Licensing test -- open a (Microsoft) word processor, compose and send an e-mail (using Outlook). Find the DCU's homepage using Internet Explorer. Three misclicks and out you go... And then: "computer usage is a privilege, not a right!". Two speeding convictions on the Internet and your license is suspended!
Nah, I am sure you didn't mean all that.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Don't make the windows mistake. Don't try to be everything for everybody!
[1] (tm) Jerry Springer :-)
>If someone could come up with a "windows clone" that ran on a Linux Kernel and then kept many of the good features of it, then I think there is where it will start making inroads into normal users' homes. But that is just my $.02.
I believe I've heard something like this before... oh yes, that would be Mac OS X! =)
Seriously, this is why Mac OS X is going to take off. You get all the benefits of UNIX, but with the ease-of-use of the Mac.
The elite will always whine about their "private club" being taken and used by the masses.. I mean, we saw that when the web took over the internet (from gopher). We'll see it again when real users interfaces take over the unix kernal. Yes, there will be die-hards who deal with the system on a text level (just like there are those who think the beast way to surf the web on a fast connection is with lynx.. go figure), but the majority will use a *real* browser-- er, I mean interface.
KDE/Gnome aren't a real interface becuase it forces you to use text at one point or another (that's like Netscape forcing someone to make a port connection manually).
Microsoft... interface?? Ha! You're funny.
That leaves Apple, the only company that copuld conceiveably use a UNIX kernal that can be *completely* controlled graphically. No CLI needed (unless you *want* to). Folks.. this is the future of UNIX. Deal with it.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Actually, both WordPerfect and AutoCADD have/had serious hybrid interface modes that made serious use of either a command line or arcane sequences to aid efficiency. The notion that a single GUI is somehow the holy grail of interfaces and industrial engineering is absurd.
I have to agree....
Dselect did suck ***. And I prefer command line interface over gui styles anyday. Seems dselect tried to make it easier and did just the opposite.
My 2,
Jason
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
I think that's an excellent idea, and one that has been discussed from time to time. I haven't seen much come of it, though, unfortunately.
But a distribution that had an easy install (like Redhat), with a nice, easy X setup as part of the initial install, and set up no services by default (other than perhaps telnet), could be very useful for people that want to try out Linux, but are intimitated by the idea of becoming their own sysadmin. The system could be set to run xdm, so they go right into their warm, fuzzy GUI (probably KDE, as it is pretty familiar looking to people used to Windows/OS/2/Macintosh).
Whatever happened to the SEUL (Simple End User Linux) project? Anyone know?
Maintaining a package is not a trivial amount of work, what with library changes that require new versions of your packages to be uploaded, keeping up with the upstream source, fixing bugs in how your package is configured for Debian, tracking down bugs in upstream source, reading the -devel mailing list, etc.
We also know that people like to flame -- a lot -- over just about anything. So, if a clueless user starts to submit bogus bug reports, and then flames people about the supposed "high quality of Linux", a flame fest always starts. It might not last too long, but they add up.
If the number of clueless people increases by a factor of 10, the average Debian maintainer will get 10 times more clueless bug reports and have to read 10 times as much flamage to see if there really is a real problem, and *poof* you have burnout. Take a look at the number of "orphaned packages" for an idea of how big the problem already is. Think about how much work most maintainers are going to have to do to move their packages from the FSSTND to the FHS, or the the LSB when it is done.
Many Debian developers are very clear (and vocal) that the reason why the work with Debian is because they want a useful system. It makes no difference to them whether they have 2 non-developers using their package or 2 million. They are contributing to Debian in order to make their life easier.
One of the real strengths of OSS, which isn't mentioned in the CatB, is that you can always, say "If you don't like it, then fix it your self. Or pay someone to fix it. Don't bitch to me about it." Seriously. This changes the mindset of everyone using the software. If I want something better it is up to ME to make it better. I can't just whine about it because I didn't pay for the right to whine. It is a great motivator to get people to contribute.
If you don't want to learn enough to be helpful to the Debian maintainers, then you should do them all a favor and keep quiet, or switch to a commercial distribution where you pay for support.
Debian, like Linux and all other OSS, won't die because of the lack of users or profits or market share. They will only die when they run out of developers. Don't make developers lives hell.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
I believe that the author of the original article is worried that the process of "simplification" will take away the power and flexibility of Linux. This is something which is still important and as said in followups on the Debian mailing list a balance has to be sought between "ease of use/learning" and "power and flexibility". Perhaps this should be through different distributions aimed at different audiences.
If all you want to do is write a letter then yes - all you should need to know to write a letter is what a letter is. Given that it should be easy! Even then my idea of a document (a structured thing because I use LaTeX) may be different to someone elses (lots of different fonts - the "typewriter methodology" as I call it). People who drive cars have to know what a car is and a road and what way to go round roundabouts and when to indicate etc...
If you want to become a network administrator then you really must have some idea as to what a network is, and in order to be responsible you should understand things such as security. No pretty interface will solve this. If you think that "Internet" is another name for "Netscape" then when it comes to setting up a DNS server you're stuffed!
What I think can be done in Linux is that the user is given a decent set of defaults that gives a basicly secure system (say no inetd unless the user explicitely asks for it and is told what it does on the form with the button that says yes). A set of utilities can ask the user questions such as "what is your ISP's phone number?" and "do you need to allow people to run programs on your computer over the network?" and set up the system for them - whilst not getting rid of the ability of a knowledgable user to set things up by hand..
Debian does seem to already have a lot of this in place. The afore-mentioned scripts exist in the form of pppconfig, fetchmailconf. Projects such as LinuxConf and many other such utilities also look promising.
A problem I have seen watching new users is that they often approach Linux using their knowledge of Windows and expect the two to be the same. When I approach Windows with my knowledge of Linux I run into troubles. For example under Windows the PPP layer is seems to me to be intertwined ("integrated") with the web browser and the mail system with all of the effects that has. Under Linux these are all seperate functions. I prefer Linux's way and think that the Windows users should read the documentation in this case. A one stop setup tool that they can turn to can help though.
My conclusion: A good set of secure defaults and user friendly configuration tools that do not prevent power users from doing what they want. I believe that Linux is already a long way towards this.
- Richard.
For reference: I started out with Slackware in 1993, then moved to Debian soon after it appeared in my university. Slackware at that time was an education. I was already using HP-UX so was comfortable with UNIX in general.
Under Debian I use the package configuration scripts for basic setup but often tweak things and am glad that I can. I like Linux's flexibility and the ability to pick and choose modules that just work together. This is an advantage of not having things like PPP, web browsing and email intertwined. Linux does the job I want it to do very well.
I try to help out new users but do get frustrated when they repeatedly ask the same thing (not learning) and ask things that, when asked to just think about it, they can answer themselves in a few seconds. Sometimes the answer is right there on their screen! Some people are just lazy and will ask first.
I bench-press 400 lbs. My 4x4 has the biggest tires in town. I carry a .44 Mag in my wasteband, and I use _Debian_!
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
For example, one of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox columns dealt with testing page templates by showing them to users with fake, "greeked" text and asking them what on the page was what ("Now point to the page title").
The column included two sample templates. The one that people liked better (67% vs 52% visual appeal) was significantly harder to understand (+0.9 vs +1.3 score for usability on a -3 to +3 scale).
If you let people choose interfaces on the basis of visual appeal, they will learn to work around the flaws in the interface because they like looking at it. (How many people know why Windows and X menu bars work slower than Mac menu bars? How many still prefer Win/X menu bars because they don't like the Mac look and feel?)
I liked the article. The guy is passionate about his beliefs and he likes computers. He likes to mess with them, modify them, tweak them, etc. etc. And then he assumes other people are (or should be) like him. Oops.
Computers used to be and to most intelligent computer people (=nerds) still are a "thing in itself". You install a system for the pleasure of installing a system. You tweak the parameters because you can get it exactly right. You write a Perl script to automate some stuff because it's boring to do it by hand and it feels good to do a clever hack in Perl.
But the great majority of people aren't like that at all. For them the computer is a black box that performs certain functions. This is a perfectly viable worldview that has all rights to exist. Let's say I want to write a letter. A computer is a thing that I will use to do this. All I want is to write a letter, I don't care about configuration, amount of memory, space on my hard drive, etc. Why should I be computer-literate to write a letter?
The article author's answer is that everybody should be smart enough to understand computers and those who do not should die out, or at least be banished to using pens and paper. Why? I don't know... -- because they are not worthy?
Think about the car analogy. 60 years ago you had to be (or had to employ) a decent mechanic to own and operate a car. I bet there were people around who said that unless you can disassemble and reassemble an engine, you have no business driving a car. Fortunately, they turned out to be wrong. There are still people who disassemble engines for fun, and sometimes profit, but the normal user doesn't care about all the mechanics under the car's hood. I am sure that the same thing will happen to computers. People who want to write letters will be able to do so without knowing anything about RAM and interrupts. And people who enjoy messing around with computers will still write optimized device drivers. And again, as I said, this is a GOOD thing.
The article argues for Linux to remain the domain of hard-core hackers (=hobbyists). I think that this will be the death of Linux. Without mainstream acceptance it will go to the great write-only memory in the sky and will be remembered just as a curious hack at the dawn of computing.
Of course, nothing that I said should be constituted as doubt in the wisdom of the KB law:
"In any sufficiently large group most people will be idiots."
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I think what hurts the entire unix/linux
community is that using it requires you to think.
And if you make someone think, it scares them.
This is why people get freaked out after listening
to Baz Luhrman's Everyone's Free song.
The fact that using Debian requires intellegence
is a step in the right direction, as it weeds out
the idiots, and perhaps brings up the average
IQ by a fraction of a decimal.
Help us build a better map!
That's a great idea! I use Linux PPC and I know I could get a LOT of my friends on linux if it had a simple, easy to set up version for them to start on!
"So why not make a "slimmed-down" Linux for them."
I'm having a similar discussion on another front, though the issue is modular tools in general, not merely Linux.
First response is that Red Hat (and SuSE, IIRC) allow you to roll out different configurations of Linux, including some relatively basic workstation configs.
The kicker though (these aren't my words, I'm your view) is that people will frequently (often?) go for the gusto and install absolutely everything. Especially first timers. We've been told that more is more so often that "less is more" sounds false.
IMO, stripped Linux installs will be the only way to roll for a corporate desktop. The home user, however, will probably feel cheated if that's the way it's presented. However, existing products such as the Cobal Qube, Trinux, and the Netwinder are in fact tailored Linux distros, so you're predicting the past to a certain extent.
Things will work out eventually.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
i guess to be able to use linux you have to go thu some painfull initiation. thats just as silly running naked accross campus just to get into a fraternaty.
I enchurage people that are interested to try linux, but at the same time WARN them about it's steep learning curve, and give them good places to find info. the fact that people want to learn is a good thing. clueless people shouldn't be labled and people assumed that they suck and can't learn and therfor can't break themselves from their clueless caste. i see linux as the best learning platform out there. the main problem is the scattering of info. it takes more time just finding info than it does to read and learn. this is why new users resort to prematurly posting to mailing list. i think the linux doc. project is a great source but it's still young.
slamming RH because it install easy is silly as well. having multiple distro's, each geared toward different groups is great. this is accomlishing what M$ has been trying to do for years,the same OS with different flavors.
anyway its good to see that the general consencous is that the article is silly
I have installed various types of Windows on many different machines. I have also installed RedHat on many different machines. You don't need to be any more clueful to install RedHat than you do to install any Windows variation. Is this a bad thing? NO! I know a lot of people who badmouth RedHat for exactly this reason, I don't think such objections are warranted. There is absolutely no technical aspect of RedHat that makes it any worse than any other Linux distro. In fact, its co-existing libc5 and glibc compatabilities are a great technical strength.
Now, Debian could be just as easy for clueless people to install. The installation manual could be made a little bit more friendly, there could be an automatic X configurator. This would be a start.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Debian. But the idea that it is somehow better because it's harder to install is silly. Linux is not just for computer gurus, like us. I would like to see Linux in the hands of the common man (and woman). Attitudes like the typical "we don't have time for clueless morons like you" really undermines that.
No sig.
It sounds like *someone* couldn't get Disk Druid to work...
Developers don't write man pages for the newbies. They write them for those who want to use the program and need a starting point. this does not imply that an expert will just start the program and know what to do. if ipchains did not have a HOWTO, noone, and i mean NOONE would have an incentive to use it.
I was thinking of how to intentionally fail my drug test... It would make a good memoir story someday.
Ok. Everybody go back and read Neal Stephenson's excellent essay that the Cmdr so woefully relegated to "quickie" status yesterday. It'll take you an hour, but it'll clear a lot of this up.
It's a Unix system - I know this.
You don't really need to know that much to get your work done. 20 commands at most will do it for most people. If you want to be a system admin, that's another story. Some people revel in knowing every detail, but I've found that it bores me.
As if "newbie" wasn't a bad enough moniker for people new to Linux, now we call them "clueless" as well? That's so freakin' lame. Maybe that one dude was right - you are a bunch of arrogant bastards.
It seems to me that the implicity assumption with a lot of that is that there is a "Free Software World" and a "Pay Software World" and never the twain shall meet.
Meet, perhaps. But expecting one to absorb the other is naive.
This seems to me to be at odds with what I at least perceive to be the goals of the free software movement, which is to, well, make software free. If we work to restrict "free" software to the gurus then it seems to me that it is no longer a movement to make software free and instead is merely a bunch of guys passing around neat programs.
Right now it is just a bunch of guys writing flames and passing around programs - some neat, most not very.
"Software" as an end in itself is not important. We need adequate tools for whatever we need to do. Programmer will always be a minority.
"Free software" as an end in itself is not important. If software costs less or nothing, and is well-written and easy to use, it will help people. "Neat" is nice, but not sufficient.
"Free software movement" as an end in itself is not important. Be pragmatic. Does being a member of the movement help you pay for groceries?
I am also a tech support person for a pretty darned large ISP in New England and I think one of the things that just drive us nuts is the plug-n-play mentality. You ask them simple things like "What email program are you using to get your mail?" and they're lost - and worse yet expect you to know. There are three basic types:
1. Those that don't know because they're new (we all were new at that at one point or another).
2. Those that don't know and don't want to know.
3. Those that THINK they know and don't.
Of course none of this is helped by places like AOL that has it's own drivers so that you could install it on your toaster.
But I digress...
I'm new to Linux (Debian 2.0.3 kernel and RH5.2) and even tho the community has been quite nice in regards to answering questions (I read the **** out of the man pages, sometimes I just don't know where to look), I worry that the Linux backlash will catch up and people will no longer want to help people like myself.
Just remember that there ARE those out there with dumb-ass questions sometimes that really ARE trying to learn. After spending a few days with my box, Windows9x seems so damned backward and fruity that I can't imagine going back.
My 2,
Jason
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
The issue with strtok manpage is it expects you have somewhat of a clue about programming in general. As the rest of man(2) and man(3) should. Such definitions occur VERY frequently in specifications of functions, get used to it. It's a semi-formal language you'll need to learn.
I've seen a lot of people using the car/computer analogy here (a bad analogy, probably encouraged by the "Information Superhighway" catchphrase) and what amazes me is that they use it to justify user ignorance/apathy.
- ------------------ - ------------------
Let's try taking that analogy and turning it around:
A person who has never driven a car before goes to a car dealership. The car dealer sells them a car and tells them they should read the manual and take good care of it. The car "user" thinks "it can't be that hard" and promptly drives the car (if they can even figure out how to get it started) off the lot and into the path of an oncoming semi.
I'm not saying that every computer user should be an expert in the field, but they should at least know how to use the computer. I can't stand it when people ask me a question that could be easily answered just by looking it up in the manual or if they had taken a basic computer course.
I believe that computers will become common tools, like the car and pen and paper, but I also believe that they will require some training like a car and pen and paper.
-----------------------------------------------
Nathan Paul Simons | "For a good time, 'finger
http://www.nmt.edu/~npsimons | npsimons@rainbow.nmt.edu | less'"
-----------------------------------------------
Nathan's blog
I agree.
.dll files from the .CAB files and it worked.
Linux is already at a stage where once it's installed and configured it is as easy to use as Windows - and you get the bonus of stability too.
I'd say that Windows is actually harder to fix when something goes wrong.
My parents bought a new PC and tried to install Publisher, but it crashed "MSPUB has caused an error in MSPUB.EXE"
I eventually manually extracted all the
Hmmm...
This is the last straw. I'm so sick and tired of moron acquaintances saying, "You know computers? How do I get on the Internet?" or proceeding to ask me some idiotic question invariably about Windows 95. They finally 'get on the Internet' and waste _our_ bandwidth downloading porn. Then they learn some HTML 'codes' and put up a moronic website that looks like shit. Now they're 'hackers' and need to install Linux, then cry because they're too stupid to figure it out.
Well, the web is a revolution all right. What's the word for rule by stupid masses with too much time and money on their hands?
Windows has millions of clueless users. That's why it is so popular. Linux needs more clueless users to make the operating system easier to handle.
The "Linux is for nerds and geeks and otherwise intelligent people" attitude irritates the heck out of me.
Right now, it's true that you have to be intelligent to install Linux, but I for one hope that in a couple years anyone will be able to install it and run it.
Stop the elitist attitudes. That's what's going to kill Linux, more than anything else. Helping the clueless is by far the best way to go.
I'm new, a tech support (UA) for an ISP in MA, and people have been very helpful (Slashdot, DejaNews, friends). There were some good points made tho - many want Linux to be PNP and it just ISN'T. I try and refrain from asking questions unless I simply don't know where to look for the answer or I don't understand that answer.
But there is (of course) going to be the requisite clique mentality. It no longer labels you as knowledgable to say you're running Linux and that pisses some people off.
My 2,
Jason
j@intap.net
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
Debian, being the official GNU distro, should be for everyone.
.....
Debian 2.0 was the first distribution of Linux I've installed, on
an old 486 using floppies. It was VERY easy to install and
dselect is VERY easy to use (dpkg is somewhat more
demanding, but necessary sometimes even for newbies because
dselect will not always execute setup scripts).
Granted, there is considerable elitism among Debian users and
contempt for new users, just as there is in the Slack user
base. That's just something Debian will have to endure.
GNU means little unless people who know little about the
internals of unix can use its products. Software is not very
free if most people can't use it. Certainly some tools should
only be for professionals or serious users willing to learn, but
I submit that using the system itself should require no computer
literacy whatsoever. It should not even be necessary to work
with files - just ideas and topics. We are not there yet, but
this is coming. MS tried that somewhat but didn't go far enough
and the foundation was unstable. Using tools like XML it
should be very possible to set up a system which is so intuitive
that it makes todays' gui's look like binary encoding of every
instruction, without dumbing down Linux at all. The traditional
unix utilities and system will still be there under the surface for
those who want to use them or to develop the system itself.
End users should never have to do that, though. Such people are
not clueless or stupid. They just do something other than
programming or sysadmin for a living, and deserve free systems
they can use to get work done without arcane unix crap.
Command line addicts who have contempt for people who just
want to use computers will continue to plauge Linux for some
time but will gradually be forgotten. The command line, scripting
with a text editor, and real programming are tools for professionals.
Professionals who are any good don't have contempt for the
people they develop systems and applications for. Only
mediocre cli jockeys do. They have contributed little or nothing
but pride themselves on being able to use vi. Who cares?
Look, mommy, I can use the CLI
Debian is getting better and better every week. I wish dpkg
were the standard packing tool for most Linux distros instead
of the proprietary rpm. (for those who want a packaging tool).
Debian is so easy to use that when installing it even sets up
ppp scripts for the most "clueless" newbie. Right on Debian.
.
First off, I didn't bash any clueless newbies. I bashed RedHat. And I bashed it hard.
Secondly, I tried to do things The Right Way with Redhat but couldn't because the stupid "user friendly" popup boxes and things got in my way and even actively prevented me from configuring my system by hand edits. And that pissed me off. A lot. So I went to Debian, becuase I would rather edit text files than wade through a dozen screens of fscking configurators. And I think that makes me a better Linux user, even if it makes me a poor Redhat user.
In conclusion, go read the post again, you feeble minded moron. Before you start bashing my intelligence, go find a nice bucket full of ice cold water and SOAK YOUR HEAD.
Leapfrog, the irked.
I agree.
He should have used his time to help a newbie instead of writing this insulting shit (See my post 'I am a Debian newbie...' 10 posts below to understand why I feel insulted.
Yes. Ignore them. I've been trying to ignore those AOL users for about 4 years now, and yet their numbers keep growing. : )
I'll admit, I'm new to Linux. But the only reason I want to use it is because I hate Windows very, very much. I'm not using it because I don't exactly have the free hd space right now.
But I'm not using AOL...
miyax
Ya know, your comparison to fast food is a good one. It's even more interesting to me that you complain about comparisons of computers to TVs. One of my pet peeves is the tendency of certain users--especially Mac users--to equate computers with appliances. They wail, "My computer should be as easy to use as my TV!" Well, damn it, it's not a TV. It's not an appliance at all! It's a general-purpose information-processing engine, capable of performing any operation that can be expressed algorithmically. An appliance is a rigid, Turing-incomplete machine useful for one thing only. If your computer is acting like an appliance, there's something seriously wrong with it. The whole point of computers is to let you think outside the box.
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Actually, there is a way to do it: after inserting the bread, just type format a: a couple of times, and then press the eject button. The bread should come out warm and crummy
That's BRILLIANT!!!
-Eric
Ease of use is not going to change anything.
Macintosh GUI has not changed the world,
Win95 has not transformed the drooling masses
either.
complex tasks which have become guified end
up having complex gui's. In the end, you
gain nothing.
This guy is perhaps more clueless than the people he writes about. Allow me to explain my two major reasons for this assertion:
1) He spouts the fallacy that power and ease of use are mutually exclusive; a tradeoff must be reached. This is a myth put forth by programmers either too unskilled or too lazy to do it right in the first place. Examples of powerful GUI's? GIMP (which is finally getting the GUI design usable with the latest developer releases). Any CAD tool. *AMP on any platform (Mac, Win, X11, whatever). Any spreadsheet (which by its nature has at least a semi-graphical interface). Hell, even Grapple (a Mac port of grep, complete with GUI and all of the functionality of the original) is powerful and easy to use. He mentions "removing some of the more 'arcane' options of tar" as necessary to make it easier to use: not so.
2) He still firmly believes that the user must adapt to the machine, rather than the machine adapting to the user. Computing will never become truly ubiquitous until I can walk up to any computer and use it, right away, being confident that the skills I have already will give me at least a redumentary knowledge of how the computer functions. It's also my major gripe with the Palm Pilot (and one which isn't enough to keep me from wanting one very badly): Graffiti as opposeed to true handwriting recognition. A user should not have to learn a new way of writing to work on a palmtop. It may be implemented very nicely, but it's the epitome of bad interface.
The point is this: Simple things should be simple, complicated things possible. A CLI is not necessary for that, but since it gives so many hackers power-trips and it won't break a computer, it's not something that should disappear from the face of the planet. But the dependence on a CLI can and should stop. I know it'll take a long time, but it must happen eventually. Either that or the ultimate in intuitive interfaces (namely natural-language processing) needs to be developed, and I'd say we're still several decades away from having desktop machines that can handle that sort of thing.
Visit my web site: http://www.eunuchs.org/
If you want to be rational, that is.
Red Hat is designed to make it easy for the refugee, this is true. However, Red Hat is also cutting edge and they keep up with the times. You talk about how glorious Slackware is, but the truth is that this distro is dead, totally unsecure, unmaintained, and horribly out of date.
Yes, there is a point in doing something the hard way, but as I heard someone on usenet say:
support gun control: take guns from cops
The "average computer user" does not mess with NT nor does he attempt dual boot. Before picking up that clue stick, perhaps you should reread my post. I am mearly suggesting that if the goal is to make Linux mainstream, then it must be intuitive enough for the uninitiated. If you want to keep Linux elitist, than don't worry about it.
BTW - talking about an "average computer user" configuing a network on NT clearly shows how out of touch you are with what an average computer user is. Try using the clue stick on yourself.
"Rascal am I? TAKE THAT!" -- Errol Flynn
I'm a newbie myself, but I took the time to read the manual, and anything else i could online BEFORE I EVEN ATTEMPTED TO USE LINUX Afterward i still had/have a few questions/problems, but i try to find out how to fix them first, before i ask someone else.
I also know the configuration of my PC, so that when I installed Linux, (and other programs) I can tell the installer any info it needs to know about my system (most PC users can't, thanks to Windows). Also, when I post to a newsgroup I don't do any of the following things:
1) Post five copies of a question/
2) Put the entire body of the message in the subject line.
3) Use terms such as "thingy" or others
4) Post "test" messages
There are millions of others also.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
Back around November I had first heard about Linux and found out it was free. So I searched infoseek for "Linux". I came across a page that said Get Linux! I loaded it up it had a paragraph about Linux at top. At the bottom were links to several different Linux distributions and some information on each one. After checking the homepages of Slackware, Redhat, a few others, and Debian, Debian was the one that I liked the best.
I downloaded the base system and began the installation. Taking the advice of the page with the links, I already had a great deal of information about my hardware written down. The install went fine.
After that, I messed around with the command line a little bit. Having alot of DOS command line experience helped. I tryed to install Netscape and dselect ended up installing X for me also, which I had intended to do at a later time but it was fine with me. I found out I had to download Netscape from Netscape's FTP, but that didn't bother me.
I began to read the user tutorial at Debian's website and then a number of HowTOs at linux.org. Of course, I did have a year of experience with DOS and a few years with Win 95, trying a Microsoft alternative was fun, and not that difficult. Lots of documentation was there, you just need the base skills, interest, and you have to be ready for lots of reading.
Since then I have had to re-install Linux a few times, and I have tryed one other distribution, Slackware. (Which, I thought, sucked compared to Debian.)
Bottom line? Anyone who wants to try Linux, and is willing to put in the effort, should have no trouble with Debian. I was surprised to hear (On Slashdot) that Debian was a "advanced" distribution. It makes me feel like RedHat must be aiming for Win95. However, if you want something that _always_ works the first time, Debian (and probaly Linux) is not for you.
IMHO the right approach is the one which Apple seems to be taking (supposing they get their license debugged). Open Source for developers and geeks who want to tweak the kernel. Fully downloadable source up to and including the command line. So whoever fits that profile can learn and tweak and strut about.
But for the casual user, or clueless newbie, or whoever doesn't want to waste time reading man pages or tweaking things, there's a 5-minute installer, GUI configurations, and compatibility layers to run his old software.
Finally a lucid argument here. The main trouble will be convincing the slashdot zealots of your logic...
My copy of MOSXS arrives next week. Can hardly wait.
> Albert Einstein dropped out of high school at age 15
Ok, A. Einstein _left_ his Luitpold-Gymnasium in Munich at age 15.
> moved to Switzerland
He moved to Milano (I think, it's in Italy)
> with his folks
His family was already there.
> He did resume his studies at the Federal Polytechnic Academy
> in Zuerich when he was 16 and graduated.
He was 17 when he began to study physics at the Polytechnikum.
> But he was technically a high-school drop out.
Nope, he did his High School Graduation at the Kantonschule in Aarau
in September 1896.
So he _finished_ High School
Quot erat demonstrandum!
Lit.: Albrecht Foelsing: Albert Einstein. Eine Biographie (if you can read german)
Frank
There are different kinds of averages. Most people say 'average' when they mean 'mean', which
is defined as sum(x)/n. The median is the value that half the people are dumber than, as rw2 explained above. Another kind of average is the 'mode' which is the value with the highest frequency.
Those are all the averages I know about. Are there others? Do all their names start with 'm'?
Molly
No, as it stands now, computers do not act like appliances, nor are they as easy to use.
I'm going to draw a parallel to an appliance whose characteristics computers may/should emulate in the future: the automobile.
A car is a very complex piece of machinery, yet arguably most car owners know very little about how to configure or service their cars. They only understand what is required to make the car do what they need it to do on an everyday basis. Turn the key, and the door unlocks. Turn the key, and the car starts. Put it in drive, press the gas pedal, it goes.
When the car starts behaving unexpectedly (makes a strange noise, or "crashes" (stops running)), the range of reactions mirrors the range of expertise:
The mechanic (hacker) reads the service bulletins he keeps in the trunk, uses his extensive knowledge of the way cars operate, gets his tools out and fixes the problem.
The hobbyist reads the owner's manual (which is probably a bad translation from japanese or german), and uses his limited expertise to try and debug the problem, and often can debug the problem (out of gas).
However, the vast majority of users won't read the manual, and won't learn about how a car works. Nor should they be required to do so. The owner of the car doesn't need to know why he's developed an oil leak. In fact, he buys the most reliable (albeit boring) japanese bubble car so he can avoid these situations altogether. When something goes wrong, he doesn't hesitate, and just calls AAA. Sure, maybe his problem could have been avoided by having more knowledge of the mechanics of a car, reading the manual, etc., but he bought the car he did specifically to avoid such hassles. He deserves no contempt for trying to avoid trouble, nor for not trying to fix it himself.
Computers follow a similar pattern, or at least they should:
The hacker buys a machine with many unsupported features, because he can support it himself. He uses many special tools that the ordinary user doesn't need, but gets increased performance and functionality. (apache, gcc, turbochargers, nitrous) When something goes wrong, he reads the proper documentation, which is probably arcane, or calls up his hacker/mechanic buddies and asks them for help. He is a technician, and fixes the problem himself. This follows the hacker value that intellect and problem solving are important things.
The hobbyist buys a slightly more reliable machine, but with enough special things to keep him occupied and challenged (ie setting up PPP, changing your own oil). However, once he reaches his particular threshold of patience, he ends up calling tech support/AAA and just gets done what needs to get done.
Everyone else, on the other hand, has a computer because he/she needs to accomplish a particular task (word proccessing, internet, games, commuting to work, doing errands). Unfortunately, the modern computer consumer can't buy the reliable japanese car of computers, at least not yet. Windoze is as close as you can get to "press the pedal and it goes", ie "point and click." Since windows is so buggy, however, it is not the cheap, reliable appliance that the modern car is. It happens to be the only thing available that comes close... though I suppose a Macintosh comes closer, especially with the iMac. Macs have yet to gain the dominance in this market, though that's mostly M$'s fault. MacOS, though, still has a long way to go before it gets truly appliance-like.
It's because of all this that I can see the wisdom of those who say "Internet appliances" will be the wave of the future. For those of us who need/want to do more advanced things (ie development) there will always be more versatile, powerful workstations. But smaller, single-purpose computing appliances (perhaps even based on a linux microkernel--this is why I am learning Linux...open, and non-bloatware) will take over from the M$/MacOS/Redhat's of the world, in the general market (the 'rest' of us).
If you all at Debian want to keep the newbies out of your faces, give them a bright shiny, and reliable toy/appliance to play with, and they'll go occupy themselves with something that is useful to them.
Linux is good because it "requires some learning", eh?
Lovely. With an attitude like that, open-source software will be pushing Microsoft off the desktop in no time. I'm sure most corporate MIS managers are just dying to sit down a teach themselves a new OS, especially something as cool as Linux.
Sorry, but IMHO, the great thing about Linux (and other free OSes, don't want to leave the BSD folks or anyone else out in the cold) is that they've kinda got a scalable geek factor. You can set up a linux box as a point-and-click machine for an average-joe desktop user, or you can have a full-blown geek box with your very own custom kernel. Still, the install is a bitch (relatively speaking, of course) and if joe user has a choice, he's still going to take Windows, because it's easier for him to play with and tweak (note: not more tweakable, just easier). You want to beat M$, you've gotta sell the idea to the non-geeks, and that means building a distribution that's made for them.
Has anyone actually got something like that in the works, or is the open source movement still too hung up on its status as a fringe element to try beating M$ at their own game?
Just a thought...
"Who is more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him?" -- Obi-Wan Kenobi
We are turning a corner in the growth of Linux. If we want to break out of the "hackers only" market, then we must break out of the "hackers only" mindset. Just because some user wants their computer to work like a toaster, is that a Bad Thing? Remember, Linux is about choice. I like to build my hardware from scratch just because I want to know everything that's inside my box. I enjoy tinkering. The next person just wants to go down to CompUSA and buy a sealed box, stick her Linux boot floppy in and install the OS. Am I a "better engineer" than she is? Is it any different to want plig-n-play hardware than it is to want plug-n-play software?
We have spent a lot of time enjoying our nice little exclusive Linux Hackers club. We've put our blood, sweat and tears into building Linux into a viable alternative to the Evil Empire, and now that effort is coming to fruition. However, change brings... uh... a lot of changes.
Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it...
Your Servant, B. Baggins
The more you taint the linux pool with the blood of the masses, the worse things are going to be, at least with some distros. Just look at some of the more popular ones. "We want it more user-friendly". Who ever said linux was supposed to be user friendly? User friendly almost always means that you lose functionality and power, and get something bloated. You might maintain that power and functionality, but automatically installing anything means that you don't know your system (at least not right off the bat).
*nix is built on gluing commands together- A GUI is not. That is part of the beauty of *nix Sure, you don't have millions and millions of people using it like you do windows, but so what?
This merge toward the masses wanting to use linux is similar to the trend of script kiddies vs. hackers. You can't just "get the power" without learning first. There shouldn't be shortcuts.
What is the next geek technology? Is Linux going the way of Microsoft? "Easier and more fun". Personally that is one slogan I don't want to associate linux with. I for one will always prefer the command line. I want to SEE what I'm doing, I don't trust the GUI (even setting up and configuring X requires CLI usage).
Using linux should be like building a house. You lay the foundation (the OS, daemons) and add the applications you need. It's powerful, efficient, clean, and effective.. That's why I've always liked linux. Any efforts that detract those appeals I don't want anything to do with.
glh
I say this because you haven't read the article very closely before spouting off. The author clearly states that his rant focuses on clueless newbies, the sort who can't be bothered to think on their own and expect someone else to do it for them. If you are a newbie with a clue, i.e. the right attitude, then you will be able to figure out most everything from existing documentation, and the questions that you do ask will be new and exciting rather than stale and worn.
There is a reason I use debian. Not because it is
more difficult to use, not because it makes me feel bigger... I simply use it because it is the best system out there. You have too look at what Debian is to a long time Unix system administrator who knows what is was like when there was only BSD. Debian is a good, "brain power" based system for users. If someone wants a system that is brain powerless, you can use something on the order of redhat, where you don't have as much control over the package management system (Unless you decide to bust your butt on it.. but why try to re-invent the wheel). Simple: You can't please everyone, so please the people you try to target the best.
EOS
Clue less and "trendy" users that contribute to a pool of useless suggestions which will eventually result in the creation of another bloated and dummy operating system (see Micro$oft Windows 95 for an example
Sorry to break it to you but replicating the ease inherent in MSWindows is not at all remarkable. Afterall, it was (explorer) a full DECADE behind the rest of the market.
The rest of the 'so called ease' inherent in Windows is just marketing lies (Plug-n-Pray).
You are assuming that there is a FM and that the user knows where to find it. The documentation is in /usr/src/foobar/fred.dvi, should be obvious to any idiot.
I've bought sets of Linux and BSD CDs that have no markings on the CDs to indicate what is on the CD, just Disk 1, 2, 3.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
IMHO most people who use debian don't like dselect. I know I don't like it, but it is a necessity. It is still better then using dpkg or rpm to install packages. If your running 2.1 you get apt which does a better job the dpkg.
Your friend is right. Debian does need a bootable cd-rom. Oh well, something to put in 2.2 I guess.
Yeah, that's what happened 90 some years ago with
the automobile, in America at least.
But hey, if no one broke their arms working cranks,
there would be no keyed ignition system.
Sometimes the cries of the clueless make the lives
of the rest of us easier, eh?
You might like to try a more recent version of Debian. What the hell is a boot disk anyway? All you need to install Debian is a CD-ROM and 15 minutes. I've never had to use a boot disk, in fact most of the boxes I install don't even have floppy drives.
Also, dselect and RPM are two totally different things. The debian equivalent of RPM is dpkg, dselect is simply a nice frontend.
Of course, feel free to continue using Redhat and spreading FUD, everybody who has ever installed Debian knows you're a liar anyway, and you must enjoy spending and hour and a half after installation removing unwanted packages from the Redhat install that you were never given a choice about installing or not.
Oh, btw, you don't need to use dselect in the Debian installation process if you read the four lines of basic instructions on the screen beforehand.
This guy is as clueless as any newbie. He is however clueless about newbies. BeOs is not good enough for me. Linux is. And it is for end users too, should they really understand it.
I had a big laugh at this guy's letter! The reason are simply :
1- ANY GODDAMN OS has security holes that endusers either (i) don't care about (ii) don't understand.
2- These end users will go then and buy Norton utilities.
3- And start spending cash to get their system secure etc....
This whole thing about newbies harming Linux is just another STUPID attempt from some LOUSY - I am the best that's why I am using Linux- people.
These guys and gals only use Linux for the hype of using a select OS.
Tell you what, go and code your own OS, and then tell everybody they are too stupid to use it, and stuff it up you know what!
Ciao
Nassah (The sick of these nerds! man)
The kernel needs a Gtk/Gnome-based post-install device configuration tools "a la" make xconfig. (Better sig coming soon
>As for an "Advanced Features" option, involving such a menu selection only serves to obscure the fact that the features are there by making said features harder to access.
>...
>In Word, if I want to change my paragraph spacing, I have to go wade through 5 levels of menus, dialog boxes, pop-up boxes and "folder tabs" just to find the selection
...once. If you use a feature often, you should be able to "bring it forward" to where it's more accessible. Instead of cluttering up your screen with buttons you don't use (representing the _developer's_ idea of what's important) you should have exactly the buttons you want/need to do your job (representing _your own_ idea of what's important). As we often hear in another context, "it's about choice".
[Whether Word in particular is as customizable as it should be is irrelevant, BTW. Never mistake the specifics of an example from the point it's intended to illustrate.]
>If I were writing a word processor for my mom and dad, it would most certainly NOT look like LaTeX.
So you're suggesting that we should write _whole different programs_ for different audiences even though 90% of what needs to be in the code is common, instead of making one program which has all the features and a configurable interface? Even laziness doesn't excuse such an attitude, since it ends up being more work in the long run. It's simply DUMB, serving neither the programmer not the user.
The rest of what you said isn't even worth responding to.
Wait a minute, Mr. Geek! You have the unmitigated audacity to write a video card driver when you didn't build the card or design the ASICs that are on the card, much less solder them onto the board? Egad! You must be a total idiot!
Did you personally suck the air out of the CRT in the monitor? No? Then you are obviously unqualified to use a monitor (or watch TV for that matter).
Did you personally design and build the motherboard? No? You are obviously too stupid to use one then.
Was the first computer that you used an Altair 8080? You know, the ones with 8 switches and a pushbutton to load each individual instruction? No wimpy feeb assemblers or hex-loaders here, dammit! Real programmers used the toggle switches! It wasn't an Altair? Sorry, you are unqualified to use a Pentium.
Get the point? Mr. I-hate-Linux-newbies needs to get his head out of his ass.
That's why there's $35-55 books, including Linux CD, for newbies to learn how to install Linux. Books are written to be nice to people. If newbies want free help through irc or usenet (if they're too lazy to possibly search for previous posts in dejanews to their question), they have no right to complain. Plus Linux books tell you how to untar a file...WOW!
I find it simply amazing that a person like you who bashes "clueless" newbies couldn't find a clue in the world to help you do something as simple as change a default RedHat system setup to something of your liking. It makes one wonder how you can even manage to run Linux, let alone use the slightly less user-friendly Debian distribution you so adore.
A modem interacts with many more things than a toaster does. It's easy to make a toaster easy to install: it integrates with only one interface, which has been standard for decades. A modem has to integrate with the hosts ports (physical), potentially many different kinds of software, the phone line.
It's the flexibility in the modem that makes it difficult to install.
Most of these people don't seem to read them.
1.) Read manpage
2.) Check documentation
3.) Search on Dejanews
4.) Ask a good question with a good subject line to the appropriate news group. Don't ask for replies by email. They'll email you if they want to.
5.) Check for an answer on a regular basis.
6.) If you don't get an answer either no one knows or everyone thinks your a jerk and doesn't want to answer
You can't expect Linux to gain mainstream support outside the computer expert user base unless a distribution is made nearly idiot-proof. While you have no problem with the idea of reading a few dozen man pages to make something work, Joe Blow, non-nerd won't bother and isn't interested. He doesn't care to learn anything about Linux itself -- he just wants a reliable tool to get work done.
I'd say that under this definition of clueless, at least 75% of the US population is clueless. I'd also say that most of them don't care to learn the finer points of the ls command, much less how to compile a kernel. You'd have an easier time bringing Linux closer to them that them closer to Linux.
I don't care what anyone says, I haven't seen a distribution idiot-proof enough.
I thought the analogy was funny enough. People want something they know. Trust me trying to ween people from Office to Corel is just a nasty chore. Most people cant seem to learn... or don't want to. How about this analogy... I got this little red thing with a cross on it in college. It was great I could smash things with it and break glass and such. Then one day I RTFM and behold, this thing has a knife! and an awl. Wow, just what you learn from reading.
Posted by Matthew Adams:
I entirely agree with this. Linux isn't good 'because' its difficult to get up and running. Its good because of the configurability and flexibility in the system.
Joe User wants to be able to get his system going out of the box (preferably by inserting a CD, answering a few questions that are easily understood, and having the option to say 'I don't understand that' and getting help along the way).
The shallower the learning curve the better, and the nicer people are to the newbie, the more fun they'll have, and the more support Linux will get on the desktop.
However, for Jane Administrator, things should be different. She should plan her installation carefully, reading all the appropriate documentation and know exactly what she is doing before sticking anything in the server (least of all a CD-ROM full of OS).
I suppose it depends what category these newbies are in.
For the entire 2 weeks I struggled against redhat, my box was named "localhost.localdomain".
Not because I wanted it to be called by the default name, but because I tried to change the host name by editing /etc/hostname! Silly me! I was supposed to use the host name configurator.. which was a graphical program, a little popup box.
The same thing (or other things like it) happened to me with configuring X, with setting up my network (which had strange enough details to prevent the configurator from being helpful) and even in trying to change my default login shell.
Why? Because I was expecting it to act like a "normal" unix. Silly, silly me.
I also found that RedHat was nearly impossible to use from the command line, right out of the box. It was missing important things in my path, like for example, "/usr/bin".
And yes, I am nothing more than a RedHat bashing perl script.
"Practice what you preach", he says. Fine. I preach that I don't like RedHat. So I use Debian, instead. Done and done. Everyone has their own ideas as to what is the best distro. I don't like Redhat much because it tries too hard to be like Windows, and in doing so doesn't try hard enough to be like Unix.
This guy doesn't seem to distinguish between "clueless" and "newbie". IMHO, someone who doesn't know very much but is eager and willing to learn is a "newbie". Someone who may have been using a system for years, but who wants to be spoonfed, doesn't want to think for h(im|er)self and won't listen to what you say is "clueless".
All being well, I will be attempting my first Linux install in a few months time (probably the m68k version of Debian). I'm not afraid of reading documentation. Actually, I love reading documentation. I've started already - I tend to start soaking up information weeks ahead of time, so I'm prepared for things when they happen. However, if worst comes to worst, and I need help from another human being, it looks like I can expect to be hit over the head with a bunch of HOWTOs and told I didn't try hard enough.
Note to the condescending hackers reading this - you were newbies once. If nobody helped you, then I'm sorry you had such a hard time, but this doesn't justify you giving a hard time to other people who want to learn.
Being clueless is no sin, but a poor outlook or approach can lead to great grief for everyone.
yeah, in this case a pure gui may be necessary, but what if you wanted to just do cd recording, some programs specialize in some areas, while others specialise in others. You want to basicaly keep on reinventing the wheel just to prove your point? heh, thats just stupid.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
It is a common practice among beginners in a craft to equate the happenstance knowledge of a memorized sequence of useful actions with divine enlightenment, and the lack thereof with damnable ignorance. Their wiser and more knowledgeable colleagues are likelier to recognize such lacunae in one's knowledge for what they are -- an opportunity to enlighten and inform.
His objections to RedHat have more to do with some bad practices of inexperienced users rather than any technical flaws in RedHat Linux itself -- a subject on which I'm sure he is incompetent to comment.
Some keywords for the NSA in the Lord of the Rings universe: One Ring bind find Sauron quest Nazgul freedom
Well, ya know something? Computers aren't toasters.
Thanks for clearing up my confusion. I was wondering why the pieces of bread I keep sticking in my floppy drive don't pop out all warm and crunchy. I think this is probably a mistake that a lot of people make, so thanks for letting us know.
-Eric
I first bought a bicycle because had used one in college - it offered a nice stable, comfortable ride.
However, when I took my bike home from the store I realized that it there was a whole new side to it I had never experienced - balancing on two wheels.
Frankly, I'm not interested in *balancing* a bike, I am more interested in ***using it***.
There are all sorts of interesting things to learn in the world but the arcane intricacies of bike riding are not one of them.
The first time I upgraded all the libraries and updated all the daemons for security fixes for slack, it was a learning experience.
Yes. That's my point. The learning experience was glorious. Yes, it was a pain in the ass. And shortly after I had learned how to do most of the important stuff, I switched to Debian because it wasn't nearly the pain in the ass that Slackware was.
a few observations:
1) BIGGER != BETTER
this guy is an egotistical elistist snob - *I* have done so and so much work, so why should you have it easier - is his line of reasoning. keeping knowledge arcane has long been the tactic to maintain power by an elite.
2) COMPLEXITY != FLEXIBILITY
he makes an assumption that FLEXIBLE = MORE COMPLICATED. this is not necessarily so. FLEXIBILITY and EASE OF USE are NOT mutually exclusive.
3) SIZE != EFFICIENCY
it is not logical to assume that just because something is complex that it is more powerful. something can often be complex because it has a worse fundamental architecture and hasn't been well thought out in its design. for example, windows NT has almost triple the amount of code to do what Linux does -> linux has a more efficient architecture, and therefore doesn't require the workarounds which adds complexity to NT without benefit of additional power.
4) SIMPLIFICATION != REDUCTION OF FEATURES
it seems that he does not understand the concept of ELEGANCE. true SIMPLICITY is the HARDEST thing to achieve. if you can make a complex something SIMPLER without losing functionality, than you have gained ELEGANCE. he seems to assume that you cannot make things simpler without losing functionality. loss of functionality when something is "simplified" is the lack of a well-implemented simplification, not an intrinsic quality as he seems to assume.
5) 1keystroke != 1mouseclick
he has made an error in assuming that mice & gui are less productive,
because the time to move a mouse = 18 keystrokes. that is only a valid
observation if the amount of time saved by the mouse movement (which has
a greater degree of expression than a keyboard in X&Y axes) does not
equal 18 keystrokes of typing. if you had to type in 18 characters for
a pathname or filename, or click once to select a filename from a list,
then his deduction is not valid. the *perceptual* speed of typing is
often higher than typing alone, because you are full time engaged in
typing, which may be replaced by one or two clicks and a momentary wait
with clicking - but if the same amount of Commanding Direction has
been imparted to the parser, then the Perceptual speed will not be equal
to the Actual speed. there is not a linear correlation as he assumes.
6) he is correct in saying that people need to RTFM - too many people
don't want the power without the knowledge. but it does not logically
follow that an Arcane presentation of the knowledge is better than a
logical and clearly defined presentation of that same knowledge.
johnrpenner@earthlink.net
a few observations:
1) BIGGER != BETTER
this guy is an egotistical elistist snob - *I* have done so and so much work,
so why should you have it easier - is his line of reasoning. keeping knowledge
arcane has long been the tactic to maintain power by an elite.
2) COMPLEXITY != FLEXIBILITY
he makes an assumption that FLEXIBLE = MORE COMPLICATED. this is not
necessarily so. FLEXIBILITY and EASE OF USE are NOT mutually exclusive.
3) SIZE != EFFICIENCY
it is not logical to assume that just because something is complex that it is
more powerful. something can often be complex because it has a worse
fundamental architecture and hasn't been well thought out in its design. for
example, windows NT has almost triple the amount of code to do what Linux does
-> linux has a more efficient architecture, and therefore doesn't require the
workarounds which adds complexity to NT without benefit of additional power.
4) SIMPLIFICATION != REDUCTION OF FEATURES
it seems that he does not understand the concept of ELEGANCE. true SIMPLICITY
is the HARDEST thing to achieve. if you can make a complex something SIMPLER
without losing functionality, than you have gained ELEGANCE. he seems to
assume that you cannot make things simpler without losing functionality. loss
of functionality when something is "simplified" is the lack of a
well-implemented simplification, not an intrinsic quality as he seems to
assume.
5) 1keystroke != 1mouseclick
he has made an error in assuming that mice & gui are less productive,
because the time to move a mouse = 18 keystrokes. that is only a valid
observation if the amount of time saved by the mouse movement (which has
a greater degree of expression than a keyboard in X&Y axes) does not
equal 18 keystrokes of typing. if you had to type in 18 characters for
a pathname or filename, or click once to select a filename from a list,
then his deduction is not valid. the *perceptual* speed of typing is
often higher than typing alone, because you are full time engaged in
typing, which may be replaced by one or two clicks and a momentary wait
with clicking - but if the same amount of Commanding Direction has
been imparted to the parser, then the Perceptual speed will not be equal
to the Actual speed. there is not a linear correlation as he assumes.
6) he is correct in saying that people need to RTFM - too many people
want the power without the knowledge. but it does not logically
follow that an Arcane presentation of the knowledge is better than a
logical and clearly defined presentation of that same knowledge.
johnrpenner@earthlink.net
I hate to rain on your Apple parade, but this comes at a cost. The whole reason that the Apple card bus works so well at identifying new hardware is that all hardware vendors are locked into Apple's centrally controlled identification scheme.
If you don't get a unique ID from Apple, your hardware might end up conflicting in a horrible fashion with someone else's. Hence, if you make Mac hardware you MUST lock yourself into Apple's development program. The technology itself (for hardware "Plug and Play" that is - I really don't know enough about the rest of the bus comparison) is not superior, just controlled by a propriatary source. If that source doesn't want you in the Mac market, they just refuse to issue you an ID.
I hate to call you a paranoid, but there are cases where some central ID issuance is needed... like assigning IP numbers, and Apple's card IDs. I don't see how you can prevent conflicts otherwise, and the benefits are too great to ignore.
I've designed, and helped design, several NuBus and PCI boards and have never had - or even heard rumors about - a board rejected. Even if it competed with one of Apple's own boards.
. . . for those of you that think Linux shouldn't develop ease-of-use for newbies, here's a challenge:
Use Linux without ANY drivers.
That's right, ZERO drivers of any sort. Not even to interface with the keyboard.
After all, if you don't have an INTIMATE understanding of the hardware and I/O involved, you obviously aren't qualified to be using the system.
Remember: if you don't know how to write a video card driver, you aren't qualified to be using a monitor. If you can't write your own NIC software, you're obviously too stupid to be using a network.
Go on, do it.
Until you can do this, you aren't qualified to be an elitist. As long as you're using the work of others, you're getting off cheap. RTFM, I say! After all, the I/O specs are well-documented, so there really isn't any excuse NOT to write your own drivers, is there?
Sorry . . . I get worked up over this kind of elitism.
OK! OK! Shouldn't do this test but I'm seriously PO'd having carefully thought out replies to Slashdot disappearing into thin air.
What the devil's wrong with the new software? It's acting like it still alpha code.
Sorry for venting.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Bullshit!
A. Einstein got his Matura (so called in CH, in germany: Abitur)
with a B.
And the essence of GRT is:
It's NOT all relative!
Frank
While I admire the purity of Debian, I myself run RedHat because it is the easiest and quickest to install. And lets face it, at their core all the distributions provide the same thing: A good, stable operating system. And I think that we are switching to the proper newbie mode (RTFM). However, we have to be carefull when we use that properly and not just because we don't know the answer ourselves.
Oh, and don't paint all MacOS users with the same brush. I own a PowerMac, and am damned well proud to run MacOS on it. It serves a completely different purpose then my two Linux boxen.
Linux (and UNIX in general) is complex, and that is perhaps its greatest weakness. Larry Wall says that the universe is complex, but it's usefully complex (paraphrase). Sometimes Linux isn't usefully complex; it's just complex. Linux is the best OS currently available (IMO, of course), but it wouldn't look so good if Windows didn't suck so bad.
TedC
Before we all go jumping all over the newbies, and telling them in a loud voice to RTFM, why don't we pause for a moment and think about usability and reliability.
How many of you are competent to completely rebuild your CRT? Or LCD, as the case may be?
Relatively few, I'd wager. And yet, many many years ago, anyone that wanted to use a CRT on a regular basis had to know how to tune and tweak the damn thing with a screwdriver and a soldering iron.
Now nobody cares. If a CRT breaks, we throw it away.
The same WILL happen to computers. The idea that the OS *should* be intimidating is simply BIGOTRY. You're enamored of your own Geek Prowess, and don't want to see anything that might devalue that prowess.
But it WILL happen. The only question is whether or not it will happen to Open Source or Closed Source. You get to pick -- which will be easier to use? The main thing holding Linux back is usability -- it's the Number ONE complaint in every "mainstream" review I've ever read. Like it or not, "normal" people have to be able to use the OS. They won't care about the OS, they won't care that you can customize it, they won't care about shell scripting. They WILL care about whether or not they get their work done. That's it.
Look at it another way: it's now possible to own a car without knowing jack about the mechanics of it. Does that change the underlying mechanics of the car? No. Does that put mechanics out of work? No. It just makes the car accessible to more people, who don't give a damn about the car itself -- they only want to go from point A to point B.
Why is that such a bad thing?
Why should we be trying to STOP Linux from carrying non-knowledgeable people from Point A to Point B?
. . . geez, this is one of the reasons why Unix gets such a bad rap. When was the last time you heard someone saying NT "expertise" is cheaper than Unix expertise? Probably the last time you worked in an IT department . . .
Not to mention the fact that many people don't realize that they CAN do stuff with Linux they cannot do with DOS and Windows. They will never learn this without giving it a try.
I would add a bit of emphasis to one point: being a PC hardware expert should have _nothing_ to do with it. Linux is bigger than just that PC, which arguably should be supplanted with iMacs and netwinders anyway ;) in any case, it seems acceptable to require a bit of interest and willingness to think to operate something like Linux properly, but this doesn't have to _start_ with hardware, much less PC hardware. ;) ) and then arrange an installer that simply replaced the hard drive image with the new arrangement. If you're willing to replace the previous 'toaster' with the new 'toaster' and the 'wall outlet' is properly standardized, the whole thing becomes _very_ simple. ;P but you'd also have Giger Enlinuxment, or perhaps one that mostly just does xterms but runs the humble iMac 3D at all times for a _tiltable_ desktop, with the windows composed of square texturemapped polygons (texture is the terminal window!) in a crazed revamp of XFree86! All sorts of possibilities exist. I'd probably try to write some xlock modules and put out my version based on Window Maker but with lots of emphasis on 'live' backgrounds with xlock -inroot, a WM menu to manage it (I already have that) and very term-based linuxhandling rather than any attempt to make a GUI 'desktop'. It'd obliterate the concept of a desktop replacing it with tools to orient you around the lack of a visual representation- for instance I like having several xterms open when cp-ing stuff or whatever, so I know where I'm going and where I came from. I could use CLI tools to quickly flash up the full path (need to RTFM, bet there already are) and I could use a term with Mac-style internal select and drag and drop, not 3-button style. And so on and so on... ;) )
As a sort of side note, I can tell you right now that given a distribution that supports, say, the iMac, I could build an installer thing that installed Linux as easy as plugging in a toaster. iMacs are as controlled an environment as a console, except they are capable of hosting linux- I could basically set up a Linux with Window Maker and some kinda iMac theme (bondi blue and ice transparent eterms?
Given an adaptive installer that can expand certain partitions to fill available space, and a situation where people can restore their HDs or get new ones easily, vanity Linuxes could be a big hit. You'd make a distribution with your particular arrangement of Linux, right down to the desktop or other window management scheme and the icons and things. There's lots of precedent for this in Kaleidoscope (for Mac) hacking, where people extensively redesign everything including the background and style of system icons- now extend that to programs available and shortcuts and menu items.
You could have a 'NeXT Homage' distribution, in which linux is formed into a virtual NeXT cube. No doubt some person would see fit to favor us with the Win95 theme linux
The point is, when you _treat_ the distribution as a single object that is installed as a preconfigured lump, it becomes as easy as a toaster on predictable enough hardware- and if a _monopoly_ does this it's maddeningly annoying as everybody's fed the same thing, but what if you could get a different, radically different, Linux to play with for every day of the week? What if it was really easy to back up your whole machine and just throw on something new, if it wasn't so much like maintaining some horribly important corporate NT server, but more like playing with new toys on a whim? Commercial software forestalls this because when you buy Photoshop you want to protect it and it won't come on the new different OS you might want to play with. But Linux has a tremendous amount of common software that's free software and permissible to bundle on vanity distributions. Wouldn't it be interesting to throw in a disk, load for half an hour and be running Raster's machine? CmdrTaco's? Linus's, RMS's, Steve Jobs'? (The latter is probably Openstep! He knows how to keep the MacOS engineers hacking like fiends
You can already do this in some ways. Load a Windows machine, and arguably also any Linux desktop environment. You'll be using Bill Gates' vanity distribution.
It's time for more vanity distributions. Let me release a preconfigured Linux with my arrangement of WM, my screen geometry for aterm and 'top' et al, my WM menu arrangement with the 'Afterstep Animation Hack' I copied from the Afterstep menus. But wait- I can! Nothing is stopping me (but lack of a CD burner, and possibly of the programs to outright reformat a drive and put an image on it, and possibly insufficient standardization of hardware except for, notably, the iMac)
Who else wants to come up with a vanity Linux with all their own style of interface and app bundling, and run off some copies and sell 'em? Customers could take the results and edit them into their own personalized thing- or just install a different one for each day of the week! Could be quite fun. Wouldn't that be fun?
Iv'e seen this article once before, something like a couple of months ago or last summer. To this man who values complexity I only have one thing to ask:
Why do you want to reinvent the wheel?
I've been deep into UNIX for over six years, and one of the things I like about it is that it always has something new to learn. This is good for me. What I don't like doing is having to discover how group A thought that their method of implementing 'ps' is better than group B, whose group I grew up with. I hate having to figure out exactly how Red Hat starts up and configures X, and then moving to Debian only to discover that they did something just a little different.
Now the author would like to dump the GUI, as he believes that it clouds the religious experience which is Linux. I can understand that. I like the GUI because for the most part it allows me to do more than I can do with just one window open.
HP-UX uses SAM to configure and maintain pretty much the whole machine. Without SAM I would have to delve deep into HP-UX and figure out how to do what somebody else has already discovered.
What I am trying to say is, I don't like doing what somebody else has already figured out how to do. Learning and knowledge are only benificial when they can be used to discover or create something which is truly unique.
Microsoft understands this. They've taken what is, in essence, an extremely complicated device and turned it into something which allows normal people to be creative without having to figure out all the stuff that somebody else has already had to learn.
Now I'm not a defender of Microsoft, and it is my sincere goal to replace everything I have from Microsoft in the next five years. I believe that with continued improvement of Linux and the KDE that it will be possible to convince my family that Linux is a good thing.
However, as I have no love for Red Hat, and I think that Debian's installation is easier and does give me more control about what goes onto my machine, I would greatly appriciate any improvements in their distribution that they can make.
What would be a deal breaker for this though is for the Linux comunity to fall under the sway of this article, and keep the complexity in the installation.
The goal should be that a ten year old could read the installation sheet and install without having to know all the ancillary crap that we are normally required to track. Harder still, it would be in Linux's best interest to become simple enough for my wife to install it without having to know anything. Then if the ten year old, or my wife, wanted to dive into the control and configuration of the system they could, otherwise they wouldn't have to worry about it.
Now for the author's assertion that Clueless Users would contact the author/maintainer of some program, that probably happens on occassion, however, it is more true that if a user is truly clueless, and he reaches a point where something doesn't work, he's probably just going to throw it away and go for something that doesn't consume so much of his time. Truly clueless users don't waste time contacting software authors, they most likely don't even know how. More imporantly, they are likely to tell others that they know that Linux is a bad experience, thus preventing the further spread of the operating system.
And remember this little thought. If Linux doesn't grow and get better and expand its market share, it will die as an operating system.
Beware the wood elf!!!
"The idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able to properly use a given tool without training or understanding is even more wrong for computing than it is for other tools (e.g. automobiles, airplanes, guns, power saws)."
-- Doug Gwyn
I firmly believe that this is entirely true of any computer system. Even with systems like the one on Star Trek, you have to learn which words and phrases will be accepted by the computer. Even MacOS, which Apple loves to claim is "completely natural" an easy to use even for a first time computer user, is not. I've seen people with PhDs struggle with the fact that when you open a program under MacOS, it isn't always obvious that the program is running (ie, ResEdit doesn't even bring up a window, it only changes the menubar at the top of the screen).
With all this being said, I'd like to end with one last quote:
IBM Pollyanna Principle:
Machines should work. People should think.
Nathan's blog
I REALLY have to disagree with you that BSD is harder to install than RedHat. Installing OpenBSD was the simplest install experience I've ever had, even simpler than BeOS. You just say what you want, where you want it, and where you want to get it from, and you're off! What could be easier than that? Just because something is done in command-line mode does not mean it is difficult, and just because something is graphical does not mean it is easy.
:). I still use BSD, and I prefer it to the 'easier to use' linux distros, but it's not always my favorite thing to use, nor always the best tool for the job. The danger, of course is that people sacrifice power for simplicity, which is also very bad. It's kind of like giving up freedom for security and having neither...in some way that I haven't quite figured out yet. :)
I do agree that difficulty is not a good thing, however. Simplicity is essntial to efficient computing. Which is why I use BeOS. It's the most logical and intuitive gui I've used so far, and it's simple as well as powerful and elegant. And it has a posix shell
cheers,
-lx
Instead, some interprising fellows should be adapting Linux to all of these 'appliance' functions and dispense with much of the complexity of general purpose computers, period.
And a lot of people (including me) consider misspelling a sign of stupidity and/or mental laziness (ie. 'contridiction').
So there.
This particular topic has been thoroughly hashed out (and continues to be hashed out) on the various Debian mailing lists. There are plenty of opinions to go around, too.
However, there are a few statements that sum things up:
-- Everybody was clueless once. Anybody who thinks he was never clueless can think again. Some got unclueless, some did not (they're still clueless).
-- Some users need more handholding than others. Some users, even AFTER reading the HOW-TO's and the FMs (some of which really aren't very helpful), need some explanation and some step-by-stepping through the procedures.
-- The installation process for Debian is fairly user-friendly, which is good. It's been pointed out that it could be better. It's been pointed out that it is being made better. It's also been pointed out that "better" doesn't necessarily mean "GUI". Debian's current installation process is MENU-DRIVEN, but I wouldn't consider it a GUI.
-- The whole "clueless user" debate is (it still rolls on, in more distros than just Debian) really not about "difficulty." The idea behind the post, I think, was that we shouldn't compromise the utility and quality of software in order to satisfy the needs of the "typical clueless user." However, the other side of the coin is that perhaps we should include software which is just as usable and just as functional, but more user-friendly (at a cost, of course. In this case, probably a cost of the extent of configurability available by using "user-friendly tools").
-- We don't necessarily want Linux to go the way of GEOS, Windows, or some other "user-friendly" operating systems. They sacrificed power-for-the-user for friendly-to-the-user.
So maybe the debate is a good thing. Remember, this wasn't a "pronouncement from on high." The debate continues, in more forums than just Debian's, about whether "user-friendly" is a good thing or not.
well, if a "clue stick" is a threat, then you must be "retarded" else, you won't mind being hit over the head with it. It was meant as a form of humor. However, lets not stray from what you said earlier:
"On the other hand, another popular OS can be installed by just about anyone capable of finding the on switch on their computers. If any Linux distribution is serious about competing as a mainstream OS, the interface must be simple enough for the average computer user. Linux users, for now, tend to be above average in computer knowledge."
look at what i said in response to that, i said basicaly implied that the only other OS that MS makes that compares to linux is NT Server, and it installation is just as diffuclut as any other OS.
If you are doing a clean install of Linux on a new computer, it can be done pretty easily with RH's new "Workstation/Server" options.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Sorry to burst the bubble of the new linux zealots
F /...
but linux and other unix clones didn't come around
to destroy windows or take over the world.
They came around to serve a purpose... either one
of learning or one to give users the same power
they had on their college systems or previous
jobs. With those somewhat limited goals in mind
unix clones have achieved this and for that they
will to continue to remain useful for quite a good
bit of time.
Do you honestly think Debian needs thousands of
clamoring idiots to continue to evolve? No.
Because it isn't those newbies who bring actual
change into the code base and included apps. It
is the power user, the one who actually cares
about what unix clone he is using. If you can't
read a manual that someone took a great deal of
time to put together to find the answer to a FAQ
then they don't need you (and neither do any
of the *BSD* clones).
Let redhat have the morons and leave the rest to
those of us who DO care and have cared for years.
---
Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OS
--- I do not moderate.
You shouldn't lump all operating systems together either!
So if you just want to write letters: Use windows. If you want to do more than that, use something better suited to the task. If you're new to linux and want to learn how it all works, start with one of the more newbie-proof distros like Redhat. If you feel Redhat doesn't cut it for you, upgrade to Debian.
Isn't it great to have a choice, to get the OS best suited to what you want? To use the best available tool for the job?
Oh, and since it appears to be popular around here, the car analogy:
Everyone [1] can drive a car nowadays. Everyone [1] can use a computer nowadays. But just like I wouldn't want my grandma to use a Ferrari to go shopping, I wouldn't want Joe Typist to use Debian (or linux at all) to write that letter.
[1] With some exceptions, ofcourse...
To say that cluebies should be kept away from computers puts a nail in the "open source can still make money from technical support" argument. Have it one way or another. Or do you believe that you can support Linux easily by telling inexperienced users to go to hell?
A car is a Tool. It gets you from point A to point B. Nowhere do we specify which points these are. A car can take you to the store or across the country. You can store stuff in your car. If you are camping, or on a road trip, or homeless, or lazy, you can sleep in your car. You can listen to music in your car. If you have a carphone, you can carry on conversations in your car.
It's ridiculous to say that if you are too clueless to re-pack your engine bearings, you shouldn't be supported. The world does not operated on a roll-your-own system. The joy of Linux, *BSD, and the like is that it gives you the freedom to do so, if you need to. Living your entire life on a roll-your-own basis is not the way for everyone. Accept this.
A delicious point of irony to the people who wrote the feature in question: Perhaps the newbie they refuse to help with difficult (yet documented) computer problems is the tax lawyer who will refuse to help them with difficult (yet documented) tax problems.
Heh. Sounds ridiculous on the other side of the fence, doesn't it? Sounds like a bit of geek rage rather than a logical assessment of the end user.
I've been working Unix tech support for close on two years now and believe it or not -- it's been a pleasure. Some end users are idiots, some are irate, but some are people who don't have the time to solve documented but pain-in-the-ass problems. I help them, and occasionally, they help me. Welcome to the world of social interaction. =)
sinator
Filing tax returns happily
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
Even after so many years of 'improvements' in PCs they're still technologically inferior to the Mac II I used 10 years ago, which could autoconfigure the bus without user intervention (PCI systems tend to have all devices share the same interrupt, and there's no autovector support).
I hate to rain on your Apple parade, but this comes at a cost. The whole reason that the Apple card bus works so well at identifying new hardware is that all hardware vendors are locked into Apple's centrally controlled identification scheme. If you don't get a unique ID from Apple, your hardware might end up conflicting in a horrible fashion with someone else's. Hence, if you make Mac hardware you MUST lock yourself into Apple's development program. The technology itself (for hardware "Plug and Play" that is - I really don't know enough about the rest of the bus comparison) is not superior, just controlled by a propriatary source. If that source doesn't want you in the Mac market, they just refuse to issue you an ID.
Frankly, I don't want to see that kind of scheme used for PC hardware. I'll deal with interrupt conflicts and the like to avoid centralized control by a single corporation.
OBlusers: I personally don't see any problem with providing GUI front ends to manage and maintain a *NIX system as long as the CLI for the same gives me the power to do what I need to do withut having my hands held. This seems like a simple thing and it is mostly followed already as most GUI's I've seen have merely been CLI front ends.
That being said, there will be those who simply don't have enough working synapses to ever grok a multiuser operating system, let along the skills needed to manage one. We should probably take a good look at Mac OS/X as it rolls out into the hands of the Mac community. Though I've met many Mac users who are very cluefull, the OS, being as clean and easy to use as it is, has attracted the lower end of the computer spectrum who otherwise couldn't use a computer. Watching them on Mac OS/X could give us real insight as to whether or not dumbing down *NIX can even work at all. I'm guessing we'll find a line where it simply cannot be made any easier and a fair number of people will still not be able to use it. There will be a point where trying to make Linux any easier will be like kicking a dead horse and devoting further effort towards "ease of use" becomes non-productive.
/* Imagine: Department of Computer Usage. Licensing test -- open a (Microsoft) word processor, compose and send an e-mail (using Outlook). Find the DCU's homepage using Internet Explorer. Three misclicks and out you go... And then: "computer usage is a privilege, not a right!". Two speeding convictions on the Internet and your license is suspended! */
:(
Heh! Well, the United States tend to have low state standards for drivers licenses anyway! This would be very in line for us.
Seriously, thought, there is a line between the human urge to maximize utility now (luxury, simplicity, ease) and maximize utility later (freedom, liberty, knowledge). This is going to be very atypical for slashdot -- I don't know where to draw that line! (He admitted he does not know! Dear God!)
People care about more results, alas, then the quality and freedom of code. And, sadly enough, people would probably sell their fundamental liberties (warning: USA bias) to go watch TV.
Wait, most of them already have.
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
Debian is oriented towards the power user; your average newbie probably would be better off with Redhat, being used to the pop-up window/menu bar/dialog box modality of system configuration inherited from Windows. But if you know what you're doing, Debian is the way to go. The biggest complaint I have with it is that there are 2500+ software packages available, and you can spend literally hours wading through the list trying to figure out what you want or don't want. But, once you've chosen what you want, it becomes quite a simple matter to automatically update packages to the newest version when its released. And if a package isnt available, it's no trouble to make a package yourself. And there's always the download & compile it yourself option.
One idea that's been troubling me late at night is using the debian package manager and installer with other kernels. Like NetBSD. Because Debian packages come in binary or source code formats, and each source package has a simple "run this script to make the package" script with it, it would be almost a trivial task to set up a little Sun 3 with NetBSD and have it grind away at packages for a couple weeks. But that's just my twisted little mind.
Leapfrog, the disillusioned
Unlike any other tool in the history of the world, this one (computer) requires some intellegence be bestowed to it by either it's creator (programmer) operator or both.
There's just no getting around that no matter how much you might like to rant that a general purpose programmable symbol translator should somehow work like some simple machine with one dimensional nob and a one dimensional lever.
It's just not happening. Even Gaming Consoles have tech support facilities.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Please don't miss the critical point that it is VERY difficult to learn Linux. I've been doing computers for 20 years. I've a dozen books, which I've read, on Linux and I've read (not word for word) all of the main manuals in the LDP and many of the How-to's. I'm still having problems and I KNOW I'm not stupid
:-)... I've hacked mainframe OSs on IBM and Burroughs, designed realtime embedded hardware and software, written kernels and grapic libraries from scratch, and typed more command lines than anyone else I know.
Same here. I've been a systems programmer for 30 years, starting with plugboards and punched cards (not to mention having to walk to work 50 miles in a snowstorm
For some reason I never had to work with Unix. I've gotten a Red Hat Linux to play around, and someone gave me the FreeBSD CDs. On my last vacation I took them out and.. guess what?
I couldn't figure out the FreeBSD CDs. Organization and documentation are to put it mildly, amateurish. Too much effort to get into the mindset of whoever built that stuff. Donated them to someone else.
Installed Red Hat... OK. Played around a little in KDE... to window-ish for my taste. Began to learn about the command line stuff, and so forth... but after a week of trying to read man pages, I gave up. I have better things to do with my neurons.
And vi... well, I'd rather not say here what I think of vi.
Anyone here wants a little-used copy of Linux...?
I don't see how someone would use strtok and still want their comuper to be as easy as a TV. If you have ever done some programming the man page is clear enough. ;-)
The point is computer can and should be used as appliances for users that use them only to surf the web or writing a awfully formatted document.
On the other hand, if this comes at the expense of my ability to code I am ready to kill
There are _at least_ two types of computer users:
end (appliance) users and coders (actually there is also the hobbist that doesn't code but is willing to squeeze a little power out of its box).
The real goal is to please both.
An exaple of what I am saying can be taken out of MacOS: I have always talked newbies into using MacOS because it is actually aimed to them and has very little learning curve, but I will never code for it if I am not forced to(awful low-level API and no mem-management). On the long run I belive that if noone wants to code the whole system will be penalized, not only from the OSS comunity, but also from startup companies (they will be less and less willing to develop for the system or "port" the product). On the long run the lack of alternatives will strangle the system.
What kind of a reply is that? Are you one of those people who are "dumb" at reading? You missed his point ENTIRELY.
:P
To sum it up, everyone is good at something. I'm quite good with computers. I'm not good at flying a plane. A pilot may be good at flying a plane, but he's not good at computers. Is he stupid? Nope. Neither am I.
However, qualifying as a dummy could be given out for not reading someone's message correctly and answering like an idiot (hint hint)
I am continually astonished at the ability of good programmers to defend lazy design, lousy design, and plain-old bad coding by saying that users of their software must "know" various and sundry things about their software before they can use it "correctly."
Good user interface is not that complex. It simply never leaves the user hanging, and it provides multiple levels of user access for multiple levels of expertise. Clueless users are the best thing that can happen to a solidly coded core package of software capabilities, because those users will force the designers to come face-to-face with all sorts of silly "insider group" assumptions that have little or nothing to do with the _real_ functionality of that software. Once programmers face up to the existence of pointless obscurities, they can place the solutions exactly where they belong -- in the software itself, where a computer can take care of them quickly and invisibly.
Clubhouses with secret passwords are great fun, but their also doggone silly. Software that could be made enormously more usable and available by a few simple user-oriented additions is even more silly, because it's more like encrusting a lovely diamond necklace with a finely sculpted layer of dried (or in some cases fresh) cow dung.
So I say bring on the clueless users... the ones who bang at the clubhouse door and things like "uh... _why_ exactly do I need to know that just to get it?" Then start building the ladders for these folks, so that they can see some of the amazingly good work stashed away up there.
And finaly: Free and open source types love to moan and groan about how The Establishment wants to keep software all to itself, and thus keep talented non-Establishment folks from doing the software development work they are able to do.
So... is it really any more ethical to create an Establishement of Cryptic Access that needlessly requires users to learn some suite of software idiosyncracies that should have been automated out of existence many years ago? Hmm?
--Dactyl
Well, I agree that more emphasis should be placed on the learning that is involved when going to Linux but it seems much of the community wants it both ways.
They want Linux available from big OEM's but don't want people complaining when it doesn't run like Windows does.
I think it is often forgotten that not everyone (not even most!) using a computer does so for the "learning" experience, they do it to get work done.
I think the complaining is somewhat justified. Most want to work WITH their computer, not ON it.
To gain mass desktop acceptance, Linux will have to be dumbed down MUCH more than it is right now, both in regards to installation and maintenance. No need to STRIP it down, simply put a simple cover on it for the clueless people.
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
I pretty much agree with this sentiment. I really don't want to see Linux proliferate to every desktop. Frankly, I don't care who uses it and I've always been confused by the zealots who talk of "world domination." Dominating my work is about as far as I'm willing to go. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to help my friends-- but I don't care whether Joey Joey Jo Shabadoo uses Linux or not.
About RedHat: RedHat makes Linux more turnkey because they're a business and the more people using Linux --> the more successful they are as a business. Don't forget that. Example: gnome puts a directory in ~/ and doesn't even have the decency to let you know, like netscape or gimp. Hmmmmph! If you're using Linux because you like to know what your computer does at all times, forget RedHat and they're GUI simplification/solutions.
If people want a real easy, stable GUI for Linux, you should lobby for a Microsoft Linux. Don't laugh-- I'm serious about this. A solid Linux kernel would make the system stable, MS could persuade hardware manufacturers to write drivers for latest/greatest devices, and you can count on a GUI that is, well, the king and not imposter-to-the-king. The GPL would permit it and people would like it. Think about it, you'd have real TeX, real GNU tools, compilers, libraries, and the windows GUI. People would like it--- hell, maybe even I would like it. I already spend more money on Linux products than the cost of an MS operating system. Or, use BeOS, which is also a very good suggestion.
Linux isn't for dummies, and why make it so? Answer: You're in business and you stand to profit by making it for dummies.
Peace.
>half of all people in the world were of average or below average intelligence.
To be nit-picky about it, I think you are right.
The measures of IQ are at best an ordering of intelligence. If there is an equivalence between two people of 110 IQ each and two people, one with 100 IQ and one with 120 IQ, then it makes sense to use the mean. If it does not make sense, in my opinion it does not, then the mean is not useable, and the generic term average has to mean (bad pun) median. Your statement to your mother-in-law is a tautology (kinda like x=x). Your mother-in-law wants to believe that most people are smarter than most people, which is logically impossible.
I like the idea of OS software. much of it is very elegant and really powerful. In general, though, the interfaces suck. That's it.
I don't see why anybody would want to turn people off of Linux and ignore newbies. How else are people going to really start adopting this software. Simply put, the more people who use it, the more software will be written, the better it will get. Maybe Linux will get a desktop whose ease of use rivals the MacOS (in elegance, not stability which I won't even bring up). For many people GUIs are the fastest and easiest way to do things. Computers are tools, not ends unto themselves. Most people don't think, "Gee, I want to use a computer;" instead, they think about the tasks they want to accomplish, such as sending email, word processing, etc. Why make it difficult and cryptic for the vast majority of users to appease a few elitist "hackers?" What's next, is this gy going to start calling himself an 3l1t3 LiNuX d00d? How silly.
--Andrew Grossman
grossdog@dartmouth.edu
Because they are more numerous than us.
;-) But you cannot ignore them. If they are ignored the obnoxious ones and the voices filled with promises will take them and turn them against us.
This is very reminiscent of a short discussion on the ML of the LUG I belong to. We wanted to appraoch a local org'n and introduce low-cost, dependable Linux computing. The trouble was selling something they did not want.
Let's face it. Most of them want MSWindoze. Correction. Most of them have been socialized to want MSWindoze. It is correct to use MSW. It is acceptable to use MSW. It is good to use MSW. It is right to use MSW.
People have to be re-educated and ignoring them does not accomplish that. Similarly a batch of industry collumnists(sp?) who want to be known for touting the Next Big Thing but who really know very little doesn't teach anyone anything.
Sure, you have to ignore the obnoxious newbies who really aren't trying to learn anything, but they cannot be taught. But the 90% of disinterested persons who are only trying to catch the wave... now they can be turned to good instead of evil.
If what I said is nonsense,
I'm making a point with it.
If what I said makes perfect sense,
you obviously missed the point.
By that logic, I would argue that no OS which can be ported to a Palm Pilot could possibly be any good as a server system.
Most people can't install Windows from a distribution (in particular on hardware that isn't Windows-certified), so why would we expect them to be able to install Linux?
I also have rather mixed feelings about efforts like KDE and Gnome. It's not clear to me that trying to make Linux into a consumer operating system is desirable. People who need something that's Windows-like are not very likely to contribute usefully to an open source effort, so why do we want to expend a lot of the efforts of our community to attract those people? Why not let them pay the $100 for Windows to Gates and leave him with the support headaches and complaints?
Linux needs a user base of a certain size to get hardware vendors interested in releasing information about their hardware so that we can build drivers. Beyond that, more isn't necessarily better.
My recommendation: use Linux where it makes sense, but be careful proselytizing. And by all means make sure people understand what they are going to get (powerful text-based applications that require some investment of time and effort to learn) and that they should buy Linux preinstalled on Linux-compliant hardware to get started.
I think its important to mention that it is because of new users that don't read the docs that linux has this myth of a great support community. Small disclaimer though, I'm baseing this on usenet help since I've never been to a lug. If you read comp.os.linux.setup/question/(I forget the group name), you'll find that all the questions follow along the same lines and are "how do I setup ppp in redhat". All of these questions are answered in docs somewhere or in an archive and the answers are just simply reposted again and again.
If you've already read through mailing lists, docs, man pages, archives, tried solutions and still have a problem and ask for help, you find that you don't even get a response with any suggestion of direction to look. Of course by this point, if the problem hasn't been solved then it isn't a common problem that stumps new users that can't read the docs, but is in fact a unique problem that only exists on your system.
-?-
Glad I am anonymous this morning.
Having suffered under system administrators that were really like this, it is no surprise that MS has become so powerful. MS really gives people so much more control than someone like this who would deny any participation to people not meeting his exact standards of competence. The tyranny of MS is much more subtle than that of the unfirable sysadm in the corner office for whom you are just a luser, in every sense of the word. I say this as I watch our unix installation shrink to zero. I think the plan is to get rid of unix so they can get rid of this guy and his job.
On another point, the whole article smacks of the most ludicrous sort of elitism imaginable. Like those crufty old fortran programmers who would still have us pushing punch cards.
From my point of view as a carpenter, I insist that everyone should build their own house, or at least know how to do this. If you can't build your own house, you don't deserve to live in one! Out! Out I say! Out in the rain with the dogs where you belong. Don't come back until you know the difference between a casing nail and a green vinyl sinker.
The sure-fire cure for such attitude problems is on its way... a bit of a cool-down in the economy, a few spectacular high tech meltdowns, and computer people will be back to what they were in the 70's and early 80's: commodity labor.
done at the ghostscript prompt, not with a mouse! And real hax0rs just code the raw postscript using cat from a tty, piped to directly to the clients printer.
Only lusers need a gui...
strtok considers the string s1 to consist of a sequence of zero or more
text tokens separated by spans of one or more characters from the
separator string s2. The first call (with pointer s1 specified) returns
a pointer to the first character of the first token, and will have
written a null character into s1 immediately following the returned
token. The function keeps track of its position in the string between
separate calls, so that subsequent calls (which must be made with the
first argument a NULL pointer) will work through the string s1
immediately following that token. In this way subsequent calls will work
through the string s1 until no tokens remain. The separator string s2
may be different from call to call. When no token remains in s1, a NULL
pointer is returned. Note that a string consisting entirely of non-
separator characters is considered a single token. For example, if the
initial call to strtok is made with s1 pointing to a string consisting
entirely of non-separator characters, then the return value from strtok
will be the value of s1 passed to strtok.
seems clear enough to me (?)
James
I can definately see where this article is coming from. Things are very different now then they were two years ago. The average knowledge level of a typical linux user is rapidly decreasing. It can be argued that users need not be knowledgeable, yet I have questions.
The Linux Kernel, the GNU tools, and the numerous other bits of software that make up our systems are _not_ created by some third party. They are created from within the community of people who use the software. They are not asked to give monetary compensation to the many hackers who have worked many hours to create the gifts they so flippantly wield.
A question: are these people simply taking advantage of Free Software without giving anything whatsoever back? Do they have every right to continue as they do, reaping the fruits of other's labour? Sadly, yes, they do.
One of the prime purposes of making one's code open and free is so that others can make use of it. Whether it is used for educational purposes, or as part of a new app, it is used. What happens when people who care not for these values cross over into the Free Software world? They care little about the code, but more about the image, and the fact that everything is gratis.
By not making everything as easy as possible, we place hurdles in front of the potential user. However, in leaping these hurdles, the user becomes technically stronger, more proficient, and most importantly, beter poised to contribute something back to the community.
In some way, this is analagous to the Morse Code requirement in the ham world. Does nontrivial ease of use screen out those without the drive and interest neccessary, or does it simply serve as a Great Wall for a bunch of techno-elitists?
Can refraining from making things 'too-easy' be seen as a way of ensuring the survival of the system, or should users have every right to the proverbial Free Lunch? These issues cause me a great deal of disquiet. How do we come to terms with this issue?
(this all reminds me so much of the explosion of aol onto usenet a few years ago)
Maybe I've lived a sheltered life, but I've not seen anyone here in the midwest use the broad variable definition average that you accurately point out to be true.
I assumed (bad idea, I guess) that the author was speaking of mean since I have seen that done in error far more than intentionally (e.g. ask most people the difference between mean and median and you usually get a blank stare).
Also note that I also pointed out that the two measurements should be essentially equal in this case. I was just trying to enourage more precision in the broadcast of statistics.
It sounds like you're reading things, and won't be asking questions you can't find. So you probably shouldn't have problem.
But there are lots and lots of questions asked which could be answered simply by reading the HOWTOs, and those people deserve to have them pointed out.
As far as being a newbie once, yes, I was. And I learned perfectly well from the HOWTOs, and a whole lot of news posts that someone asked just in time for me to read the answer....
Umm, that already exists: run X, and start popping up Xterms. There ya go. Works for me anyways
Still, there is no reason to make anything more complicated to use than it needs to be. I believe that "tar -xzf" is needlessly complicated, why not have an additional standard command like "unarchive" and "archive"? What is wrong with making wrappers so you don't have to pour through documentation to find out that tar is used for tapes by default even though 99% of ALL Unix users don't have tapes? What is wrong with "dir" as an additional command, or "rename"? Nothing.
Improve, simplify, but that doesn't mean you have to reduce functionality, or decrease stability to do it. It is a fallacy that the hardest tools are the most powerful, DOS is difficult and archane to use, and it SUCKS. There is no reason a system cannot be powerful, stable, fast, and intuitive. We have 3 of the 4, Microsoft has 2 out of 4. Rather than just being better, why not make Linux perfect?
This is the one thing that is holding back complete acceptance. Linux is being adopted because it is simply superior in many respects. It is an excellent system for development, research, and experimentation. Making it accessible to more people will not detract from this, it would only make it more accessible and attract more development which will improve it.
Don't forget that everything around you is usuable to you because it has been simplified for you. We could all start out soldering chips to mother boards and debugging reflections from solder blobs, but we don't. Why should we force people to bear the pain of learning something just because we did? It is worth it to us to go through the steep learning curve because it doubles productivity for power users, but the typical person will not find the learning curve an acceptable trade off since they aren't doing complicated tasks on their computer, they are using it as a game console and a typewriter.
How are we advantaged by shutting out these people? Here's a hint: we aren't in any way whatsoever. How are we disadvantaged by shutting these people out? Less commercial companies are willing to provide the stupid crap that even we use, like video games and wordprocessors.
I vote we don't just win the war, but take over all the territory
read the fucking manual
ahh...words to live by.
Agreed. I decided to learn Linux because:
1. Microsoft is a totally corrupt company and their OS sucks.
2. Linux is something that I wanted to learn.
3. I want to learn Linux to make it easier to install, therefore more people can use it and put Microcrap out of business. (I can dream, can't I?)
Its UNIX-ness doesn't have to be eliminated for the average user, just hidden. Hide the geek filenames (why "vi" or "xfm?" I use editors and file managers, not vi's -er- vee eye in Nerdese - and xfm's.) under a GUI with a easy-to-use-and-configure menu and/or icon system. If the nerds don't like it they don't have to use it. That's the beauty of Linux: You can set it up whichever way you want. Try doing that with Wincrap.
An ideal Linux would have something for everyone (Face it, that's what M$ tries to do) - for the neophyte, it would come from a store preloaded with the os, browser, office suite, Internet dialup, printer, ready to plug in, hook to the phone, turn on and hit the net running, or writing letters, creating databases, publishing web pages, etc, etc, as easy as sliding in an antorun CD. If enough boxes were sold like that the initial development cost could be brough way down.
Later on, as the user becomes more experienced, s/he could graduate all the way up to kernel hacking and development if they so desire.
It would also have to have some way of makeing system backup easily, snapshots - that way a nervous user could make a backup of their entire system, then change various configs or install software and if they hose it, boot the recovery floppy and and do a restore to the last backup.
Congratulations. You've just described Mac OS X Server! But if you want all this for free, forget it....
I agree. It has been claimed that the job of Microsoft tech support is to make the caller feel stupid. It's sad to see that some Linux enthusiasts seem to feel they have similar job descriptions.
Hmm. With regard to Debian, is this really applicable at all? After all, this is _not_ a commerical distribution, as are all the rest.
This whole vision of Linux as *product* is causing many problems. What do the sleazeball marketing types have to gain by hyping up Debian?
...computers have been around since before many of you were born. It's a rare job that doesn't involve using one these days. Computers have more or less been forced on people. Did it ever dawn on you people that some people only want to write letters, and email and such?! Did it ever dawn on you people that some people -omigosh- don't like computers!? Yet they are forced by our current society to have have them to get along or compete. Yes, some people even resent computers!!
What does this mean to all you people here? Your plans of world domination are for naught because M$ makes things just easy enough to use that most people can get done what they want w/out really learning anything. M$ and Apple make better appliances. Linux is not nor can it ever be an 'appliance'. That is it's strength and also it's weakness.
Why do you think Linux got to be the operating system that "every computer guy" wants to have up to be cool? It's things like Slashdot, and other collections of aggresive geeks who are trying to get the whole world on it.
There exists a major hypocrisy in the Linux community. If you're going to have a OS that's widespread enough, you're going to have stupid users. That's just the way. Celebrities have fans they don't like, but they can't select who's their fan and who's not.
Same thing with Linux. Of course you're going to get stupid users. A lot of times, ambitious people "looking to the future of technology" forget that there's only so many people who can operate a computer with any degree of skill. What I'm is saying that the MAJORITY of users are stupid.
Several of those are probably good technical goals anyway (as someone pointed out, you shouldn't have to register all your PCI hardware by hand when it's sitting in
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
The fact is that ALL of us human-types are lazy and/or selfish, and we LEARN only when its in OUR BEST INTEREST. THus the tradeoff - we are willing to take the time to learn something only when we perceive a benefit to us.
Thus,for its user/market/customer Debian is right to tradeoff "ease of use" for "power and control", and Windows/Red Hat/etc are right to tradeoff "power and control" for "ease of use" for their user/market/customer.
I don't want any part of such a bigoted, snobbish culture. I just want to do my stuff.
Pity the poor luser. Unix bigots sneer, deriding his or her lack of ability and unix knowledge, while of course reserving root for the deserving cognoscenti. Then there is MS, stealing and lying, selling software that doesn't work as advertised.
Between being kicked by unix bigots, and stolen and lied to by MS, its a wonder their are any users, much less that they can actually do anything useful.
By that definition? Try by _any_ definition,
75% of America is cluesless.
The trouble with making something idiot proof
is that idiots are so ingenius -- Unknown
Who, pray tell, PAID for this fine network to be installed in the first place (Hint: It was not Al Gore). Why, it was the Advanced Research Projects Agency, an agency of the United States Government. That's right, THE TAXPAYERS OF THE UNITED STATES PAID FOR YOUR BANDWIDTH!
Therefore, since it is MAH bandwidth, I want all you ferriners to get off my internet with your geek foreign operating system so I can get on with my good old Amurican-made Mahcrosoft Winders and downlode pitchers of them All-American nekked wimmin. And yew damm Lienucks nerds cain't do nuthin' 'bout it, y'all!
Merle Haggard forever!
[The above post is to be taken with tongue firmly planted in cheek, just like the opinions above are of one with his entire leg firmly ensconced in his pie-hole (not to mention one who is auditioning for "Ned Beatty's buddy" in the remake of "Deliverance") but the US Taxpayers really did pay for the start of the internet.]
It may very well be possible to represent Unix shell type concepts in GUI's. It's just that those that have tended to push GUI's in the past weren't really interested in such things.
I agree. Even though the NeXTstep interface is over 12 years old now, it is still the most powerful GUI on the planet. If the GNUstep project is succesful, then other flavours of UN*X will get to experience the same power and ease of use.
That's not to say that the NeXTstep interface didn't have it's problems, but it's really sad that even with all those problems, nothing else today matches what it offered 12 years ago (OK, BeOS comes close, and I haven't been able to play with MacOS X, which looks promising seeing as it's based on NeXTstep...)
The writer here is talking specifically about Debian, and Debian has an interest in keeping the "clueless" out. As a Linux distribution created and maintained by its user base, Debian doesn't need to attract beginners. They would dilute the developer base and reduce the overall quality of the distribution.
/dev/null
Other distributions (Red Hat has been mentioned) cater to "newbies" and make money trying to educate them. More power to them. If these newbies can learn enough, they may come to appreciate what Debian has to offer and begin to contribute. For those confused about "World Domination", the idea is to make the world conform to Linux, not make Linux conform to the world. In other words, Linux doesn't become so "user friendly" that any non-geek can use it... rather, everybody becomes so geeky that they all love Linux!
Maybe when Linux achieves world domination, everyone will use (and contribute to) Debian. Until then, the elite can have it, and let Red Hat or Caldera or whoever sop up the rest of the users, the ones who have an interest but a low skill level.
Obviously, at some point the essential "clues" have to get transfered down from the ivory tower hackers to the little guys, if we are ever to be free from the great slobbering beast of MS Mediocrity 2000. But then again, for some folks, mediocre is good enough, and for them, MS is a good thing. Those seeking higher standards will convert to Linux, and while they probably should be discouraged from using Debian (and bothering its maintainers), there are plenty of other Linux options available to them as stepping stones.
If you're a newbie, don't be discouraged by all this. Just know that you MUST learn what you are doing. Sometimes it seems scary, but it's not really that hard, it's just different from what you know now. If you are willing to learn, there are plenty of folks out there willing to teach you. Don't be afraid to ask for help, but be responsible for finding out who to ask about what.
And don't use Debian until you know what you are doing!
flames >
Vince
Linux help for beginners to advanced users: Control-Escape.com
There's a small additional effort on the part of developers
Gee, it almost sounds like you write user interfaces on a daily basis. If it's so easy to write dynamic user interfaces, why aren't there more of them? The closest thing I've seen to your ideal is Visual C++. Highly configurable environment, but its not even close to what you claim to be the right way. And I personally can't stand it because the flashy configurable interface gets in my way a whole lot more than vi ever did. I'd be interested to hear some examples of what you think are "dynamic interfaces", yes those specific examples you hate so much.
I warned you about mistaking specific examples for general points.
Feature creep is definately a part of software bloat. Yes, most of Word's mass is extraneous features like dancing paper clips and such. I give you that point. However, I still maintain that if the interface were dynamic, that mass would be even greater due to the added feature of being able to configure the interface. In every language I've ever used to program a user interface (with the notable exception of Perl/Tk, which is a marvelously dynamic approach to UI) there has been a significant performance decrease incurred when you want to be able to alter the complexity of the user interface dynamically.
I can say from my own knowledge that (Linux is) a bigger mess than AIX, UnixWare, Solaris or NT...
First off, the discussion was about Open Source, not about Linux. There's a big distinction there, most notably bringing up that pesky little point about specific examples again. But I'll let you get away with it this time.
Since I don't have the inside scoop you seem to have about the source code of every major operating system on the planet, I can only judge Linux against others based on their performance, support, and robustness based on and end-user's viewpoint. AIX and Solaris are written for non-intel hardware. Solaris x86 has been out for a while, but rom what I've seen, it doesn't perform as well as Linux on the same hardware, doesn't support as many interesting hardware bits, and is doesn't have nearly the software base that Linux does. AIX can't even be compared to Linux because they dont share a common hardware base. Unixware, like Solaris, doesn't have nearly the hardware or software support base that Linux does. And finally, there's NT. To begin, the Linux kernel, fully loaded with lots of device drivers, typically fits in under 4 megs of ram. The NT kernel, on the other hand, is approximately 16 megs in size. Various sources will tell you differently, but in practice, NT will take the first 16 or so megs of ram and you'll never see it again. A bare minimum Linux kernel can be built to take up less than 512K and still provide drivers for quite a bit of hardware. NT may be layed out beautifully from the inside, but the user will never see source code, only the fact that it crashes under heavy loads, requires frequent maintenance, and costs an additional $1500 if you want to be able to send mail.
I have seen the innards of the Linux kernel; It's not beautiful, but it works. It works better, faster, and more reliably than NT. This isn't speculation or personal opinion, but scientific fact. Many independent reviews have been performed to verify it. You don't have to look very far back in the slashdot archives to find formal reports published on that subject. (note: I also have a Theory on Operating Systems, but I'll keep it to myself for now.)
But, again, we're getting into a "specific example" subject going into that debate.
Ouch! that stings! But honestly, when I write programs, they fall into two categories. Stuff I write for work, and Stuff I write for myself. If its work, chances are my employer has well defined specifications on what it should look like, how it should perform, and how it should be written. In that case, I don't have any say as to the design of the user interface, I don't get to choose what its licensing is, and I don't get to say how much is modular and how much is kludge. Since it is technically the intellectual property of my employer, not me, it is their say, not mine. Stuff I write for myself, on the other hand, gets written with the look and feel of what I am most comfortable with (writing and using). If someone else finds it useful, that's great. If not, at least I find it useful. And if one of my users wants more features, more configurability, whatever, I will try to integrate those ideas, provided they are aligned with my vision for the software.
What would be the point of a more detailed response? ... I'm happy to respond to the few lucid parts of what you post, but I'll let the inanity of the rest speak for itself.
The point of discussion is the mutual exchange of ideas. My crack about the "open arms of righteousness" was nothing more than just a crack, perhaps taken a bit too far, considering the context. I'm curious to learn what you think is the "ideal" interface. From what I've seen, it's certainly not what the rest of the industry thinks is ideal. And as a member of the industry, I have an obligation to give the customer what they want. Yes, I believe the point and click static interface is growing stale. Yes, I would like to see a change in the old pattern of menu, tool-bar, pop-up. I don't think making a change in the way programs use this pattern (i.e. dynamic toolbars, configurable complexity) will change it enough. I'm ready for a (gack! buzzword alert) paradigm shift, at least in the user interface department.
mmmmm.... inanity... Remember, friend, flames are the tabasco sauce of the internet. Too much is really painful, not enough is far too bland, and just the right amount puts the spice back in an otherwise bland discussion. So I insult your grammar! And your grampar too! A pox upon your childrens' pets unto the seventh generation, foolish Mac user! (yes, I think I've been staring at the screen too long. Maybe I need some sun.)
And as long as I'm rambling, The sun is so hot that everything on it is a gas. Aluminum, Iron, Copper, and many others. If the sun were hollow, a million Earths would fit inside. And yet, the sun is only a middle sized star! (apologies to TMBG).
Leapfrog, the mildly intolerant.
I hope Linux just dies and withers away. The last thing the world needs is another group of idiots who think they know better than anybody else and won't share their tools.
I will certainly NEVER use Debian solely on principle. I certainly have the knowledge and technical ability to install and use it but I won't. Any group with those kinds of attitudes does not deserve my support. Linux is about sharing. Period. Sharing ideas, source code rights etc. Beleive it or not there are people out there who could greatly benefit from Linux but have niether the time nor desire (and in some cases the intellegence) to become *nix gurus just so they can do a spread sheet or play a game. Do they not deserve the benefits of Linux?
Personally I will throw my support behind a distibution which attempts to INCLUDE people from the Linux club (RedHat, SUSE, Caldera etc) not exclude them. Funny, all the Debian snobs say RedHat is acting like MS, but when I read their posts, they seem to be the only ones not willing to help out everyone and share in the knowledge, to make it easy so Linux can spread beyond their realm. Now who's acting Like MS?(Keeping things secret so to try to get people to do things their way)
Hopefully all the "newbies" and "clueless" will pick anoher distro (if the pick Linux at all after that elitist rant!) and relegate Debian to the Amiga of the *nix world. Be careful what you wish for - all the "clueless" will stay away - millions of them and MS Windows will continue to rule the OS world.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Some people will never be able to use Linux. That doesn't make them "clueless" or "stupid." Others need to be taught, and are willing to learn. These people should be encouraged, not flamed.
Unfortunately, there are some geeks such as the author of this letter who seem to have a problem with anyone who isn't as "smart" as himself and is not willing (or lacks the skills) to teach the newbie. He may be a UNIX guru, but his people skills are on the level of Saddam Hussein. If he doesn't change his attitude quickly he will most likely be an out-of-work dinosaur very soon. This guy needs to be told the facts of life in Linux-land in 1999, but I have a feeling that he is even more close-minded than the people he's chastising.
I am a Linux semi-newbie (about 5 months) and am Reading The F$%&ing Manuals and am reading the How-To's. I still have a lot to learn about Linux, but that is why I decided to get it. I have installed Debian 2.0 and RH 5.2 with very few problems (fortunately my hardware is fairly standard). If I need help, I know where to get it on the internet (much better than what passes for support from Microslop).
This guy reminds me of the old-time amateur radio operators (I have 30 years there, too) who chastise the newcomers because they don't have to learn that antique mode of transmission called Morse Code. His grandfather probably complained about those new-fangled electric starters on cars in the '20s and said that "real men" start cars by turning the crank underneath the radiator in 0 degree weather (and walked 20 miles to school in the snow - with no shoes on - uphill - both ways).
BTW, I am a hardware engineer who is capable of building a PC from a bare board and loose IC's which I have to solder by hand. Anyone that can't do that has no business operating a computer! That includes most software pukes, who would probably grab the hot end of the iron. I can build one from scratch, so everyone else should too. I'm just being facetious there, but do you understand my point?
Please do - come on by! Admission is free - stay as long as you'd like. Post some questions on LCT and I'm sure you'll have answers from our friendly group of regulars.
I have no idea why people badmouth dselect.
Is it just that you have to use keys other than
just the arrows and enter? The garish color scheme?
All the newbies I've subjected to Debian had only
to spend one or two minutes getting the feel of
dselect and were fully in control of things after that.
One of my friends started Debian but decided to go
with RedHat because he could load from CD. He says he
misses dselect the most, and now calls me all the time asking me what package he needs to install to do X or Y, and I shake my head and say I'd help if he was running Debian but RedHat's package names are different. All in all, he's spent way too much time working around RedHat problems than he should, but hey, that's the price he pays for not coughing up less than ten dollars for a Debian CD, I guess.
A computer lab at a school is nothing to judge idiots against. The majority of users there want/need to learn how to type a paper or whatever, or else they'll get F's and kicked out of school.
Pick up a job as a tech support sort of worker in a real company. Where most people are 40+ and could care less about learning anything. They just want to come in, survive 8 hours, and go home until the day they retire. Then you'll see the true definition of idiots, refusal to learn things like their password, etc.
Now, if a distribution wants to be a distribution for geeks or people who really want to learn that's fine. There will always be other distributions for newbies and people who want to use a Linux workstation, not learn all the intricate parts of Linux. Those sort of distributions should lock down things by default, no daemons whatsoever, etc.
The average person is dumb ? Ok. I have a very goo d orthopedist (sp?) that is responsible for my still being able to walk. I met with the guy 7 times a week for a couple of months, while he was fixing me. This gave us lots of time to talk about things and other. I found out that he didnt know how to use a computer, and that he still used a paper log book, that was being processed by his secretary. Now, Does that make him a dumb ass ? I think not. Because, even if I can put a machine to pieces and put it back together in working condition blind folded, I would have been unable to fix my legs myself. So please stop saying that because someone is computer illiterate they're dumb. They might have a weakness on the techno side, but be very qualified at something you could be considered dumb at. Food for thought. Disclaimer: Me and the corp got a deal. They dont speak for me, and I'm not paid well enough to speak for them.
Sun Tzu must have been running Linux...
- Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him. (Sun Tzu, The art of war)
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
Anyway, the industry can't move forward on its belly. It's our responsibility to exceed these people and do things right, as we've been doing for years--and, in a sadly high number of cases, to clean up their mistakes (but never to take the blame). Maybe someday there won't be such a drastic shortage of IT workers, and their asses will be tossed out the door. In the meantime, somebody has to bear the torch . . .
Patience.
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
While the article has some interesting points (like stability sacrificed for ease-of-use being a bad thing), the general tone does scare me. I thought, as time goes on, computers are supposed to become easier to use? For most people, computers are a means, not an actual end. Heck, even for myself, I prefer using an OS that requires a minimum amount of fiddling to get running, and then gets out of my way so I can get my work done. I don't particularily want or need an OS that demands I learn a whole new set of cryptic commands to let me get my work done.
:)
Just write me off as a GUI-weenie, I suppose
There is absolutely no reason that Linux cannot remain configurable AND also easy for the newcomer to get up and running. KDE to an extent already shows this. So long as the 'ease of use' is additive and not replacing the fundemental nature of Linux, not only does this aspect become optional it does not prevent anyone (especially the new user that proceeds to learn Linux) for configuring and chasing down problems. However, to shut out whole segments of the population is the wrong direction.
Linux can be made easy for the newcomer and remain as open for the pro as it needs to be. The only thing stopping this are elitist attitudes.
Hmmmmmm... well, it took me only 10 minutes to figure out how to change mine, but then again I wasn't certain beforehand where to change it, other than that the file to change would be somewhere under /etc. A few greps here and there eventually turned up the file /etc/sysconfig/network.
The same thing (or other things like it) happened to me with configuring X, with setting up my network (which had strange enough details to prevent the configurator from being helpful) and even in trying to change my default login shell.
Well, I certainly found the so-called "X-configurator" (or whatever it's called) to be rather confusing and useless. It turned out to be simpler to me to just edit my XF86Config directly to put in the exact frequency settings from my monitor documentation. I can't comment on the network settings - this system uses only PPP. But I didn't even attempt to use any PPP "configurator" to set it up. I just downloaded Mindspring's instructions on how to set up Linux PPP by hand. Never had any trouble editing the /etc/hosts and /etc/ppp/options files directly, and I never saw any "popup" boxes come up automatically.
Certainly I've come across many "configurators" in my Redhat Linux distribution, and it is annoying that the Redhat docs concentrate so much on doing everything with linuxconf. But I haven't yet run across the situation where I had to use a "configurator" to do something. Then again, I haven't heard yet what version of Redhat you were trying to install. It could be that earlier versions relied so much on "configurators" that they caused complaints from some Redhat users, thus resulting in changes in later versions.
also found that RedHat was nearly impossible to use from the command line, right out of the box. It was missing important things in my path, like for example, "/usr/bin".
Hmmmm... again, very odd. I did not have that problem after I installed from the CD.
And yes, I am nothing more than a RedHat bashing perl script.
Well, not many people know this, but I'm actually a dog. I just read Slashdot when my Master's not using the system. Of course, I taught him everything he knows about Linux. :-)
And BTW, my apologies if my incredulous tone in my initial reply to your post led you to think I was questioning your "intelligence" and thus sparked this little flamefest - but doggone it, what did you expect from a mean-tempered Schnauzer? Just be glad I don't go over to your house and take a dump in your lawn! ;-)
Don't know what the deal was with your Redhat installation. I've appreciated Redhat's somewhat easier install routines, and I don't mind having the option of using a "configurator" sometimes (the sound card config program was a nice touch). However, I will admit Redhat's documentation concentrates way too much on linuxconf than I care to deal with. Perhaps if this old dog can convince his Master to finish writing his Linux game project, he'll get his paws on Debian and try it out.
don't like Redhat much because it tries too hard to be like Windows,
Ah yes - Windoze. Hmph! After college, my Master spent two agonizing years doing Win32 programming. He was sure glad when I finally got him a job working on the Tomahawk Cruise missle project. The Dept. of Defense may not use Linux much (mostly Suns and HP-UX), but it sure beats Windoze!
And if I ever meet up with Bill Gates, I'll be sure to bite him on the leg for ya.
Until then, I'm off to find some other Slashdotters to take a piss on... ;-)
WOOF!
I work for a computer manufacturer that builds many a linux box. It used to be that we only built them for use as a server but now, more and more, people are asking for consumer Linux machines. When somebody comes in and inquires about Linux I first of all make it clear to them that it is in intensly cool OS, able to do things that other OS's are simply incapable of. Then they ask if it is easy to use, (this is the important part) and I say NO! It is MUCH harder to use than windows, so if you want something thats easy to use, dont install Linux. This encourages the geekier, or at least the more experimental users and discourages those who just saw it in the newspaper. And then I work like crazy to install or help them install Linux and answer any questions they might have. I remember one day when I spent four hours installing and configuring Linux on an old man's 486 and only billed him for one. I thought there was no way such an old fart would actually take the time to learn Linux, and he did bother me a lot for the first week. But now whenever I hear from him I hear of all the cool things he is doing with Linux, it really is amazing.
To sum up my senseless blabbering: encourage and help new linux users, but be sure that they don't think that it's easy, because its not.
This seems to be a trend, and I see this a lot in Debian and especially BSD users. The idea that something has to be difficult to be powerful. This is ridiculous and counter productive, and it just doesn't make sense. Simplicity, always. Always.
Take BSD's install and compare to Red Hat's. BSD's is far more complicated, it is counter intuitive and yet it is no more powerful than Red Hat's, which is so easy that anyone with some experience with PC's could do it with only a little RTFM. The reason BSD's install sucks is not because it is powerful, but because the people who designed it just aren't good at interface design.
Something can be simple and powerful. Deal with it. This is just something the BSD/Debian fud coalition is going to have to face.
The idea that Red Hat is somehow inferior because it doesn't make you compile and install bash before you can use it is just utterly ridiculous. This article was nothing more than "my-dick-is-bigger-than-yours" chest thumping nonsense. People like this have no point and need to be ignored. If the Debain maintainers do not want to add value (convenience is a value, yes) to linux then that's their business, but they'll just have less users because of it. Yes, even advanced users want convenience. Sorry.
UNIX like OS's are not gaining popularity because they are complex. Rather, they are gaining popularity because they are simple. Compare linux to the insane, incomprehensible complexity of Windows NT. If complexity was such a great thing in and of itself, this guy would be mucking about in the NT registry, not using Debian.
support gun control: take guns from cops
It seems like a simple "solution" to me to just ignore those who won't get a clue.
My theory is based on the idea that every feature X has a complexity Y related to it. The total complexity of a program is directly related to the summation of all Y across all X. We can consider this the baseline of complexity for the program involving all features X. It is possible (in fact, easy) to increase this complexity by the use of complicated nested menus, pop-up windows and dialog boxes when all that is really necessary is a simple checkbox. But the overall complexity of an application is directly related to the quantity of features (and therefore the power and functionality) in the application.
As for an "Advanced Features" option, involving such a menu selection only serves to obscure the fact that the features are there by making said features harder to access. The "Advanced Features" option then becomes in itself another unit of complexity, making the program even more obfuscated and confusing. In Word, if I want to change my paragraph spacing, I have to go wade through 5 levels of menus, dialog boxes, pop-up boxes and "folder tabs" just to find the selection. That's simpler than giving TeX a simple \spacing directive? Granted, I had to read many pages of LaTeX manual to find that, but it took me less time to learn LaTeX and write a 20 page paper in it than it would have taken me to write a 20 page paper in Word. Or even in WordPerfect. (yes, I realize there's a difference between word processing and document formatting. That's why I like LaTeX so much better. Let the computer worry about the details.)
As far as my "soft-core" background, I've never done any more publishing than a computer geek has to. I've written 20 page papers. I've constructed web pages for corporations. I've never written a book, never gotten published in a magazine, and I've never used Adobe Acrobat. I'm a programmer. I write programs. I design user interfaces. I deal with databases, mainframes, embedded processors, graphical user interfaces, 3D graphics, and I have extreme distaste for the Web in general. I've also written code in Perl, Fortran, COBOL, C, C++, Prolog, Korn Shell, Bourne Shell, C Shell, Lisp, Smalltalk, Java, Javascript, HTML, Visual Basic, Access, Python, Ada, Forth, applesoft basic, assembly (6502, 80x86, MIPS, SPARC, 6811, 680x0), and Pascal. I've written compilers using Lex and Yacc. I've replaced chips on motherboards, I've assembled computers from scratch, I've fabricated printed circuit boards. I know which end of the soldering iron to hold. (hold the plastic end, the metal end hurts.) I'm not sure exactly what, apart from having been forced to use operating systems and software tools that I personally feel are sub-optimal in order to fulfill my job requriements, classifies me as "soft-core". I could make the same arguments about, for example, using WordPerfect for X versus using LaTeX. (or playing Descent versus playing Doom) I was "born and raised" typing cryptic commands to a Unix command line. At first it was a pain, but as I learned, I found that there was real power in being able to type "find / -name *.jpg -print | grep foobar | perl -npe 's/\.jpg//g' " at the command line instead of (what I'd be required to do in a GUI) wandering through hundreds of little windows, selecting icons, and still manually banging in text into Notepad.
I've written in Visual C++, Visual Basic, Borland, Java, Access, and with each of these tools, one point stands out, over and over again. The fact that the developers have gone out of their way to make it easier to use gets in my way. I would like to think that I know what I'm doing. I've never used "alt-middle-button" when writing applications. I've used well-documented command-line options many times. I've never had call for an "advanced users" menu option, because you have to know your audience. Just as a real publisher would never want to use Word for all their DTP needs, a beginning user would balk at diving head first into LaTeX. But, once I learned how LaTeX works, and why it was designed that way, it could see it as an infinitely more powerful tool than Word.
As for your "typical Linux program", give me some specific examples of times when the manual page didn't tell you where the .fubarrc is located, or doesn't give information about what alt-middle-button does. (and EMACS doesn't count, becuase EMACS sucks anyway.) The only programs I've seen that were incompletely documented were either a) commercial, or b) still in development. It's a waste of time to write up every feature before the feature-set has been finalized. Every Debian package I've ever installed has a manual page, a readme, a texinfo page, and a web page to go with it. By "online help", I assume you mean "pushing F1 and up pops a window with a dancing paperclip in it." That sort of documentation is not only irritating, distracting, and gaudy but also a waste of processor, RAM, and disk. What is the point of having a dancing paperclip when a simple text file will convey the same information? (visions of "man MSWORD | grep 'line spacing' " pop into my head)
The most important part of being a programmer (and being a writer, an actor, a senator, &c) is knowing what your audience wants. If I were writing a word processor for my mom and dad, it would most certainly NOT look like LaTeX. If I were writing a database so my Dad could keep track of his wine cellar, Access might start to look like a reasonable choice. But if I were publishing a magazine, MS Word wouldn't cut it. If I were creating an on-line database holding millions of customers' information and processing orders on-the-fly, maybe Informix or Oracle would be a better product to start with. Complexity versus ease of use is the most important trade-off in designing software. The reason why there are hundreds of software packages that do basically the same thing lies in the distinction of audience. You can look at Paintbrush, PSP, CorelPhotoPaint, xfig, Microsoft Photo Editor, Harvard Graphics, the GIMP, Visio and Photoshop and say they serve roughly the same purpose. But look at the difference in target audience, and consequently the differences in price, output quality, and complexity. No one would ever tell you that the GIMP is easier to use than Paintbrush. Cripes, my 6 year old cousin could figure out how to use Paintbrush. But, look at the difference in what you can do with them. The GIMP even has its own scripting language so you can automate just about any task you want. That makes it harder to learn, but at the same time, infinitely more powerful.
Do I need to say it again to make it clearer?
Leapfrog, the indignant.
You'd have to be clueless to pick Debian for your first Distro. Okay, that was a *little* mean-spirited, but true.
The last thing that a Windows user wants is to have to read a ten pound book just to get *started* using Linux. It's not too unreasonable to expect things to install and run out of the box. Is it?
And the absolutely clueless ones, and by that I mean those that can't or won't learn Linux, are going to go back to Windows or elsewhere. Problem solved.
If you expect world domination, then you have to take them in all shapes and sizes.
John Waalkes
jwaalkes@edge.net
Installing Linux is one thing, using it is another.
I like being able to install RedHat Linux off the shelf, just as like being able to run SGI IRIX without having to configure everything before I can get an xterm running and start working.
What is the point in making the installation process as difficult as possible? Once it's installed you can still modify the entire system if you wish, recompile the kernel.
How many actually compiled glibc and Xfree86 themselves? What's the point if it already works the way you want?
Debian are saying that people should learn how to build a keyboard and those who can't should stay away from computers.
I've got 3-4 years of Linux experience. I started with Slackware, and now run RH. I tried Debian a day or two ago, and gave up for a few reasons. I hated the installer. Yes, I could easily have gone through the entire install, but it just wasn't worth it. Problems with Debian:
/dev/sdc because youre root partition is /dev/sdc2. Some BIOSes may not like this."
/dev/sda where it's supposed to go or at least give me the option to do so. RedHat puts it in the right place.
Debian's installer:
"We will now put LILO in the MBR of
No sh*t, Sherlock. My BIOS is brand new and didn't like that. Put it on
Flexibility, my a**. RedHat gives two options, both are feasible. Debian gives one, and it's useless.
"To do it any other way, you must create a bootdisk."
a) RedHat didn't need that bootdisk, and Debian takes 4-5 times as long to create said disk. I'm a college student and I have problem sets to do, and I want to USE the system, not spend unneccessary time trying to get it to even work.
Next, there's dselect. They keep on saying they're going to replace it, but guess what. It's still there, and people are right. Dselect is a royal pain in the ass. I'll stick with RPM...
Difficulty to use != power.
Oh, I do have positive things to say about Debian's installer. On multiple CD-ROM systems, it allows you to choose your installation CD. In addition, the fact that you can add RAID support to the kernel in the install seems to indicate that Debian might eventually come with support to set up RAID drives in the installation process. (A feature I would absolutely LOVE to have.)
Of course, this could probably be added to RedHat... Eventually I may take the Root-RAID HOWTO and combine it with the RedHat installer.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I can't speak for the apple //e but the c64 *was* quite complex if you wanted to do anything more than load"*",8,1. Did you ever try to install a second 1541? you actually had to open it up and clip wires to get it to act as drive 9. Most, if not all, of the third party hardware was just *slightly* incompatible with the c64, leading to hard to track down errors. Installing a harddrive for the c64 was a *nightmare*. Plus since computers were not nearly as popular then as they are now you couldn't walk into any barnes and noble and pick up a book on the c64. Just a few months ago I found a book on programming the 64 that gave a list of all the addresses you could POKE to and what they would do, when I actualy operated a 64 those books were nowhere to be found. I'm not even going to mention the 128. The 128 actualy ran CPM if you wanted it to, I ordered CPM from commodore and got four 5 1/4 disks and a "digital reasearch CP/M system guide" that was over 2000 pages but it had *no* page numbers or index. I could'nt make heads or tails of cp/m at taht point, after all , I was about 11
You are right though, computers got more complex. The Amiga ( still my favorite machine) was a total mystery when it first shipped. I still have my amiga manuals, they are about as thick as the win98 manuals, they contained nothing more than a few "how to turn the computer on" chapters. The manuals totaly ignored CLI mode. Creating boot disks ( the amiga 500 had no harddrive), actualy getting hardware to work ( amigaOS was microkernel, all the device drivers were in userspace and distributed by the hardware manufacturer. As far as commodore was concerned, they didn't exist) was actualy quite hard to figure out. Two of the hardest things I think i've ever done involved amiga hardware. One was installing a 4 meg memory upgrade, this involved removing chips and modifying the amiga motherboard, contrast this to upgrading memory today. The other was installing a scsi harddrive for the amiga, this involved changing the jumpstart eprom and the amiga user port, contrast this to installing a harddrive today, its pretty much plug and play these days. BTW, there were various amiga unix packages back then that added all our favorite unix utils, like grep, to amiga CLI
Even load"*",8,1 is pretty complex compared to todays operating systems. About a half of all people I knew who owned c64's had load"*",8,1 and load"$",8,1 written on post-its near their computers. Even the most raw of newbies can remember ls.
Did anybody read the follow-ups? I also think the macho attitude of making something as difficult as possible needs to be dropped. The most powerful utilities are often NOT the hardest to use utilities, and need not be. We have a very powerful system right now with the Linux and GNU tools combination, and we have a damn stable system which is also of central importance. Perhaps now we need to start making it more ergonomic without loosing the functionality which is central to the Unix theme and I think most important.
The system we have now was done the right way, meaning starting with a functional, powerful, fast, system, to make it complete, we need to make it intuitive. Microsoft Windows did it the "wrong" way, they tried to make it intuitive first, and functional, powerful, and fast later. Now they have a rat's nest. Even NT suffers from the "make it pretty first" methodology.
We have a superior product, I vote we make it superior in every conceivable way. Let's make something perfect instead of just really good.
Your analogy between a computer and a car lacks something - with a car, you have to have a drivers' license. You are tested and expected to have a certain level of understanding about the basics of DRIVING the damn thing. Yet you seem to say, gee, we don't want that with computers... nobody should be expected to actually KNOW anything... Give me a break.
Also, working in a roll-your-own fashion isn't for everyone - why do you think M$ and Apple stay in business? But for me, that's half the reason I USE Linux - the ability to do things MY way. Roll my own if it comes down to that. For those who don't want that, I'm just not sure Linux is what they REALLY want.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
In general use there is RMS (Root Mean Square) used to measure "average" (ie effective) voltage.
For arbitrary k, you have the k-th root of average of x**k. The limit as k approaches infinity is the familiar mid-point. The limit as k approaches 0 should be the median (I'm too lazy to check it). The familiar (median, mean, RMS, midpoint) correspond to k=(0, 1, 2, infinity). The other values (not necessarily integral) are not in general use.
The mode is not so tractable. Very slight change to a bi-modal distribution gives large difference in mode.
It seems to me that the implicity assumption with a lot of that is that there is a "Free Software World" and a "Pay Software World" and never the twain shall meet. This seems to me to be at odds with what I at least perceive to be the goals of the free software movement, which is to, well, make software free. If we work to restrict "free" software to the gurus then it seems to me that it is no longer a movement to make software free and instead is merely a bunch of guys passing around neat programs.
I think that if it ever wants to get beyond that, then people will need to admit that the vast bulk of the population is has no talent for writing programs, does not want to write programs, and just wants to get software to make their lives easier.
The other thing that needs to be admitted is that the vast majority of programmers are going to spend the bulk of their time programming for those nonprogramming users, and when they do so, the systems they use are going to be programming are largely driven by the choices those users make. In other words, a world where only techies use Linux is a world where most of the programming effort is spent on Windows. We can't all program for each other and still make a living.
So me, being a selfish bastard, want lots of nonprogrammers on Linux, as this means that I don't have to spend the bulk of my day writing fucking Windows code.
Linux is certainly not presently suited for people who need their computers to be toasters.
However, this does not excuse trying to scare people off. Just because they don't know anything yet doesn't mean they're unwilling to learn.
The first time you logged into a Unix system, if I'd handed you a tape and said "here, recover the Samba configuration from the third dump session on here", would you have known what to do? I seriously doubt it.
Computers are always approaching ease of use. It's not a point, it's a process, but if you oppose it you are in an awfully Luddite-ish position.
Linux is proving the point that just because the interface *CAN* be improved to where anybody can use it, doesn't mean the guts under the hood have to be inaccessible.
It would be a very wonderful thing if we can continue to improve both. Don't try to put the "ubiquitous computing" genie back in it's bottle, it's gotten quite too large to fit in there. Instead, try helping the process.
If you insist on denying the need, rest assured that technology will march along without you.
Bad anything is bad. That's why we call it "bad" to begin with.
Power does not preclude elegance and ease of use.
Complexity does not bring power, nor does simplicity bring ease of use.
A well-designed project can be powerful and easy to use. Some designers do this instinctively, some have to work at it a bit.
Linux's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: the ability to write absolutely hideous code. If you can't write it badly, chances are you won't be allowed to write it very well either.
-- Old Man Kensey
Posted by OGL:
>2. If you average 6 keystrokes per second and it
>takes 3 seconds to move
>your hand to the mouse, move it to the desired
>location, and place the
>hand back on the keyboard, you have lost 18
>keystrokes.
I really HATE this kind of argument, which CLUI users repeat all the time. First of all, I don't average 6 keystrokes a second, I'm not that good a typist. And even if I were, constantly typing in order to use my computer makes my hands tired, and as a result makes me feel uncomfortable. Likewise, I have the ability to instantly place a mouse cursor on any point on my two monitors (too much quake2 for me I guess). I guess what I'm trying to say is: if you like CLUI fine, but don't try to push it on the rest of us just because you have some bogus statistics. I can only use an xterm to manage files, because of the paucity of useful Linux file managers. But if I find myself doing tedious work such as deleting a lot of dissimilar files, my hands quickly grow tired and achey. Conclusion? Usually a compromise is best.
-W.W.
OsX like it's predecessor NeXTstep covers over and controls it's underlying unix, but it's still unix and it still needs a root user and sysadminning to keep it in good working order. OsX will have loads of cute user tools to do this, but even GUI configurators require a minimum of cluefulness.
Since BeOS is very much designed as a desktop system, it has much less of this complication.
Posted by DonR:
This guy has lost sight that people use computers for their function. It shouldn't matter to Joe Public whether, eg, his email app is running on Windows, Linux or trained mammals so long as it does compliant email.
Compliant? *Snicker*
*chuckle*
*ROFL*
---
Donald Roeber
So keep it complicated and hard to understand? And that will make them set up their systems better? Get real. They set it up wrong BECAUSE its complicated. Keeping it hard to use will not solve this problem.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Don't always think that everyone has to run linux, because that is most certainly not the case. We certainly don't make cars so that every tom dick and harry can think they are a mechanic...
In the end, I really don't care, 'cause I use FreeBSD.
that most people have lives and don't find how many commands they can pipe together on one command line the least bit fascinating. These nerds (GNUrds?) wouldn't know this because they spend 16 hours a day writing code that can only be understood by themselves (job security) while living off nachos and twinkies and drinking cans of Jolt. A date tonight? Nah, I can't. I have to code this pointer-to-a-pointer-to-a-function which calls a property in another class. You nerds lead such interesting lives!
The average person considers a computer to be a tool invented for the purpose of performing work, not a be-all and end-all in itself. They use it for their work, leave at 5 and go home to their families (something the ultra-geek knows nothing about).
At least Linus Torvalds has his priorities straight. He can be a (self-admitted) computer nerd and still have a life. Many of his followers, unfortunately, cannot.
1) Remember, the average IQ is, by definition, only 100.
2) A good strategy would be like whut Bushnell said about video games: make them easy to learn (so the player is quickly 'engaged' in the game) and difficult to master (so it can be challenging to the advanced player). An ideal Linux would have something for everyone (Face it, that's what M$ tries to do) - for the neophyte, it would come from a store preloaded with the os, browser, office suite, Internet dialup, printer, ready to plug in, hook to the phone, turn on and hit the net running, or writing letters, creating databases, publishing web pages, etc, etc, as easy as sliding in an antorun CD. If enough boxes were sold like that the initial development cost could be brough way down.
Later on, as the user becomes more experienced, s/he could graduate all the way up to kernel hacking and development if they so desire.
It would also have to have some way of makeing system backup easily, snapshots - that way
a nervous user could make a backup of their entire system, then change various configs or install software and if they hose it, boot the recovery floppy and and do a restore to the last backup.
(That's what I do even with M$ products,
GHOST is great for that!)
BooBOo
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Clueless users complaining are, indeed, terrible. In order to get rid of them, however, the proper thing to do is to get them to read good documentation before they talk to anyone. However, it is far better to get users to find the answers to their questions on their own than to give up on the topic.
.fvwmrc was perfectly fine, and I used it until I decided I cared.
Nobody who's failed to document something they let someone else try to use, proofread that documentation, and get someone who didn't already understand the topic to understand it by way of that documentation can really say RTFM without being somewhat hypocritical. Ideally, the answer to any question would be RTFM, with a reference to TFM, which would actually answer the question, as well as an explanation of how the user should have found the answer without asking the question. Any question that can't be answered this way is a sufficiently good question to deserve help.
On the subject of computers-as-toasters, why not? I'm perfectly happy with Apache, which I have done essentially nothing to configure. It would be great if anyone could set up a new Linux box with an afternoon of waiting for downloads. For complicated or esoteric stuff, it is fine for the process to be more involved. I'm rebuilding my whole system, and it's made my learn a lot of stuff. I've configured an MTA recently, and I had to read a bunch of documentation to do anything interesting. This is fine, and probably good. Users ought to understand anything they want to mess with. On the other hand, if what you want to do with your computer is as simple as making toast, it should be as easy as using a toaster.
Primarily, ease-of-use in the presence of customizability is a matter of good defaults. I've spent a long time by now customizing fvwm. I have strange shortcuts that are efficient but arcane (Shift-shift, Alt-alt, &c). On the other hand, when I was starting out, the default
Ideally, new users should be presented with an interface that isn't particularly quirky and behaves the way they expect. They should then be encouraged to try to make things work the way they would prefer. Then they should have to slog through complicated config files, and figure out strange features. Before that, they should be able to just have things work, so they can configure other things.
Imagine: you're sitting down to configure your kernel. You start up a text editor to edit it, but none of the keys do what you expect. You try to read the man page, but it scrolls right by, and your xterm won't scroll back. You try to pipe it through less, but the TERM environment variable doesn't seem to be set. The shell you're running is clearly neither csh or bash, and neither of those seem to be in your path. Oh, and you can't get the window manager to shift the focus back to the text editor.
Some things have to work before you can do anything. I've spent enough time running off a minimal (or sub-minimal) boot floppy to know that I expect computers to be as simple as toasters for some things. It really sucks when 'ls' doesn't just work. I don't really care if 'ls' is pretty without any configuration, but I do need it to list files without any configuration.
As if "newbie" wasn't a bad enough moniker for people new to Linux, now we call them "clueless" as well? That's so freakin' lame. Maybe that one dude was right - you are a bunch of arrogant bastards.
I've spent time in IRC channels like #linux trying to explain to migrating Windows users how to install various distributions of LINUX. I usually give up after I figure out that people have been telling them to go Debian because "it's the best". People, for a semi-knowledgeable user migrating to LINUX who is willing to look up info on security patches regularily, please tell them to go with an easier distribution.
Users who have too much trouble go away saying "LINUX sux" because they can't figure out Debian. Probably half the users are coming to LINUX to try out xxx game (like Quake2). So please keep this in mind if you recommend a distribution to users.
If we've found a good thing, why not share it? An earlier comment was about the difference between "newby" and "clueless." I'll assume you're talking about not spreading linux to the "clueless" community.
Anyway, you sorta sound like the author of the original article. It seems to me that you want linux to be an exclusive club. But you know, the more people that use it, the more applications will be developed and that's a Good Thing.
I think he was not advocatng less documentation,
rather he advocated making cryptic arcane and
powerful (in his mind these are synonimous) OS.
He repeatedly uses the acronym RTFM, which
implies he advocates more documentation.
Well put. I've been using Linux since the SLS days, so I'm one of the "grey-haired old timers" you talk about. I encourage people to use Linux, and I back that up by helping out newbies as much as possible. I help out friends and coworkers, spend a moderate amount of time on #LinuxHelp, and I post to the comp.os.linux.* hierarchy frequently. Last night, for example, I spent about 45 minutes in a /msg window with a guy helping him get X running on his video card, then got his mouse working, then KDE up and running. All that to say that I have a good deal of patience helping newbies get their feet under them.
On the other hand, I also understand where the author here is coming from. I'm not sure clueless is really the word I'd use to describe them, but there are plenty of newbies out there who just refuse to read any documentation at all, and just expect things to magically work. Then they come to you for "help" and get really angry when you point them to something they could take five minutes to read and would solve all their problems. I agree that telling people "bugger off and RTFM" is worse than no answer at all, but at the same time it's very frustrating when you point someone to exactly the resource they need in order to help themselves with a minimum of work and they still complain.
Does he mean replace it with a better inetd? (rlinetd or xinetd) or just turn
off all the services that youre not using in your
inetd.conf?
For sure you can't design an application in a vacuum, but that doesn't mean that user interface issues should creep into the application design either. The problem is that a useful application has the potential of being used in many different ways. If the design of the application is such that it is tightly integrated with a particular approach then you end up with an inflexable system that is difficult to extend and maintain.
There should be a seperation of concerns between the application (aka business logic (but that has a corporate connotation the belittles the broad range of this concepts application)) and interface. This has been a common design idiom for quite a while. I more recent times (~the last five years) communications mechanisms (e.g. CORBA, DCOM, RMI) have made it easier to exploit exactly this principle to the end of distributed applications (yes, I'm aware that distribution has been around for decades in other forms. I'm pointing out the fairly recent collaboration of a design idiom and current technologlical advances).
Posted by DonR:
/. readers would agree that the proper sequence is some variation: (RTFM, mess with it a bit, try something different, repeat) find local help, THEN, AS A LAST RESORT, call tech support.
:)
I think most
Personally, I find emailing tech support to be much more productive. (providing the problem that you're having isn't with your MTA
It allows you to compose your problem in a clear and conscice manner, and allows them to properly research the answer.
I only call if its been a few days since my email and I haven't had a reply, or if they ask me to. Sometimes its easier to walk through a problem over the phone.
One thing I do have to say.... I've had great experiences with all unix software vendors I've needed support from. Truth be told, this is a small number.
---
Donald Roeber
Eh? You aren't given the option of removing packages from RedHat before installing them? Either you've never actually installed RedHat or you are just plain lying though your teeth. You can add/remove packages to install under RedHat quite easily using it's install program. Just because *YOU* don't know how to do it doesn't mean a damn thing.
Medical school is designed to filter out the
dumb people. Usually it works. Your orthopedist
made it through the dumb filter and you can walk
now.
You are happy with your smart doctor but
want us to support dumb bandwagon-jumpers.
It's a complete contridiction.
I forget where I first here this from but here goes:
"Make a computer easy enough for an idiot to use and only idiots will use it."
-?-
It is true that computers are not as simple to use a televisions. But they should be. Most people just use their systems for web surfing, email, word processing, and the like. These people should not have to dig through arcane config files in order to use their systems. Remember, to anyone but the hobbyist time spent setting up a system is wasted time.
The average user cannot and will not dig through arcane config files. If we want Linux to be successful we must make certain that they never have to. They have better things to do. They have productive things to do.
Here's an experiment. Pull up the man page for strtok(). Now try to figure out what it does. I submit, if you don't already know approximatly how it functions, then your screwed. The man page is, at best, cyptic. Strtok() is but one of many cryptic man pages. How can any novice user be anything but frustrated when faced by instructions such as these?
-- You can't spell geek without 'EE'
What you want flavors of flavors of Linux? Who's gonna buy that?
Screw the people who don't want to learn anything, they can live with Microsoft. That's all they need!
We don't need "users", we need the hackers.
At last, the perfect way for the elitists to continue their high priesthood, conducting their mystic rites in a tongue unknown to the awed rabble. Create an OS that only accepts input from a Morse key (in Morse Code, of course). Or maybe we could go back to front panel toggle switches. Or how about having to use Morse to input in hex, or binary. Security through mysticism!
(and print the manuals in the ascii numbers for the letters)
(I'll send the binary of that OS to the Truly Deserving Elect among you as soon as The Divine Source reveals in to me in a vision)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
...but nobody listened.
The author appears to be clinging on to the
old idea that ease-of-use and raw power don't
mix. NEXTSTEP is as much counter-proof as
you need.
I wish dpkg were the standard packing tool for most Linux distros instead of the proprietary rpm.
Last time I checked[0], rpm was GPL - hardly proprietary... Check your facts, man!
argathin
[0] about five minutes ago...
A few observations...
Another simple relationship "the easier Linux is to use and set up then the more people will use it".
Just because someone doesn't want to learn how to setup sendmail's conf files doesn't make them a Neanderthal.
Wake up - Computers bore the **** out of most people. They use them because they have to, not because they like them.
Linux's main application at the moment is as a server os, mainly because WinNT is so poor at it - and overpriced. If there is any desire in the Linux community to see more Linux on the desktop and really kick Microsoft it has to be made easier to use. How about a project to develop the kind of install wizards you get on Microsoft platforms?
Mark J
UNIX needs CLI and CLI only. That's the gist of this message. Oh, and forget the stupid people.
That's an attitude that will really get you a lot of support. How about this as plans for world domaination(tm):
Get people started on RedHat. I've been running Linux for almost 7 years now, starting with the MCC interim and TAMU releases on 6 diskettes.
I consider myself advanced enough to talk for a long time on the subject of system administration. There comes a time when you are able to sit back and say "I don't want to look up the commands to ifconfig anymore". I'm at that phase. I can just as easily (and sometimes do) hard-code in my network settings in an rc.local file as using netcfg.
Users should start with RedHat to get themselves accustomed to the way UNIX works. Everything's in shell script, so it's pretty easy to see what's going on. SYSV init scripts make it even easier to see. Once used to the way UNIX works, then can move on to other distros (Slackware, Debian, etc) and really get their hands dirty.
Newbies are good, we need them. They are willing to learn and show us what we need to fix. I work with them constantly trying to get this thing easier to install. But the one thing that separates newbies from clueless... the willingness to learn.
The clueless aren't willing to learn, and linux isn't ready for them... yet. Give it time, we will get there. But to develop the system, we need newbies, no clueless. We also need lots of developers who can take the newbies ideas and make them reality. We need the developers more than anyone else. And because linux isn't run by marketers, it will remain a system for developers and newbies for quite a while. But give it time, the clueless can join us and be happy in a while, just not now.
Sure, GIMP is a great example. One of it's key features is extensibility by programming in scheme. That's a very GUI-ish sort of thing to do. The same can be said of spreadsheets with macro languages of some kind (VBA, BASIC, guile) or older versions of AutoCADD or WordPerfect that still manage to be more efficient than their more modern counterparts.
Then there's the GREP clone you mention.
That one's really absurd. The problem with grep isn't the obscure syntax, it's the obscure concept. Some programmers go blank when you mention regular expressions nevermind laymen.
Computers still remain the morphing tool. Some of those tools that a computer may morph into still have inherent complexity that dwarfs these mere CLI vs. GUI squabbles.
Nevermind, you never address how it is that GUI's manage to compose many small tools together to solve arbitrary problems. THAT and the need to be less dependent on what some developer has provided for your convenience are things that still make GUI's less powerful.
Mind you, they are not necessarily less powerful. It just so happens that in pandering towards convenience they tend to leave out more complicated concepts for the sake of that convenience (like RE's).
Very well said. I've often wondered why the computer culture is so eager to eat thier young. Perhaps it's our genreal propensity towards being anti-social. Or maybe we are impatient with other humans because they are not always "logical" like the machines we love. Maybe it's the over abundance of male hormones...(Where are all the female nerds :)
I don't know, maybe we just need to grow up a little...
is coming from. Just goto any linux discussion group. I frequent comp.os.linux.misc. About the 10th time some asshole asks WHY he can't use the WinModem with Linux just makes you want to retch. People like that don't even read the messages in the newsgroup their posting to.
I learned Slack all by myself thank you, with some help from Running Linux and a lot of web time LOOKING for docs, and answers.
jmr
While I agree that the clueless are painful and counterproductive elements, the conclusion drawn is extremely narrow in its vision. Why is it always a GUI vs CLI argument? As if these were the complete set of possible interfaces in the universe.
Unix is a powerful--and complex--paradigm of computing. It grew from a philosophy that emphasizes combining small tools to accomplish larger and more complex tasks. It works wonderfully, and it takes a great deal of time and effort to master the toolset. Worth it? Yes, but lets not be such luddites that we can't envision an interface that is both powerful and easier to work with!
GUI isn't the answer either, IMO. The basic GUI metaphor is almost as dated as the Unix shell. If one will honestly contemplate the stupefying lack of innovation in interface development, one must come to the conclusion that the GUI metaphor we are so familiar with is not the answer to ease of use questions.
I, for one, refuse to accept the notion that we cannot invent an interface which includes both the power of the Unix paradigm (tool combination) and the rich presentation abilities of a GUI (it's only current strongpoint). There is something better to be created, but we as an industry and as an academic community have grossly neglected this area.
Perhaps it is simply waiting a breakthrough in another field (holography?) to generate interest. Perhaps it is a lack of vision, or simply a growth-stunting fervor about command lines. As in all things, we benefit more by seeking answers to problems than by laying blame for them. Whatever the case may be, the point remains that we ought not to limit ourselves to current paradigms in our search for answers.
It is a challenge. Not all of us excel in every facet of computer technology. Most of us excel in only a few. We must therefore fight against our own tendencies to "think within the box," while continuing to fight for that which all scientists agree is the key to progress and discovery: the sharing of knowledge and the freedom which enables us to.
This guy has lost sight that people use computers for their function. It shouldn't matter to Joe Public whether, eg, his email app is running on Windows, Linux or trained mammals so long as it does compliant email.
When Linux+KDE or Gnome is a tick-the-box PREINSTALLED, PRECONFIGURED option from most major computer vendors then the newbies will find themselves able to get their work done without bothering Pablo.
But I think the newbies are telling Pablo something important about the OS he has given over a lot of expensive brainspace to learn about: the shell prompt is the wrong layer for people who don't want or need to hack but to get their work done.
I don't consider half the things you have to do to get Linux (and other systems) installed real learning. Even after so many years of 'improvements' in PCs they're still technologically inferior to the Mac II I used 10 years ago, which could autoconfigure the bus without user intervention (PCI systems tend to have all devices share the same interrupt, and there's no autovector support). Writing XFree config files for instance should be considered a necessary evil, not an 'opportunity for learning'. Been there, done that, and if someone automates the process I don't have to do it again.
No, it's divided into people who want to learn *different things*
I first installed Linux becuase I'd enjoyed using Unix when I was at college - nice, stable environment, decent scripting, I liked XWindows etc...
However, when I installed it I realised that there was a whole side of it that I'd never really had to bother with before - installation and system administration, and frankly, I wasn't interested it it. - I don't want to *configure* a computer, I want to *use* it. Now I'm not saying that I'm adverse to a little bit of tweaking here and there, but I just found that with Linux it was complete pain in the butt. There is a whole lot of documentation that comes with it, but all the HOWTO's are very badly organised, and it can be quite time consuming trying to find the snippet of information that you want. Now, if I was a sys admin, obviously I'd be willing to spend the time looking for it, but all I wanted to do was try out Linux on my computer, to see if it was the kind of environment that I'd like to program in.
There's all kind of interesting things that I *want* to learn, but many of the arcane intracacies of Linux aren't among them.
cheers,
Tim
For all you "newbies" out there, you're always welcome at Everything Linux - which has a Q&A help forum as well for your questions.
I totally agree. Clueless users who manage to get the OS installed will almost always have no idea how to secure their system. I have seen people who get RedHat installed and have their inetd.conf totaly open, several services running they will NEVER use, and an old kernel. I think a big problem we have to worry about are these machines becoming cracker targets. Script kiddies just love to compromise theses machines and use them to mount attacks on other machines. The clueless user probably has no idea they have been cracked and just go about their business.
Actually, there is a way to do it: after inserting the bread, just type format a: a couple of times, and then press the eject button. The bread should come out warm and crummy
For all you "newbies" out there, you're always welcome at Everything Linux - where there's even a Q&A forum for your questions.
Hey, stop mocking that comment. There are documented cases where people have used floppy drives as garbages, etc. The above average person is DUMB. nuf said.
-?-
Irrational? I've had to teach Windows over the phone to people who don't get the concept of single click vs. double click. After about the three hundredth iteration, you start having nothing but contempt for clueless idiots who think that installing a modem is like installing a toaster, and then take it out on you when it's not. All they want to do is download dirty pictures, not turn into computer techies.
I used to work in a computer lab, so I know the sort of people you are talking about. But it is important to realize that the bellicose morons who blame YOU for THEIR ignorance are a small minority. Many people honestly want to learn, and there is no reason not to be nice and help them.
-Eric
Pointless technical note: the package manager isn't "all written in Perl". The core (dpkg) is C, the more powerful tools (dselect, apt) are C++. It's the parts of it that create new Debian packages (dpkg-buildpackage et. al.) that are Perl.
> In general, the whole Linux coding and packaging community is sadly lacking even the basics of usability testing, proper screen and
> application design. The tools are generally based on incompatible cultural background, exspect you to know different paradigms
> where you could reasonably exspect them to work alike and all this is even before we start talking about documentation.
Actually, I would slightly modify this statement - the community lacks "centralized" usability testing, proper screen & application design. Instead, it just uses an evolutionary approach: designs which people can't stand die, the others live & compete with each other. I think this is a direct application of the "meme" paradigm of idea development.
As more people become part of this evolutionary scheme, common usability ideas & designs will get absorbed into many products & become "standard", much like biological life (cells, hearts, etc). But also like biological life, there will be almost infinite variations of the basic schemes.
But then, people associated with a distribution have to be careful. When I started using Debian (after moving from Red Hat), I had a lot of learning to do, but through reading and tinkering, it wasn't that hard to pick up. If a distribution's 'followers' are too quick to scream at new users because they haven't RTFM, they might not have new users at all.
The problem is, a lot of Linux help area object not to just answering questions, but telling people where to find answers. It's one thing to refuse to tell someone how to set up X, it's another to refuse to tell them how to find out.
All in all, though, I've found OSS support to be on par or better than any commercial help line I've used. I've never had an opportunity to use a commercial Linux support provider, but I'm sure they'd be even better still.
I think a lot of people are falling for the same bipolar line that Microsoft uses so well to fend off its competition. The Microsoft line is essentially that while Linux (or whatever other OS they are talking about) is more stable, it has less support, and you must be some sort of techie to get it to work, as if stability and user-friendliness are mutually exclusive. They are not. I'd go so far as to say that most of the facets of software that people are throwing around here, "user-friendliness", "configurability", "stability" are not really particularly related at all. It is not particularly hard to add an "expert" mode.
I also think there is a tendency for people to attach themselves to a particular technological system and then view any changes as dangers. But the implication to this is that the system is perfect. There are no perfect systems, however. Linux is not a perfect system. It can be improved. And improving one area, like user friendliness, can be done without hurting another area, like configurability.
One of the things that I like about Linux is its flexability. If I want to make my machine run a Windows-like GUI, or an Amiga like GUI, or whatever, I can do it. I don't have to worry about someone else, who doesn't like GUIs, making that decision for me. And if someone else wants to add packages to make it more configurable, or more friendly, or more whatever, well, more power to them! I don't have to use it...
Which is the whole point, I thought. Not having to put up other people's ideas about what's best.
why are you comparing linux to windows 95/98?
are you retarded?
Linux is networking OS, it can be used as a desktop OS, but it primary strength come form its powerful server capabilitites. If the person doesn't give a rats arse about networks, then let them install BeOS, now thats a sweet OS for the "average computer user"
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
The first hurdle is quite a big one, it's hard to compile your first kernel when you don't even know what make and pipe is/does, the FAQs explains it all nicely enough but doesn't really help you because when you move over to nix you have to think different.
Having to think different is what I eventually like about Linux. But I guess many users really need a geek to guide them into the light or something.
But once you have passed the Debian install it is superior to RedHat in most respects.
Sorry about that. Seems my "threshold" was not set to the proper setting in order to see ALL the messages (someting I find odd since I would assume that the DEFAULT would be to see everything). Looks like Slashdot is becoming about as intuitive as Windows (OK, maybe that's not fair but...).
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
You have got to be kidding. Ease of use hasn't changed the world?
So, you honestly think that nobody except propellerheads uses computers today?
Of course you don't; that was a troll. Entered, no doubt, from a GUI web browser.
>>
All they want to do is download dirty pictures, not turn into computer techies.
>>
All my lawyer wants to do is download useful legal information that might save me, not turn into a computer techie.
All my father wants to do is communicate with long-lost friends and relatives, not turn into a computer techie.
All the environmental activist wants to do is organize a mailing list so people can make the world a little better, not turn into a computer techie.
All my girlfriend wants to do is send me e-mail saying she loves me when she's on the other side of the world, not turn into a computer techie.
God forbid that even attempt to do so...
It shouldn't, but for historical reasons it is (difficult). The standard assumptions allow someone to just plug in a toaster and have it work. The assumptions required to just plug in a modem are not in place. Plug and play (plug and pray?) is an attempt to solve the problem.
BTW, installing American toaster (120v AC) in Europe (220v DC?) doesn't work.
Installing a toaster.
1) Find flat ledge space.
2) Put toaster on ledge.
3) Plug power cord into convenient outlet.
Assumes ledges are flat and not too slippery
Assumes toaster made for domestic power.
Installing a modem.
1) Find a spare slot.
2) Find a spare IO address (so cpu can talk to modem)
3) Find a spare IRQ (so modem can wake up cpu)
4) Convince OS that modem exists.
5) Convince Application that modem exists.
This is an example of where Standards *should* be applied. Imagine if each Power&Light company distributed its own favorite voltage. Then modems would be easy and toasters hard.
I like it. IF Linux advocates want it on people's desktops (another debate entirely), why not do a desktop distribution that includes (for example) a kernel with PPP support by default? Leave out sendmail, ftp, and other "server" stuff.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Bad anything is bad. That's why we call it "bad" to begin with.
Power does not preclude elegance and ease of use.
Complexity does not bring power, nor does simplicity bring ease of use.
A well-designed project can be powerful and easy to use. Some designers do this instinctively, some have to work at it a bit.
Linux's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: the ability to write absolutely hideous code. If you can't write it badly, chances are you probably can't write it very well either.
-- Old Man Kensey
I really agree with this... We have many people here who want to install linux just because they heard it is good. They don't have a clue about what it is and the thing they worry about is: Will ICQ 98 run on this... no comment!
I also agree on the fact that there should be some kind of step OS to learn more about Unix without beeing complicated... (ste OS... NeXTSTEP... get it?)
The author suggested BeOS but I really think that MacOS X would be more appropriate... It is difficult to get easier to learn then a Mac and you get your consistent user interface and the builds I have seen offer a lot of configuration options in the GUI but it is always possible to open a term and edit the files... That is what I think makes this OS the best to learn Unix... Not to mention the nice OO Framework... And they would get the commercial applications they worry so much about....
Anyway.. I don't want to start a flame war or anything but I really think we should recommend Mac OS X instead of Be to learn Unix... even if "for now" it requires special hardware...
But the world _is_ divided between those who want to learn, and those who don't.
I don't see why we should care about those who don't.
I had NO problem whatsoever in removing the admittedly annoying FVWM95 and installing WindowMaker instead
The way i read it, the problem wasn't changing the default wm, but that RedHat replaced hand edits to the config files on reboot. Or is that fixable too? i wouldn't know, never used RedHat myself and so i have little to say about it.
--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
Leapfrog's Theory of Software Complexity:
In order to make a program easier to use (more user-friendly), you must make it less powerful for the advanced user. In order to make a program more powerful, it must become more complex, and therefore harder to use.
Case in point: Adobe Photoshop vs. MSPAINT.
Anyone who's ever used Adobe Photoshop (or, for that matter, the GIMP) knows that these are real power tools. They are incredibly useful and quite powerful, with a great many configurable options. But, I have known users who couldn't stand Photoshop because there were "too many buttons". These users turn to Paintbrush because it's easier to use. They don't care about powertools. Why use a screw gun when this rusty old philips head screwdriver works just fine? Sure, it's easier to use, but the results are vastly different.
The big three: Debian, Redhat, Slackware
Now, I don't intend to start any flamewars here, but The Way I See It (tm) is as follows. I've used this metaphor many times, and it always seems to fit.
Redhat: Redhat is a linux distribution designed for Windows users. It's been that way for some time, and the approach they're taking doesn't seem to be changing. They provide a whiz-bang easy installation, literally dozens of annoying pop-up programs with which to configure your system, and even the default window manager looks like windows 95. Redhat has done this because they want more people to be able to use it. I ran Redhat for about 2 weeks before I got just as sick of it as I did of windows because even though I know what files to edit, and where to edit them (on a normal system) Redhat would undo my changes every time I rebooted because I didn't use the "configurator" to do it. It took me 9 days to figure out how to change my hostname. The first 5 days were repeated attempts at editing /etc/hostname and the rc.d scripts over and over and being disgusted that every time I rebooted Redhat would just undo my configurations.
Slackware: Slackware is the exact opposite. It offers absolutely no configuration tools of its own. What you get is what you get, period. Slackware was my first Linux install. It was great fun. Every time I wanted something, I downloaded the source, compiled it, and installed it by hand. If there was a configuration problem, I was in there hacking kernel code, changing /etc files, moving symbolic links so my X server would go higher than 320x200. So I learned how to do it The Right Way(tm). And it was a valubale experience. This is why I think of Slackware as Linux for Dos users. Everything you want to do, you do by editing /etc files, installing it yourself, homebrewing directory structures (/opt? Sure! /foobar? No problem! /usr/local/foobar? Hey, you're the boss, buddy!) and most importantly, reading the gosh-danged manuals. My first month as a linux user involved 15% actually using the system and 85% playing RTFM(*). But looking back, I wouldn't want it any other way.
Debian: (Always save the best for last, I say...) In my opinion, Debian offers the best of what's around. You start out with a relatively simple base install (I remember using the magic 7 floppies) that's not quite as easy as RedHat, but in turn offers immense flexibility and configuration options. Then you reboot and are whisked away to the land of dselect, where literally thousands of packages lie before you, waiting for you to pick and choose what you want and don't want. Each one has a short description of what it does, and a great many have the informational notice "If you don't know what this is, you don't need it", so all but the most clueless of newbies can, and do, stumble through a Debian installation and still come out with a useful (if not optimal) system to fit their needs. Once the install is done, you're left with a machine that looks and behaves just like a "normal" unix box. If you want to change configurations, you can elect to use handy pop-up configurator boxes, but it certainly won't keep you from editing your configuration files. And the default window manager is chosen while you're installing the software. It's not magically pre-determined for you. And if you don't like the wm you chose, you can easily edit .xinitrc's to change it. Almost all the config files are well documented and in the places you'd expect them to be. For these reasons, as well as a "general look and feel" category, I've always considered Debian to be Linux for Linux (or Unix) users. People who want to get their hands dirty. Who want to edit config files, tweak settings, and recompile kernels, but not have to worry about downloading and compiling gcc and libc and m4 again. The debian package manager handles all that pesky downloading and installing for you, with over 2 thousand different packages to choose from. Oh yeah, the package manager is all written in Perl, too. I like Perl.
Conclusion: Clueless Newbies
The masses have spoken. Average Joe User wants a system that's easy to use, easy to learn, and supports all the hardware and software available now. As such, he has no need to use Debian. Or Slackware, or Redhat, for that matter. Let him suffer Windows, at least until the DOJ tears M$ a new corn-chute. For the person who wants to run a server, but doesnt know anything other than NT, point him towards RedHat. (at least its not quite as bad as windows). For someone who really wants to learn Linux, and learn it the hard way, off to Slackware with ye! And finally, for the real power user, the person who has been around the block a few times, knows what they want and how they want it, Debian is the only way to play.
At least, that's the way I see it.
Leapfrog, the mediocre.
(*)- I always saw this as Read The Fine Manual.
I have tried all the 'major' distributions. RedHat, SuSE, Slackware, Debian, and TurboLinux. I have found that Slackware and SuSE are the two that were easier to install, and Redhat came in 3. (IMHO)
Having tried Debian, I found its install very difficult. Deselect is not 'user friendly'.(IMHO)
First something to remember and for newbies to realize is that Linux is UNIX. Linux has cron, it has ls, it uses the same commands as UNIX, and basically it is UNIX. The big differences are that Linux is free or available at a relatively low price; it is available for most hardware (many versions exist on intel platform thou); some versions of Linux have a relatively easy to install.
Having used NT/95, Solaris, SCO, AIX, MAC, and various Linux versions, no operating system is completely user friendly. Adding hardware to any system can be either easy or a chore. Installing any sytem can take and hour or a day.
Now about the article. Who is Debian trying to target as there audience? If they are going for experienced users then maybe they need a warning label "caution this distribution is not for newbies" (LOL). The fact is that most of what you can do in debian you can do in any other distribution.
So why pick Debain over another distribution? I have been using Linux for several years now almost 3. I have just switched to RH because I want the stability of Linux with 'less' adminstration. I feel I know enought about *NIX to do with any distro (even Solaris, or AIX) what I do on Linux.
I like my GUI thou.... I like to do administration thru my GUI. I do not have time anymore to be screwing on my computer to get it to work, I need a workstartion that works and functions, not to tinker with and change stuff. Once a *NIX system is installed it is a matter of editing the right files.. Yes I have used vi and occasionally still do, but I also wrote my own editor in tcl/tk to make editing of these files a lot easier that is like notepad for windows. Cutting, copying, pasting from files is easier in a GUI than vi(IMHO), especially when using multiple windows. Yes I used win 3.1, but I also edited all those ini files, and batch scripts so that my machaine would do what I wanted it to do. Now I edit registry files and /etc/rc.d files too.
so who is this person to say screw the newbies? Linux is not for Newbies, it is for peole who want a real operating system. Pepl who can handle having power OS and know what to do with it. It is also for serious network adminstrators.
If a newbie want ot learn Linux I agree with him start with slackware or SuSE or Redhat. They are easiest to install, and have tools for administering. However when a user gets more familiar with man, xterm.
I user the GUI more and more often these days, but still write batch scripts to automate things like compiling a new kernel.
If this person want to stay on the command line let him, and i hope the command line stays around ther are times when it is needed to just do it on console.
what keeps me with Linux is that I find it does out perform NT/95. I have a DUAL boot, and Linux works better!
I also find my self getting on line to find information on configuring this or configuring that, still after 3 years. There is no way a newbie should be using Debain. I'd be suipprised if he got it installed. It was a real pain when I tried it after using slackware for 2 years.
well debain canot ignore the newbies, but they shodl suggest that the newbies start learning Linux with another distribution or get readdy to read... hey my bookmarks are metalab.unc.edu/LDP, and www.linux.org.. those are the first two places I hit for info, and start reading HOWTO...
so run that script and come back to you machine in an hour.... Linux is still for developers
Only 'flamers' flame!
specifically the latest Debian release.
1) To learn Linux.
2) I can not stand winblows.
Computers are not television, but then all that TV does is show images at you. The fact that computing is still in its infancy is never picked up by consumers... they always expect the technology to make up for their own deficiencies.
One of the main reasons for the proliferation of computers today is the fact that so many "new" and hence "clueless" users have been getting into the technology. The industry needs them, for they are the ones that have the money that pays for the inovation. .xinitrc file in order to get the initial Xterm window to have the correct font, or for her to understand all of the cryptic commands.
Can any of you really imagine your grandmother using linux? The simple fact is that some things, especially Linux, are to powerful for the normal computer user. I believe that they can gain much from the stability of the OS, but I again don't see my grandmother greping through a
Now I don't advocate turning Linux into a Unich but one of the main ways that Mac or Win is superior IS in their ease of use. Or at least in them having a less steep learning curve. A medium can be struck between ease of use and power.
If someone could come up with a "windows clone" that ran on a Linux Kernel and then kept many of the good features of it, then I think there is where it will start making inroads into normal users' homes. But that is just my $.02.
I've been using Debian for a year and I still can't get the help screen to do anything useful. Whenever I press a page key it vanishes. After fighting with it for about thirty minutes the first time I used it I pretty much gave up and just stuck to "+", "-", "_", and "i". It works well enough until Apt gets finished. :-)
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Actually I think you are simply some perl script coded with some AI to automatically bash Redhat users. Too bad it doesn't pass the Turing test.
I've used Redhat for a couple months now. I've edited lots of things by hand. I added a new user by hand, and even edited my XF86Config. I never had any trouble getting past any "popup" boxes. In fact I haven't even SEEN any popup boxes since I installed Linux. linuxconf has been available, if I wanted it, but I prefer not to use it - that's simply my own personal choice.
I have no idea what you are talking about, and quite frankly, neither do you.
Next time: practice what you preach. Take the time to learn how to use a distribution before you start bashing it, or you'll end up looking as you are now like the stupid clueless newbie you hate so much.
Here endeth the lesson...
No, I am not asking for a punch line. Both are tools to do other things. I have a friend who is a programmer and also does woodworking. When I asked him what steel alloy his hammer head is made of, what wood the handle is made of, what he thinks about the difference in stiffness between fiberglass and wood, he didn't know. I think the guy should not be allowed to handle a hammer.
Or should he?
To use another example, the vast majority of computer programmers I know don't know how to change brake pads, much less what the spark plug gap should be nor what the allowable clearance for their crankshaft bearings ought to be. Perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to own a car. Should they?
The vast majority of people use computers as tools, as a means to do a job faster, simpler, easier. If we are serious about Linux competing against Windows, we _must_ look at the linux kernel, the libraries and applications as a tool and ask -not ourselves, but others - if this is a simple to tool to use to do work.
Otherwise, it's just a toy. And completing a difficult install is simply too much like
the old joke: "like peeing your pants in a dark suit. You get a warm feeling, but nobody notices."
I think Linux, associated libraries and programs make a solid, reliable tool for people to use. I flatly and absolutely disagree with the writer of "Clueless users..." These "clueless users" shouldn't have to learn the operating system equivalent of the spark plug gap to do their work simpler, quicker and easier.
RTFM? Yes, but sometimes that just doesn't always cut it. Just like sometimes when RedHat says to "do this" according to the manual, and it doesn't work. I know that's not what the article was focusing on, but still...
Aren't these supposed to be vices, not virtues?
Apparently, someone hasn't read his Camel book in a long time.
Leapfrog, the unnecessarily gaudy.
I don't care about people who want to use Linux but don't want to learn anything about it. I don't care about Linux world domination. I don't want to spend my free time holding hands through Linux installs day in and day out, and I don't really care if my mom can use Linux. So name me elitist.
It seems these days, if you just want to get your work done, or work on things that interest you, you're named an elitist or an asshole. Why should other people be dictating what I should do with my life, simply because I've learned more than they care to?
I say, let the people that want to deal with those who don't want to learn do so. I'll deal with the applications I want and the users I'm interested in.
"The idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able to properly use a given tool without training or understanding is even more wrong for computing than it is for other tools (e.g. automobiles, airplanes, guns, power saws)."
-- Doug Gwyn
But how do you define "tool"? Is a "tool" a feature or a whole program or a whole OS? What I see is people saying that you shouldn't use _any_ tool in the box until you understand _all_, and that's just crap. Many of the people looking down their nose at newbies "shouldn't" be using GIMP, then, and practically none should be using Linux.
I agree that people should know and respect the limits of their knowledge and training, and at least know the risks of attempting something beyond those limits (though they'll never learn without doing so) but Gwyn's formulation is too simplistic.
This would give the best of both worlds. Hell, hackers can hack, and my mom could write emails.
Why aren't we doing this?
Debian has a political axe to grind. So for it ease is not the main thing. That would better describe the KDE group where they are more than willing to put up with software of questionable pedigree to meet an ease objective. Debian isn't like that and users should be clued in accordingly. There is diversity in Linux and you should use what is appropriate for your needs as well as understand your needs.
End users need to know when they should be putting forth the extra effort to deal with a Debian or even Free/OpenBSD or when they really should have gotten a Mac or MacOS 10. They also need to be willing to actually act on those decisions.
NT succeeds primarily by being 'the default option' and people use it whether or not it's appropriate. People need to stop doing that and to start buying according to their needs.
That is ultimately what is needed for capitalism to work and for all of us to reap it's benefits.
Just cut through the crap and buy what you need. Debian may not be it. Slackware may not be it. If not then just move on to other options.
First of all that attitude seems to permiate the Debian distribution from my standpoint.
Second, making things difficult doesn't make them better. The computer sprung forth originally from the desire to make doing math easier. Furthermore, just because I can write out every config file, doesn't mean I always want to. It gets quite monotonous after a while.
Third, what the hell kind of attitude is that? The point of a distribution is to make things easier. If you want to weed out the idiots give people a tar bar containing a kernel, init, a compiler, libc, and either lilo or a boot floppy, and let them build their own system. Damn near all people with a clue could do this. It would suck, and take way too much time, but it could certainly be done.
I can only say this:
I don't (personally) think that people should be allowed to be stupid and even USE a computer. I've said it for years. We cater to stupid people. WHY should we cater to stupid people?
I love Debian (I run slink on the server at work... way more stable than RH) but I hope it stays the way it is. I do, however, hope that Dselect goes the way of the dodo - I had horrible dependency problems when trying to setup the system using Dselect. When I just started using apt-get, it worked great.
Other than that, I personally don't think Debian should change that much. Let RH be the distro for the cluebie (and FIX THE DAMN LEAKY LIBCS). The clueless shouldn't necessarily be denied access, but is it so unreasonable to expect them to think for themselves?
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Linux is a lot harder to install than Windows, but then again, the things you use Windows for are hard.
Access is the worst thing that ever happened to mailing lists. It lets stupid people maintain them. Ever deal with a list that combines city state zip in one field. Some customers still can't figure out why it costs $20/M names to Zip standardardize some of their lists, and others are $300/M.
If you can't install Linux and get a feel for it with an Unleashed! book, THEN YOU'RE TOO DAMN STUPID TO USE A COMPUTER.
Utter nonsense.
This is in response to the whole thread, primarily in disagreement with and rebuttal to AC.
... Let him suffer Windows ...
... turned out to be a hideous language ...
... opinion is that Linux is the worst-implemented of the bunch.
... ... , ad nauseum. Welcome to exponential complexity. .... An important point is that the configurable interface adds complexity and, since it is incomplete, reduces competence.
>metaphor: Debian, Redhat, Slackware
Entertaining and useful. Each distribution tries to do what is best according to the way it sees things. What works and what doesn't is a combination of a lot of little things and a few big things. Default assumptions about hardware also matter. It will be interesting how you will characterize Corel/Linux when it comes out.
>Conclusion: Clueless Newbies. Average Joe User
I understand your point, but should he have to suffer so much?
Right tool for the right job.
Plan A. A different screwdriver for each screw.
Plan B. One screwdriver for all screws.
Neither extreme works. You need something in the middle. There are always tradeoffs. There are *lots* of ways to mess it up.
>In order to make a program easier to use (more user-friendly), you must make it less powerful for the advanced user. In order to make a program more powerful, it must become more complex, and therefore harder to use.
Ultimately true, but it is better if simple things can be done simply, even with the power tools.
>...configurable complexity adds another layer of complexity.
In spades. Ultimately, configurability is indistinguishable from chaos. AC apparently has configured something and thinks he understands configuration. Wrong.
The *first* point of user configuration is the choice of which program to use. The simplest text editor is (DOS) COPY CON filename. Of course correcting mistakes is a pain.
>Ada
If I remember correctly, the design of Ada makes what would be semantic (ie undetectable) errors in say PL/I or Fortran syntactic (ie detectable) errors in Ada. In some respects, Ada is more rigorous than Algol68, with reason. Depending on consequences, not killing troops, this can be a good tradeoff. But if you don't need it, you don't want to pay the penalty. Imagine the horrors if this is a configuration item.
>Putting in dynamically alterable toolbars, menus, popup boxes, etc. puts a huge strain on the computer system (hard disk, ram, processor)
>>Bull. -- Wrong again. Compare hardware for DOS vs Windows.
>... modularity
AC is confusing modularity with a count of "modules". The proper metric counts interfaces and the amount of state information that must be known on both sides. If the Linux kernel is small, monolithic, and with well defined interfaces, it counts as *highly* modular. "NT may be layed out beautifully from the inside". Video drivers in kernel mode and crashes under heavy load say otherwise. Its all the state information that exists on both sides of the interfaces. If efficiency is ever important, it is far easier and cheaper to do the required analysis and design up front, and do it at the lowest level. Adding an efficiency layer on top just does not work.
>...the flashy configurable interface gets in my way a whole lot more than
Exactly. The cure. Configure the configuration,
If it gets everything you need or care about right, it is a good thing. If not, then it is a problem of where did they hide the
>Three great virues of a programmer (as defined by Larry Wall) Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris.
Aren't these supposed to be vices, not virtues? Yeah, I know. Add this for Laziness: There *has* to be a easier (better, faster) way to do this. And expend more effort to indulge the laziness.
Arrggh! This is so true it makes my teeth hurt . . .
The "RTFM!" attitude is nothing more than the usual "holier than thou" crap that makes me hate organized religion.
"Oh, I know how to USE Linux, so I'm obviously the superior intellect"
Give me a freaking break.
I don't know what it's like on your planet, space man, but here in Mayberry, users don't get that choice. Developers write code. Users buy or do not buy based on whether or not it fits their needs.
Yes, I do say that different audiences require different programs. Say, for example, that there came a decree from the heavens that from now on, all word processing, document formatting, publishing, and anything involving words written on the screen needed to be done in Notepad. Joe and Jane User might be happy with it. Mr. Unix Guru would be a little disgruntled, and Mr. Anonymous Publisher would be livid.
But, this is where Open Source shines. Say Mr. Unix Guru (we'll call him, oh, I don't know, Knuth) wants a document formatting system. So he writes himself one and calls it ..er.. TeX. Then, along comes Mr. Publisher and says "Gee, I love that output, but the input is baffling, cryptic, and arcane! Zounds, what can be done? Maybe I'll hire my friend Joe Programmer to write a pretty interface that hides the arcane input. We can sacrifice some of these features.. Hell, who needs Klingon fonts, anyway? Only those pesky Unix guys, that's who." So Joe Programmer takes TeX and the source from whence it came, and writes a nice front end for it, like LyX. Suddenly, everyone is happy, with a maximum of code reuse.
Having "One program that does everything" is absurd. Look at Ada. Ada was designed to be an all-purpose programming language, sponsored by the government. Ada came out. It turned out to be a hideous language to program in because they tried to put so many features into it. Even pedantic tasks were a nightmare, to say nothing of the extremely complex tasks the government wanted it for. So in putting everything into one program, the program could theoretically do everything, but in practice made everything so difficult to do as to become impractical. And don't even get me started on the price and performance issues of such a beast.
And Laziness is always an excuse. The three great virtues of a programmer (as defined by Larry Wall) are Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. Laziness promotes reuse of code, Impatience promotes knowing when to reinvent the wheel, and Hubris makes you want to write code you can be proud of.
I await your flaming sword with the open arms of righteousness. If you're too angry to argue, it might be time to rethink your viewpoint.
Leapfrog, the mediocre.
I like it. IF Linux advocates want it on people's desktops (another debate entirely), why not do a desktop distribution that includes (for example) a kernel with PPP support by default? Leave out sendmail, ftpd, and other "server" stuff.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
I actually agree wholeheartedly. But most end users are going to be using the machine to do things like surf the world wide web, and word processing. Very rarely will they do much more, not because they are incapable intellectually, but because such fields are not yet in the public interest.
Personally, I'd like to create a licensing program for computer usage, just like drivers must be licensed. But it took many years of chaotic driving from unlicensed drivers about the turn of the century to convince people that it was worth licensing. This is social cost pricing. To implement an idiot-check for computer users now would be doomed to fail. As unproductive as widespread computer use is now, it has to get really downright annoying before people will submit to changes.
Such is the nature of humanity.
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
If Linux wants to attract a PC customer base and be a threat to Microsquish then we must support the newbies. I have multiple releases of Linux and when I started I was very confused. I now have close to 20 books on it. The manuals that came with each release (or the lack of manuals) were not always helpful. Just ignoring people or trashing them because they don't know anything helps insure that the populus at large will remain part of the Borg that is Microsoft._ __________________
_____________________________________
Can We trust the future - Flesh99
Seems like this long-winded gripe against new users to Debian can be shortened:
...spend three years recompiling packages to the latest versions... Recompiling packages doesn't guarantee you know how best to use them (or at all), or what the trade offs are for implementing it one way instead of another.
"Everything that is powerful is complex. Things that aren't complex suck, and it really bothers me when new users complain about things that I consider mundane. Oh yeah, Red Hat sucks too because it's not complex and they use marketing phrases to describe their product."
His view is quite understandable. There is a wonderful feeling of power when you finally bring Linux up and running for the first time. I'll never forget the feeling I got when I got my modem working (period!) and to connect to my ISP (icing!)...it was fantastic.
My problem is that this a narrow-minded vision of what he wants one distribution to be. He wants people to go what he went through, and that's the only way to learn. He won't give out answers that could be figured out in under 30 minutes on their own by reading the manual.
That's fine for him, but all people don't learn the same way. Just because someone doesn't do exactly what he does, the way he does it, it's bad or not "pure". If someone could save me 28 minutes by giving me a 2 minute explanation BUT DOESN'T I'd be pretty pissed. Especially a co-worker! Plus, one of his requirements for learning *nix is to
Call me crazy, but I thought the whole philosophy behind Open Source was the dissemination of information, not withholding it. You can ignore who you want, but I've found some real time savers in e-mail list archives in responses to (what I now consider) easy questions. Plus, who has tons of extra time on their hands?
You learn by using, not necessarily by installing. BTW...if it takes 12 times to install something (I don't care what it is) there is a fundamental problem with either the user or the software. But because someone can't make it through an install, does that mean they're a moron and not "worthy" to use Linux? I think we'd loose some potentially great additions to the community by ignoring this.
Would you consider someone who never finished high school to be stupid? Albert Einstein never finished HS. It's all relative (pun intended).
On the point of Linux software being inherently complicated to use (i.e. no GUI and lots, and lots, of options) that is because these packages where initially created to fill the need of the person who created it. Because they knew exactly what they wanted done, there's really no need to create wondrous, majestic GUI's. It's not to scare off newbies or because wrapping a GUI around it would make it less powerful. The important thing is that it *does* exactly what they want it to do. Making a broad generalization that if (GUI) {software = "lousy"} is an irresponsible statement.
A word on tech support. Customers pay for that. If you're manning the lines, you know you get stupid calls quite often. But they have the right to ask. They spent money on it. They deserve it. Don't like it? Quit. End of discussion. (and yes, did that for 3 years).
Then at the end he throws in Red Hat just so he can gripe some more. Sheesh! How does this apply to Debian in any way, shape or form? It doesn't.
Bottom line, if he doesn't like the way the Debian maintainers are taking this distribution then he can make his own. That's what it's all about right? Flexibility, power, reliability and customization?
What's so wrong about wanting grandma to use Linux? Don't shy away from a design challenge.
(eg. MkLinux, minimal sysadmin duties, etc)
But I don't come to the same conclusion. My father, for example, really likes how fast Linux is and how he can choose how it should look by picking a different window manager. Yet he's having a hell of a time installing LinuxPPC with ApplixWare. Now, granted, it's probably best to wait for R5 or get R5beta at this point, and yeah, Apple loves to put crappy nonstandard hardware in their machines, but I'm a little pissed that I can't remember exactly what all I had to do to get stuff peachy on my PPC boxes. Of course I'm installing MkLinux on a PowerBook 5300ce shortly so it's sure to come rushing back, accompanied by waves of nausea. And it won't see my network!
Anyways, the point is that MkLinux and LinuxPPC installs suck rotting crotch. They're awful. The only people who end up running Linux on PPCs are either hardcore, or are willing to sweat blood while they become hardcore. I've met many, many system administrators -- competent ones -- who would just as soon run NT as go through that.
That's really *NOT* the way to get support for running such a system at work.
What is better is a gentle but firm reminder to people that ask really, really stupid questions to RTFM, and an intuitive way to present said FM. I hate dealing with users, and I like writing elegant code that does cool and/or magical things. But in order to get the users to %$@! off, I have to put stuff where they can understand it.
That's really a lot more enjoyable way to have things, set up so that ignorant people can educate themselves and lazy people can be gently scolded into helping themselves.
Neal Stephenson's essay had a section detailing the usage of the Hole Hawg drill. I refer you to said passage and then ask, "Do you want your grandmother trying to wield a Hole Hawg, or would it be better if there was a safe way to use that power?". Be has such a system, though it doesn't really work (yet). Linux ought to have one too, not just because more people will be able to use it, but because we can probably get it done.
And it will really piss off die-hard Windows users when everything becomes as easy to do on Linux as on Windows. At that point Linux will have become the Universal Operating System and everyone can go work on more interesting stuff.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
What is a "Debian"? Is it somebody's name?
I don't care what anyone says, I haven't seen a distribution idiot-proof enough.
Make it idiot-proof enough, and only idiots will use it.
Maybe we don't want Linux to be easy.
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
I am glad this subject came up. I still remember the time I installed Slackware and the agonzing sleepless nights looking frantically through the HOWTO's and manuals. Actually, other than the actual installation, the configuration was what drove me crazy. But when it worked, I think there are as few moments in life with that sense of satisfaction.
And do I recommend this experience for everyone? Never.
It's true most of the things, I had to read and read and read because I'm the type of person who can't go on without satisfying my curiosity. That means a lot of time on reading documentations and what not. As a student, this is forgivable. If your job is a sysadmin, this is admirable. But if you're anyone else whose life uses minimal amount of computing and has a busy schedule, you really shouldn't get it.
Let's face it, I would love to take my parent's Windows PC and put Linux on with a nice GUI and show them that it's not the scary, only for the techie, operating system (yes I run X, and I like it dang it, but that's another story), but I resist the temptation because 1) they really don't have a need for it 2) If they don't have the time to learn (and they really don't have the time) I'm just setting them up for more problems down the line ("honey I just typed rm -rf...what just happend?" dear lord!).
There are some things about what he said that I have to disagree on, but I understand where this guy's hostility comes from. I'd help the "willing to become antisocial documentation worm to get this frickin thing to work AND have the time to do it" newbie, but other than that, I'd suggest them from staying away.
The veterans should understand that often times, it's not laziness or cluelessness that drives a person to simply ask, but lack of time in their lives. And I think the media is not helping out by making it seem like a breeze. Maybe the distrib's can put a warning sign, something like "Requirement: lot of reading. Caution: This product may cause extreme frustration and sleepless nights. Install with your discretion!!"
:P
~KitKat~
As somebody who tries to be helpful on the comp.os.linux.* newsgroups, I've got to say there's a lot of general newbie clue failure out there. Questions like "how do I find out how much free disk space I have" get asked over and over and over again, more frequently than not cross-posted to several newsgroups. People don't understand how to use the resources available to them: FAQs and HOWTOs go unread, DejaNews unchecked, and even the past 24 hours' worth of newsgroup posts that contain a nearly identical question and a more than functional answer are completely ignored.
i'm slightly diferent than you: mostly i'm reading HOWTOs after i crash my head over some problem (exception: important things like BIG server for BIG costumer, etc.) but i'm aware of my "incopetence" while solving problems like that
i agree with you about need for another human beeing (preferably skilled) when in trouble
i just want to say, that there are a lot of clueless people (as you termed them) so they are flooding people who want to help; and while those willing to help people can't stand such a pressure, they stop helping; so i want to (partialy) agree with authors of debian article that "some" people (termed clueless) are bad for us; not only debian, but whole linux community.
i wonder when people realize, that keeping everything simple just can't work; some learning is essence of doing the thing right!
hany
This has already happened. Just look in almost ANY story on /. about any OS other than Linux and you will see plenty of nitwits complaining about an OS you have to Pay Money For *shudder*.
Too many of the "If it's not free it's crap!" people mean "free beer" not "free speech".
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
agreed.
I think that people who do not notice the 'win' in winmodem do not have the mindset needed to run a diff OS (this does not only apply to *nix).
I wonder if IBM gets those calls on OS/2 or BE on BEOS.
Your standpoint seems to involve gross overgeneralisation. To some degree, this is an issue of "more catholic than the pope". Some Debian users (in my perception percentage-wise a lot more than Debian developers) have an urgency to show how l33t they are.
Second, making things difficult doesn't make them better.
Making things too easy doesn't make things better. The tricky part is to make easy things easy, while keeping it possible to do hard things.
Personally, I'm not particularly interested in fine-tuning the webserver (which I only use for dwww ) or mail transfer agent (which I only use to submit the occasional bug report) on my system. Luckily, with Debian I don't have to be. apacheconfig and eximconfig take care of them. But Debian doesn't restrict me from finetuning what I'm interested in. For example, kernel-package simply eases building of (packaged) kernels, but it doesn't interfere with the fine-grained configuration.
Still, Pablo has a point (though there's a lot of gray between his black and white extremes). I like it much better when phrased the way I saw in a sig though: I don't reply to messages below some arbitrary mark. There's nothing l33t in that. It's simply a matter of choosing how to spend one's limited time.
I like helping users, but there's a limit to the amount of effort I'll go to (because I can help more users by spending that effort on e.g. improving my packages or packaging new stuff). TANSTAAFL; I'll happily point users to reading material, but I expect them to do their own reading.
The author of this article needs a good butt wippin'. Shame on you and your high and mighty attitude! Like he never went through the learning pains of Linux. This guy compares those not as acclimated as himself with blathering idiots. What's next? Does he want to herd those less fortunate into camps and have them shot for trying learn?!?!?!?!?! KNOB!
I am using slackware since '94.
My first install of debian early '99 was a horrible experience.
dselect is the worst piece of software I ever had to use!
You always get help-screens first, because its handling is so counterintuitive.
After dealing with that the system worked very stable and smooth,
but each new package-installation was a pain!
If the Debain maintainers do not want to add value (convenience is a value, yes) to linux then that's their business, but they'll just have less users because of it.
According to the Debian web pages, Pablo Averbuj is not a Debian developer, so you shouldn't assume that his views reflect the maintainers' views.
that is soooo true. when i installed slackware for the first time, i read tons and tons of dox, and spent three days reading half of the admin guide because i couldn't figure out how to dial the modem with pppd. turned out that i assigned the wrong serial port, but what i gain was, i read all sorts of dox for three straight days, like 18 hours a day, so i struggled through the tough time.
i tried to give SuSE bootable live CD to my friend, and told her, if she could figure out how to set up ppp herself, she's ready to install, otherwise, stick with windows. I think that's the right approach towards newbies. you gota put a barrier somwhere,so that they know they will have to throw in some time of her own.
I understand the desire to remain part of an exclusive club - the "unix guru." I understand that having to learn something the hard way may lead to a deeper comprehension of the subject. And I know that everyone likes to play "kick the newbie" once they are beyond that stage themselves. But...
What the author of the article seems to have overlooked is that a lot of what is driving many users towards Linux (FreeBSD, etc) is NEED. Think about it - the reason that comp. industry jobs in general are exploding is because more and more companies NEED the solutions that computers provide. Companies don't buy a computer just to have cool machinery, or to join a community - they just want their database to run.
So if there is a tremendous need for a stable OS, and an insufficient number of people out there that can cope with the really powerful, cryptic stuff, then there is a tremendous NEED for easier stuff. Look at NT - it didn't succeed JUST because of marketing - it went most of the way to providing services that TONS of people needed but couldn't do themselves with existing products.
So yes, there is a place for a complex, difficult, powerful, and rewarding distro of linux. But don't look down on people for needing something easier - there aren't enough people like the author of the article to hire that are skilled enough (even if grumpy) to fulfill the NEED of the market out there. So maybe there are some joiners out there trying out linux just because it is cool - but the rest of us just want to get the job done. Easier distro's do that - I learned on Red Hat, now I am tackling Solaris , maybe tomorrow Be (if they ever get the apps I need) or W2K.
So I guess what I am saying is that the right tool for the job can be the one you can deploy the fastest, or the easiest, or the most reliably, or at the lowest cost, or... you get the idea. The author makes a good beginning at an interesting argument but needs to de-simplify some of his own reasoning to make it stronger.
'Another simple relationship "the easier Linux is to use and set up then the more people will use it".'
Possibly. But what price do we pay for trying to make linux easier to use and set up?
1) We pay the price that anyone who seeks to introduce additional layers between the user and the machine does:
a) increased complexity, which opens up new room for bugs.
b) additional code to support through hardware and supporting software changes.
c) potentially increased library dependencies, which requires users to have more libraries on their systems, and which opens up the whole can of worms that library updates brings.
2) We pay a more subtle price in terms of expectations. Computers by their very nature are complex. If we try to make linux too easy, then when the end-user is unable to understand something, he or she will not be trained to go RTFM before hassling someone else to tell him or her the answer, which he or she will probably not remember when the problem happens again.
Please remember, I don't advocate making linux a @#$#@ pain in the butt to use, I only hope the developers avoid the trap of trying to make an OS that anyone, no matter how uneducated or ininterested in learning, can use.
No matter how hard you try, there's always a user
too stupid to figure things out. If someone won't RTFM, then the heck with 'em. If they do RTFM, and they still have trouble, then let them ask away. As I noted before, most people I know are perfectly ok with helping someone who put out the effort but is still having trouble, esp. since RTFM will answer 99% of the questions/problems people have.
I ask you, WHO is going to support linux for all the people who don't want to learn?
Hey, you got the time, you want to do it, go right ahead. Better get your "coffee-cup holder" explanation ready right now.
"Just because someone doesn't want to learn how to setup sendmail's conf files doesn't make them a Neanderthal."
Maybe not, but it's symptomatic of a disinclination to put out any effort towards achieving a desired result.
You want an information appliance? Fine, get a mac, or a windows machine, or webtv. Just don't whine when it breaks and you have no way nor idea of how to fix the problem, and you find yourself at the mercy of bored, underpaid, tech-support people.
Re-installing your OS every month is not a satisfactory solution to a computer problem.
"Wake up - Computers bore the **** out of most people. They use them because they have to, not because they like them."
Wake up yourself. Just because something is boring doesn't mean that you don't have to put some blinking effort into learning how to use it, if you want the benefits of operating such a tool.
Do you really love using a card catalog? How about checking your car's oil? Spelling a real joy in your early grade school days?
How much more complicated is a computer than any of these things - even a car.
Personally, I don't always just love learning how to configure and compile new packages, but I regard it as the price I pay for using them, and the additional control I have over and understanding of their operation is worth the effort I have to put out.
zeke
long long ago I tried to install RH 4.2 and failed badly. I cussed redhat because it was just to hard to install.
About 6 months later I met the sysadmin at my ISP who actually came to my house with a debian CD and installed debian with me. He set my system just like a pro and showed me what he was doing while he did it. I have re-loaded debian a few times since then (not because it needed it rather, I was wanting to see if I could do it).
I always run to him for help and he is always there to answer me. I have since then talked 4 other people into trying debian and they come to me for support. I like the way that works... someone was so helpful they they came to my house and set my box up and I have returned that favor to the linux community by possibly converting more users.
could this be pattern forming behavior?
Is anyone else interested in starting a website with documentation geared towards "wet-behind-the-ears" newbies?
The Linux HOWTOs are simply great, but lets face it, they can be a bit intimidating to people completely new to this Linux thing. ("I have to read HOW MUCH just to get my MODEM WORKING?") Think of it as "Cliff Notes" for Linux.
Maybe if there was one definitive source for newbies, they won't flood the lines of communication traditionally dominated by the cranky oldtimers.
Just a thought. Something I've always wanted to do. Contact if interested, flame if not.
I, for one, am tired, not just in this aspect of life, but in most of such people. People refuse to read. They even abandon the "quickstart" guide, assuming that it couldn't possibly hold anything helpful. Soon, trouble pops up, and that person is immediately asking questions, rather than doing what any reasonable person would. Read something. I didn't have a guru standing over my shoulder, teaching me the ways of SunOS, and later Linux. I had someone say, "If you don't know what a command does, or what parameters to give a command, type 'man program'." I read the man pages. If that didn't help, I looked in /usr/doc. If that didn't help, I searched the web. If that didn't help, I'd hit Usenet. If that didn't help, I'd seek someone out to ask, be it in a public forum or in private. Almost never did I reach the final stage. I still have questions periodically, even today. I still read. Using Linux since 0.99pl13 hasn't given me a magic membership card entitling me to ask whatever I feel like.
If you've got a genuine problem that you can't resolve without help, nobody will begrudge you that, unless it's something addressed by the standard documentation.
--j
The unsig!
>First off, the discussion was about Open Source, not about Linux.
;-)
Fine. It's easy to forget here on slashdot that there's open source besides Linux, since slashdotters are so inimical to anything else. In any case, I could have picked plenty of other open-source examples. Want to hack emacs internals? How about Perl internals? BWAHAHAHA! That way lies madness. A few packages have actually "matured" in their internal structure or were written well to start with (e.g. gcc or Python respectively) but most are thinly-coated garbage that only seems to work by merest coincidence and not any concerted application of sound software engineering principles.
>If its work, chances are my employer has well defined specifications on what it should look like, how it should perform, and how it should be written. In that case, I don't have any say as to the design of the user interface, I don't get to choose what its licensing is, and I don't get to say how much is modular and how much is kludge.
I'm sorry to hear that. I guess it's been so long since I was a code-grunt that I've forgotten what it's like to be limited to implementing somebody else's brain-dead ideas. Hang around a few years, and you'll be allowed more input into many of these things (but probably never the licensing); maybe by then your views will have changed too.
>I'm curious to learn what you think is
the "ideal" interface.
>[much earlier, but fits into context better here]
>Gee, it almost sounds like you write user interfaces on a daily basis. If it's so easy to write dynamic user interfaces, why aren't there more of them?
No, I don't write user interfaces on a daily basis any more. I did at one point in my career, though, and I'm somewhat proud of having retained those skills even though my "bread and meat" nowadays comes from filesystems and such.
I'm also not into "ideals" and what I'm proposing isn't so radical as you make it sound. All I'm talking about is taking advantage of the separation of interface and implementation (model and controller, if you prefer that terminology) in fairly basic ways. I've used dozens of programs, both Windoze and UNIX/X, that allowed some form of customization via toolbar editors, floating palettes, etc. If you've used Tk, you may have noticed that tear-off menus come practically for free, and they're part of the same thing. This isn't some freakish new thing, it's just "current state of the art" stuff. If you designed and wrote your code correctly, changing something from a button to a menu item or vice versa is a trivial matter, and from there it's almost as easy to let the _user_ make the choice. This is true whether you're doing it in Python and Tk (my preferred RAD environment) or MFC/AFC/JFC (what I often have to use) because it's mostly a matter of understanding and applying simple OOP methods (pun intended).
It's a Linux distribution.
-Stu
In the summary, it states:
I don't believe this is true. I believe Linux can be great because learning can occur. But Linux will not be great until learning is not necessary. It shocks me to see Linux advocates practicing elitism over regular users, claiming Linux is something for just us. Is this what free and open software is about?
Why don't we just buy everyone a copy of Microsoft Windows [insert current year], and perpetuate the ongoing problem of closed operating systems by making Linux closed (through elitism) to those who want an alternative to MS, but do not want to have to learn the ins and outs of an operating system?
If I didn't have UNIX experience already, I wouldn't bother with Linux. GNU gives me most of the tools on Windows, so why would I bother to learn how to jump through Linux hoops inorder to see if I actually like Linux. Because somebody says I'm an inferior drone because I don't think Linux is the shit? Not really. I'm too old to care what other people think. It would really just look like too much of a bother to find out if it's really as great as everyone says it is.
In conclusion, I wholeheartly disagree that Linux should be an elitist system. I believe in free operating systems for everyone. If you don't want to work on Linux usability, that's okay by me. But you shouldn't say that these things are a waste of time. Anything done to make Linux better should be praised.
My $.02
F'jord
Very well said. I've often wondered why the computer culture is so eager to eat thier young. Perhaps it's our genreal propensity towards being anti-social. Or maybe we are impatient with other humans because they are not always "logical" like the machines we love. Maybe it's the over abundance of male hormones...(Where are all the female nerds :)
I don't know, maybe we just need to grow up a little...
Email addy is alcaron@ozemail.com.au. I'm too lazy to create a slashdot account :)
./install, and enter the answers for a few easy to understand questions.
Stop the elitist attitudes. That's what's going to kill Linux, more than anything else. Helping the clueless is by far the best way to go.
Correct, being elitist may kill linux as the Next Big Thing, but changing linux for clueless users is wrong.
I use linux for the following reasons:
- It's stable
- It's secure (if you know what you're doing)
- It's configurable
Now, the obvious threat that these "clueless" users pose is configurability. If "User Friendly" UI's come in force, then they will have less options to confuse the user. Less options means less configurability. Also, there is the issue of speed. I do not want to have to wait for a picture loaded bloated installer to "load". If anybody here has ever installed staroffice, they will know what I mean. I want to be able to go
If you consider the above, if linux does become User Friendly, what we have is a Windows clone. In windows, it's difficult to diagnose a problem because giving the user descriptive errors confuses them and alienates them. In windows, it takes me 3 times as long to do anything because I have to wait for pretty pictures to load. In windows, security is compromised because the normal user shouldn't have to worry about little things like "permissions".
Also, I like X, mainly because it looks pretty. Transperant Eterms rock. So does XEvil and Koules. Go figure.
Finally, note that User Friendly != Easy to Use. I've seen some UI's around that are a piece of cake to learn, but incredibly difficult and horrid to use. One of these is the Office Assistant in MS Office 97.
Urgh. My prose is shot to hell tonight. Oh well, hope the above is readable.
Michael Pearson
alcaron@ozemail.com.au
http://www.nitro.fsck.org/~alcaron
I have been flamed hard a couple of times for even asking "which fscking manual". This is completely unacceptable.
One of the great things about my current career track is that I won't have to be a sysadm. I will at some point be hiring and firing sysadms. I look forward to this.
People that can manage people will always rise above people that can only manage things. I offer Linus as Exhibit A.
My first attempt at Linux was Debian 1.2. Back then I still didn't understand what people meant by hard. A little complicated I suppose, but hard, and I didn't read any documentation as usual. And my previous UNIX experience was trying to install 386BSD 2 years before that (I got scared when I read about making a disk image).
:)
I had good times and bad times (reading docs may have given me more good times), but I loved every minute of it.
And man pages are a learning curve. The first while man pages seem unintuitive, now my own writing has started to reflect man pages
Bah..you seem more like a thing to me.
I don't see the problem with making things easier for a newbie, iff the useability for experienced users doesn't suffer. Linuxconf is a good example. It "edits" the normal conf files for you, but nothing stops you from editing them with vi.
The key is to build pretty front-ends for programs . Expect, Perl/tk and other scripting solutions are awsome for this. That way the powerfull tool is still there, but the casual user of it can still get their work done. It's also much less hassle and safer than having both a tar and a 'visual tar', where the latter actually reimpliments the subset of tar that it wants to use. By using the two layer approach, all fixes to tar are fixes to the gui version as well. The only hitch is that interface changes become a bit more difficult. But they are already, or should be in order to preserve continuity.
As for RedHat, I agree that some of their ways are a bit annoying, at least at first. The Sysconfig dir stuff and the complicated rc.d structure annoyed me at first. Now that I'm used to them I find them very convenient, tho. The stuff in some of the scripts that overwrites changes to conf files is pretty lame, however. I'd like to know their logic on that. But nothing stops me from fixing it.
I just don't understand why so many people rant on and on about how RedHat is ruining Linux, blah blah blah. Bottom line is that it *is* very quick to install. It *is* easy to set up. And if you have clue enough to be annoyed by their sillier stuff, you should have clue enough to do it your way.
The whole argument that RedHat somehow keeps you from learing is also bullshit. Plain and simple, *you* are responsible for what you learn. RedHat doesn't hide anything. It's all right there. Go to it. Just because they provide GUI tools as an option doesn't mean you *have* to use them. Or even that it's bad when you do, since again *they*just*edit*the*same*fscking*conf*files for you.
Get a little sense of personal responsibility, people.
--
"First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
He almost sounds like a Microsoft fan.
He is basically saying you should only use Linux if you have a specific use for it, which can't be done on DOS or Windows.
Many people just install Linux for fun, experiementation, or just to learn about it.
The main problem with most GUIs is that they -are- just front-ends to a CLI program. To make a powerful GUI based application, you have to design it from scratch as such. There are plenty of things you can do with a GUI that you just can't do efficiently with a CLI, and vice-versa. Try using The GIMP sometime without the GUI...
One of the fundamental rules of user-interface design is that you can't design and build an application and then try to give it a nice interface. The interface has to be part of the initial design.
I can understand the author's view, but I don't think that it is fair to treat users who are less technical this way.
I think you should differentiate between two kind of users. The first group is like most of us, people who spend a huge amount of time in front of their computers. The other group are people who only use computers ocassionally to do a specific things, write a letter for example. You cannot expect from the second group that they will learn how to configure Linux, they don't care for all the technical stuff beneath their word processor, they just want to write the letter. I can understand this, when I use a toaster I don't have to know how it works, and they want the same thing when writing letters. Of course, I will read the toasters manual before I call customer support, but that's a different problem
I would not say that CLI tools are always superior to GUI tools. This depends on what you do. If you need a tool every day, a CLI tool will be better (at least in most cases). But for things that I do very rarely, for example install an ISDN router, I dont want to spend 10 hours of reading manuals before I am able to install it. I just want it to work as fast as possible. If I can do it in 10 minutes with a simple GUI and without reading manuals, I will do this. Unless you use a tool frequently, CLI doesn't pay off because you spend more time learning the use of the program than actually using it.
I started setting this Linux Nurture site up a few months ago. It's not fully functional yet but you can see the idea. It uses a strange, but lightweight mix of awk, bash and the NoSQL RDBMS and I'm having trouble exporting varibles between scripts.
From the site: "This site connects people with little or no experience of Linux with those who are reasonably experienced and feel willing and able to help others"
Is this a good idea? Would people use it, both helpers and helpees?
If anyone wants to give me hand completing it, or even better hosting it I'd be happy to hear from you. One idea was that it could spawn other sites each with different emphasis (language, distro., interests) but all linked together by a webring.
StephenYou still haven't answered that question. If a modem needs to integrate with the host's ports, then the host should use a standard port (which it does). If it needs to interface with many different kinds of software, there should be a common API for modem access (and there is). If it needs to be attached to a phone line, there should be a standard phone jack (there is).
So given that we have a standard port, a standard API, and a standard jack, why should a modem be more difficult to install than a toaster?
The answer: it shouldn't.
there were said a lot of things i agree and a lot of things i disagree
i want to state:
and also:
hany
After the dissing of Redhat, I'm almost afraid to admit that I use Mandrake!
His two basic arguments voiced against Redhat were that it was easy to install and that typical Redhat users logged in as root.
As for point one, why isn't he still running Slackware?!? Time is valuable. I would much rather spend a mere half hour on installation than days on untarring and compiling 500 packages. But then, I've installed Redhat, Debian, and SuSE, and I found that Debian wasn't any harder than the others (except that there was no 'back' button).
As for users logging on as root, how is that Redhat's fault? If you would just RTFM you would see that Redhat tells users quite often NOT to log in as root. Even "Linux for Dummies" tells it's readers to create a user account first thing. If he's pissed at people logging on as root, blame the idiots at fault, not Redhat.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Hey, stop mocking that comment.
Oh, you're no fun
The above average person is DUMB.
I'm not sure about that, I think people are just so self-involved that they have trouble seeing past the end of their nose sometimes, and this translates ininto stupid behavior and ignorance.
Then again, maybe self-involvement to the exclusion of nearly all else is part and parcel of stupidity. I'd think about it some more, but I want to go stare in the mirror for a few hours...
-Eric
So, you want everyone to use Linux, so that you get the option of using more applications? Sounds pretty selfish.
And as for Linux being an exclusive club, there is a certain appeal to that, but it's being discussed on another thread--- se Outsiders joining the club? Heavens, no!
Perhaps part of my confusion is that I really have no idea what people use their computers for. So, I guess if you're using Linux, it's because you're interested in understanding a computer and having it do just what you want. Therefore, making it for idiots doesn't make sense. Unless of course, you stand to make money off these idiots, which, by the way, was my original point.
Peace.
I can't speak for all the other Linux newbies out there, but I can tell you a bit about my personal experience with linux.
I'm not going to go into a long story about what I was having trouble with. Suffice it to say that it was a very simple problem, with a very simple answer. But when I went on an IRC channel to ask what I should do, I got the infamous RTFM. (man pages)
So I did. And I learned something. The man pages have got to be the _worst_ thing you can tell a newbie to start with. Of all the stupid things you can tell a newbie to do, reading the man pages has got to be the worst. The archaic format of them was not at all similar to anything I'd ever seen before; it took me four hours alone to decipher the format of the entry on ls.
I still don't understand most of what's written there.
In the end, I just gave up, and ended up typing "ls --help" as a joke, and much to my surprise, ended up actually finding something intelligible.
Look, I'm not saying that the man pages are a bad idea or anything. I'm just saying that their format's more than a bit different from the norm. They're difficult for a newbie to understand. And if you send a newbie straight to the man pages, you're really just telling them to abandon all hope now.
(Incidentally, has anyone written a HOW-TO on deciphering those things yet..?)
Fork
I am not comparing operating systems at all. I am talking about useability. Since it is clear that your discussion style is limited to threats (I'll have the clue stick waiting for you) and insults (are you retarded?), I will no longer concern myself with responding to you or waste any more of slashdot's bandwidth. If you would like to try an intelligent conversation some time, perhaps I could accommodate you.
"Rascal am I? TAKE THAT!" -- Errol Flynn
I have an idea: let's be NICE to people who want to learn linux instead of scaring them away by acting like condescending jerks. Just a thought...
-Eric
One of my problems with linux always has been (and, sadly, will probably always be) the fact that the community (and, thus, the operating system) tends to close itself off at the opportunity for popularity.
Linux is a great operating system. So is FreeBSD. So is Solaris. MacOS and Windows 90's are great operating systems too. They're all tools for a specific job. It seems like they've divided themselves up, so UN*X is a geek/coding/server OS, MacOS is a graphics OS, and Windows is an end user OS. The only operating systems that seem to make an effort to make themselves a bit easier for the novice are the Wintel and Mac platforms. There's a reason for the popularity, and it's not all bundling.
A few weeks ago, LinuxWorld and Refund Day got Linux some mainstream press coverage and a boost in popularity. The user consensus seemed to be "at last we have a chance against the Evil Empire!" And we did.
However, problems like this will simply keep Linux from grabbing any market share. While many of us code for pleasure and function, most people, most of the time, simply don't want to think about HOW the computer works, they want to USE the computer. This, almost certainly, means GUIs and ease of use will triumph over text shells and more extensibility.
Guys - we've got a good thing here. It could serve as the right tool for a lot of tasks, depending on how people see it and can use it. Unless Joe Middle Manager can use Linux, it simply won't take off. And, now that we have some publicity, whose fault will it be?
Designing things of everyday use (and computers have become such a thing) requires more than just knowing to hack your way through a Slackware or a Debian system.
In general, the whole Linux coding and packaging community is sadly lacking even the basics of usability testing, proper screen and application design. The tools are generally based on incompatible cultural background, exspect you to know different paradigms where you could reasonably exspect them to work alike and all this is even before we start talking about documentation.
"If it was hard for me to learn, it should be so for everybody else" is not a valid attitude. For Open Source Software it is a killing attitude.
I don't agree with everything in the article, but it does raise some interesting questions for me.
I've always subscribed to the notion that an OS is a tool. You should get it based on your needs. Not all OS's should act as servers. Not all OS's are good for newbies. Yet, everyone looks for THE OS to use as an all-purpose solution. If Debian wants to target the server market, then they shouldn't compromise the server functionality/configurability. That _doesn't_ mean that they should make it hard to use just to scare off inexperienced users.
So, the question that I wonder is, just what audience is Linux targeting? Perhaps the model I see emerging is a good one. The Linux is the underlying engine, there are different UIs for different users, and the support companies target different audiences.
-Jennifer
have you ever taken the time to read that help screen? it may be ugly but its very smooth.
apt also beats everything I have tried and is currently having gnome-apt written for it.
there is something wonderful about typing 'apt-get upgrade' and then taking a nap....
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I second this thought.
Normally I wouldn't post simply to say that, but the bulk of the messages seem to be:
a) Unix is supposed to be hard
b) You can't have power without making things hard
Point (a) is the hot rod mentality (which I tend to share, BTW). That is, I fool around with my Linux box a lot for no good reason. I just enjoy making a tweak here and there to make it run faster, be more secure or whatever. I would probably have raced cars if I were born 20 years earlier.
Point (b) I simply disagree with. As the previous post points out it is quite possible to have a great deal of power without making a system senseless.
try to get "the average computer user" to install NT Server, and then to get his modem working and his soundcard working, and his network card working, and then to configure his network.
Then try to get him to install it on a system that has linux preinstalled, and you want him to make it dual boot. Shit, let him even try to install windows 95/98 on a preinstalled linux system, let him have to create partitions and get them to dual boot.
I will be waiting with the clue stick for you.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
The world is not divided between "clueless" users
and "clueful", with a large, impassable gulf
between them. If you think this way, then
you are part of the problem. There is no "them".
One of Linux's strengths has been that it is
*exceedingly* well documented, far better
documented than most other UNIX flavors.
There are lots of documents available -- HOWTO's,
the Linux Gazette, etc. This is a *good* thing.
The only way that such documentation can
be created is for experts to care enough
to explain things and smooth the learning
process for new users. The word here is
"new user", not "clueless" or "idiot".
*Everyone* benefits from clear documentation.
I really hope that Debian's main contributors
will not start to develop a chip on their
shoulder with respect to documentation.
There's a lot of room for improvement in
the Debian distribution. Debian needs more
and better documentation.
"Trying to make things easier" does *not* mean
making it idiot-proof. It just means making
it easier, that's all. The better the
documentation is, the better the OS is.
> The above average person is dumb.
I've always said, "Think of how stupid the average person is. Half the people are dumber than that."
First everyone tries to push friggin linux on everyones desktops and now people complain when the dirty masses try to take up your suggestions. I keep Win NT as a server because my boss understands this technology and I can have any moron administer it...it doesn't crash as frequently as ya'll liked to beleive but then again I run t pretty tight. I keep a Mac on my desktop because us stoopid users don't want to think...we want to do.
A computer is a tool. Did ya have to read the instruction manual to use a hammer? Did ya try using a hammer when ya should have been using a screwdriver? On a mac, ya don't get these problems because its intuative which is how machines should be. At home, I keep a linux box as my router so my sister can dial into the internet from her Win95 box and I can get in with one of my various machines and my other roomate can hook in with his Compaq Laptop. Do they know how this works? The answer is : They don't need to.
Yes, this might be a bit inflamatory, but if you're gonna promote an OS as the OS, then you have to factor in the Human anomolies. It's like communism...on paper its good and in the right hands it might work, but if you throw a real human into the soup ya get Socialism and Stallinism. Its not the OS (or ideology) ya have to worry about its the people.
clif
As the Melissa debacle demonstrated: a system has to be engineered to deal with the stupidity of it's users. Redhat has some SERIOUS security issues they need to deal with. In this respect, Redhat suffers from being 'too easy'.
Cobalt Micro also had an issue such as this come up and bit it on the butt (apache home dirs).
I have nothing against people who want to learn and have the capabilities, but there are just some people who can't understand computers. I worked at a PC repair shop, I know. At this point, Linux isn't a plug-and-play (excuse the lame term) operating system, and it isn't supposed to be. I like linux the way it is, and I think that the bit of competence needed to install it helps filter out a lot of idiots. (ie I can go into #linux and there are quite a few more people who 'get it' with computers than in ALL the aol chat rooms
Using Linux I feel like I'm a little more advanced of a PC user than most other people, and it kind of gets on my nerves when people ask how to click the setup icon off a Red hat CD because it's they read an article on the web and like the idea of a hacker operating system. People should definitely read up on Linux a LOT before they dive in, that way they won't sound so dumb when they do go for it.
--
Absolutely.
The overwhelming majority of computer users are just that - users.
People need to wake up to the fact that GNU/Linux is now going mainstream (for all the right reasons) and the majority of new users aren't interested in complex configuration - we want ease of use and ease of access combined with the strength and stability of Linux.
Thank you
This "Letter to Debian about Friendliness" has a number of points that need addressing. The author is not completely off base, and serveral of his points are universally true of all OSes, and indeed most technical or semi-technical endeavors.
His basic premises are that stupid users are bad and should therefore be ignored. The problem with this approach is fine if one is in a position that one has no concern as to whether someone uses your product or not, nor whether it moves outside its niche. A case in point (no flames please) is Apple. They have targeted their systems for years at those who wish a simple to startup and use computer without the learning curve of "other systems". This approach does indeed work - and while there are a great many Apple users who have deep knowledge of computer related subjects and their machines, the majority just want to use it without worrying about HOW it works.
The problem is that many of the people he considers "stupid" are not such. They are often those with a need for a flexible, powerful system but due to the many constraints on their time - do not have the leisure to become a system guru - they need their machines to work, and work now - not after a couple of weeks of tweaking.
This time intensive learning curve is one of the reasons that older versions of UNIX have not found popularity on most desks. It isn't because people are too stupid or too lazy; they do not have the time to learn the myriad tasks (some of them tedious) to maintain a UNIX system, not indeed the inclination - they are COMPUTER USERS ... the people these things were designed for in the first place.
To ignore their concerns because they are too busy to learn what is sometimes a whole new vocation, is damaging to any company.
The friendlier a system is the more people with basic skill sets, or the time to learn them,will utilize a system. That is so obvious that it shouldn't neet to be emphasized. It is what keeps Apple selling Mac's, it is why Windows became so popular. One of the (but not the only) reasons that people are now starting to search for alternatives is that the simple friendly Windows is starting to not be so simple and friendly anymore.
The author presupposes that the earlier era of "hackers and geeks" as he refers to them would have scoffed at him for his skills. I don't think so, since by his discussions of tape and punch cards puts me in at the end of that era. The first computer I worked on was an old IBM System/3 with a typewriter console and a punch card reader the size of a dumpster.
Those of us who knew a bit had patience with what he considers "stupid" questions even if the answer was in the documentation. This was becasue then, as now, much of the documentation was as obscure as the smile on the Sphinx and buried a lot deeper. Who wrote all those GUI's in the first place? Hackers and geeks who wanted an easier interface for themselves because there are times when searching for little used switches is as frustrating for the most jaded user as it is for the newbie.
(Exercise: write down all the switches for the ls command and what they are for without looking them up. Then check the docs and see how many you missed or got wrong.)
He is correct in that it was a different time. It was not as rushed in the sense that time was not such a precious commodity and while things still had to be done yesterday, these days that means lask week.
I'm sure that I am glad he does not work for me or in a tech department I have to rely on. Assistance for those with time constraints, or problems finding some thing in an obscure documentation is as necessary sometimes as being polite to your boss when they are being a pain. :-)
I agree with him, that many jump in without reading any documentation at all but that is not their fault entirely but that of a social and work culture that has taught us to expect something to work as we wish, or think it should from teh very start. That isn't being lazy in most cases, just culturaly conditioned.
"I tell them that I will not answer any question that I feel could have been researched and answered in less than 30 minutes. Why should I do all the work for them. -I- already know how to disable ftpd, they're supposed to be learning."
This is where he fails to see a larger picture that I have already adressed. The majority of those he considers stupid or lazy are not interested in learning how an OS is built or in administration. They want to USE an operating system with minimal fuss and installation. So long as it is hard to install, operate maintain it will never enjoy widespread use among the general computer using populace. How many users on a mainframe can install, tweak, administer the system? Damn few, but they don't have to to take advantage of its power.
His outlook on GUI's is also skewed although I find myseelf sympathizing somewhat. GUI's have been around a lot longer tha 10 years. The first was done by Xerox before Apple ever saw the light of day. And they were developed for areason - to make complex systems easier to use for those who did not have the time to learn the intricacies of their underlying design. I often prefer a command line interface myself - but I grew up with one as it were and can oftern do things in it as fast as others in a GUI. But that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the complexity that a GUI sheilds a user from having to deal with on occasion.
His premise that some of the most powerful tools available to the advanced/power user are complicated and not user friendly is probably correct. His premise I believe is not - namely that the programmer didn't work in a GUI. It is more likely the case that it was written initially for personal use to solve a problem, like all software, and the programmer wasn't really concerned about making it pretty so long as it was efficient. After all computers are not an end in themselves but a tool to facilitate a solution. As a confirmed command line user, he goes on to admire and use the graphical interfaced BeOS. As I said - a tool to a job.
His complaint that only a very UNIX knowledgeable user can consider thenselves safe from bugs and exploits as the uninformed couldn't fix it or even be aware of it until it was "too late". This is an obvious fallacy as every day bugs and holes are found in UNIX systems managed by professionals. Not everyone wants to be or needs to be or has the time if they wanted to be a system administrator.
I agree with the author that Debian does seem to fill a niche between the attempted "turnkey" solution of RedHat and teh starkness of Slackware. But the expansion of the number of people in this niche can only be for teh better. Those who decide to use it and stay will gradually learn more and more about their systems over time and that will be only to the good of the Unix community. The greatest strenght of UNIX is its flexibility - that in can be that obscure powerful command line OS to one and the arguablly easier to navigate GUI "frontended" OS to another. If it ever looses this I think it will really spell the end of UNIX.
One last word on documentation. I guess I'm old fashioned. I like printed docs. Its nice to have open on the desk for reference. Studies have shown that people read slower off a computer screen than from the printed page. As UNIX doc's have never been the most succinct and straightforward it can be time consuming and frustrating sometimes to search for the answer to a problem ... and sometimes the answer isn't there.
A comment on the footnotes:
"2. If you average 6 keystrokes per second and it takes 3 seconds to move your hand to the mouse, move it to the desired location, and place the hand back on the keyboard, you have lost 18 keystrokes."
At 6 ks/sec you are typing at 72 wpm - higher than most computer users can type. With the loss your speed is 69 wpm.
This turned into a longer post than I intended but I felt that there needed to be some answer. If Linux, and other UNIXes, are to become wodely accepted, they not only musy offer facility to new users, but cannot be burdened with an "eliteist" attitude on the part of the current user body.
(BTW, I do not meant elite in the current prevailing meaning amongst the "hacker" community but in its original sense.)
Cheers!
-- Holerith
>In order to make a program easier to use (more user-friendly), you must make it less powerful for the advanced user.
./fubarrc file in a semi-documented location and in the software author's own unique format, then presents them with an interface where half the functions are only available through alt-middle-button (which doesn't exist on a two-button mouse) and of course there's no online help. That's not "serving the advanced users better". That's just "being sloppy, lazy, and incompetent."
Wrong, wrong, WRONG. What you say could only be true if it were a requirement that the user actually take advantage of every feature a program provides, which generally means the developer _forced_ them to do that by designing a crappy interface.
Your example of graphics/DTP programs with too many buttons, besides showing your soft-core background, is actually quite a good one. A _well designed program would present the first-time user with a stripped-down set of the functions needed to do simple work, with an obvious way to add functionality. For example, users looking for a function not on the default toolbar might start cruising the menus. If there's an "Advanced Features..." item, they're highly likely to select it, and in addition to providing the features themselves it could present them with a "Add these features to the toolbar" option. The important thing is that _the level of complexity should be customizable_.
As much as we like to bash MS, Word provides a good example of this. You don't _have_ to use templates and tables of contents and cross-references and multiple columns and such to type up a simple document; you just open a new document and start typing. But those features are there when you need them and are ready to use them, and with just a little bit of extra work you can even put the necessary controls either on the toolbar or a floating tool palette. Would that all programs would try so hard to serve _both_ the newbie and the more advanced user (though, as someone with a background in real publishind and not just web-crap, I can't resist the urge to point out that Word is not very advanced in some areas because it's a word processor and not a true publishing program).
The obvious contrast is a typical Linux program which requires the user to compile it, do half the installation by hand, and do any customization by hauling up a text editor to modify some
What does it really matter if instead of dealing with a nest of menus, you instead deal with a nest of fairly obviously named files?
.dfmext nicely parallels the need for the US to artificially inflate it's college entrance scores (SAT).
What does it really matter if instead of futzing about with some values presented to you with some eye candy and some visual hints, you just manipulate those same values directly with just a different style of visual hint.
That the average American can't deal with the little bit of pattern matching involved in a config file like
Personally, I like being able to use my uber-editing-interface (emacs) to easily manipulate my filemangler filetype bindings. In some instances it would still remain useful even if the facility wasn't necessary.
is to integrate those poor, ms-impaired masses into our community. Yep, I said community. Everyone just mocking at new users is just too lazy to do the *real* work, something harder than compiling or CLI fiddling, something which distinguishes Linux and other free OSs: the building of a community. Cut your sociopathic comments. *You* are the one who is not worth using Linux.
--
"Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple."
Has the writer of this piece ever learned a foreign language? Learned to play the piano? I've not only learned both, but i've taught both professionally for many years. (And i've learned Linux.) Both things need a *lot* of spoonfeeding on the part of the teacher, unless, of course, the learner has a special "gift". Linux is similar. I find the writer's attitude like a professional musician who doesn't think that the non-gifted should even be given the chance to touch the keys of a piano. I would have loved to be this guy's Arabic teacher... "Here's your Arabic novel, here's your dictionary, and here's your grammar. My method of teaching doesn't allow me to tell you anything that's already documented in the grammar or the dictionary. Now start reading that novel! If you can't handle it, then you're too stupid to learn a foreign language anyway."
Although i agree that GUI's foster laziness, the contention that newbies who ask basic questions on mailing lists don't want to learn anything is ludicrous. The fact is you can't even run Linux without learning a lot about it. The guy who came to the mailing list to learn how to turn off ftpd, or whatever, has undoubtedly already spent many an hour reading just to learn about file permissions, file system navigation, and many, many other things. Furthermore, Linux documentation tends to be written for the experienced user. "Man" pages can be useful sometimes, but at others they leave the user more frustrated than before consulted. Linux documentation is really great at omitting typical examples of usage, too.
If you don't want to teach newbies directly, the best thing to do is to direct them towards the documentation. Often a newbie will simply not know where to look for appropriate documentation. This is especially the case when the user doesn't even know what command to use to perform a particular task. Your other choice, of course, is just to ignore them. But even in that case, there's no reason to get sour about it. Not everyone's as technically savvy as you, and there's no reason to get arrogant about the fact.
Your language analogy is very instructive. Would you want to be the Arabic teacher of someone who always said "Why can't Arabic be more like English?" and constantly complained about the unintuitive grammar? Would you tell that person that, oh yeah, Arabic is an inferior language and needs to apologize for its habit and conventions? I imagine not. It is insulting and disrespectful when people ridicule learning and knowledge; it's also insulting when people ridicule people who don't yet have it. This means that there need to be burdens of patience and respect for both student and teacher; if either one is missing, there will be problems.
We need to welcome newbies, and at the same time not cave in to complaints that Linux is not (say) Windows -- it's not supposed to be. Newbies should recognize that learning a new operating system is a challenging undertaking and a process which will take some time and effort -- just like learning a new language will be. It should be approached with respect, just as learning a new language should be. Then the newbies, in return, should find patient and helpful teachers to assist them along the way.
That allows education without "dumbing down" but also without insulting the struggles of those who are not yet experienced at something.
All the Debian folks are volunteers. I don't think it's too much to ask of newbies that they prepare a little before asking questions. Also, I've seen some newbies be downright rude and offensive out of the gate.
Hallelujah and praise the lord!
I've spent time in tech support, and one of the things that really struck me about most of our callers was that they really didn't want to learn anything.
They'd call us to ask questions that were in the manual. They'd call us, wait 15 minutes on hold only to ask what was the address of our company web page (which was listed several places, including on the outside of the box and in the manual, then complain about the hold time). I swear to Buddha, I got someone on the phone once who didn't know what a modem was (I supported modems). AOL told her to call us so she did. I sent her back to them with a polite request for more information.
These are people who want a computer to be a toaster. Plug it in, and it works. When something doesn't work with their system, they flip out. (What do you mean, I can't change the interrupt on a PCI device through Windows? I have to go through the BIOS? I'm gonna sue!)
Well, ya know something? Computers aren't toasters. You're going to have to learn a little bit if you want to use them. If you don't want to learn anything, go back to your VCR and your cable TV and your daily funnies. And your preloaded Windows 9x.
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
It seems to me that in many cases, the developers/contributors of projects like Debian (and many other projects in the Linux world and beyond) are a bit too eager to respond to the difficulties novice users (which, IMHO, aren't necessarily stupid, often they just don't have enough time on their hands to track all the prerequisite information) have with their software by calling them "stupid". They should notice that user's problems are often a sign that something could be improved in the software, whether it's the GUI, the documentation, or general useability and act accordingly - i.e. improve their software with the users in mind instead of feeling insulted and acting defensively because someone didn't like their stuff or was unable to use it for some reason (which should be worth investigating!).
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
As a university bob myself, I saw this one coming. Most folks in tech support have heard of the "famous 1%"-- that's how many of my callers actually have a computer problem that can't be solved by reading the documentation.
/. readers would agree that the proper sequence is some variation: (RTFM, mess with it a bit, try something different, repeat) find local help, THEN, AS A LAST RESORT, call tech support.
People expect a computer to be like an appliance (yes, like a toaster). They expect to not have to spend time learning how to use it. As much as I think Mac OS (but not Windows) is a fine desktop OS for most people, the relative ease with which computers can now be used causes many of our headaches. People expect to simply pick it up and use it, and when something goes wrong their first response is to call for help. I think most
In his "how to become a hacker" FAQ, ESR said that the most important thing (IIRC) is confidence in your abilitiy to learn and a willingness to work things out for yourself. How true.
Or to put it differently, as the saying goes, "Unix is very user friendly, it's just particular about with whom it makes friends."
People hear that Linux is a good OS, but they don't take the time to find out about it. Because they don't take the time to find out about it they don't learn that Linux is a flavor of unix, a heavy-duty enterprise-ready OS that is designed to be easy for a clueful person to administrate. I love Linux because it works flawlessly and allows me to learn to do something new every day if I so desire. The same traits that make it so rewarding for those who take the time to learn how to use it will stymie those who do not.
Fortunately all of my Linux users so far are quite clueful. I do hear from some, as our dial-up authentication scheme is pretty arcane. Most will first get help from the LUG or post to our local linux NG, but every now and then I get a call like this:
B: "IT Helldesk, this is Bob."
U: "Hi. I just installed Linux, and I'd like to set up PPP. Could you tell me where to find TFM?"
That's the way I like it.
(Much of this is a rehash of the content of several comments which you may have seen before.)
Have you ever wondered what it takes to produce a masterpiece? Or propound a new theory, and test it? Or to become very good at diagnosing diseases accurately and quickly? Or doing anything you would find hard to do?
Would you agree that the people who do this are smart? People who you'd be hard-pressed to label as "stupid" or "idiotic"?
If you look around, most professionals who would otherwise be regarded as intelligent prefer simplicity and ease-of-use over an arcane interface (e.g. the CLI) any day. These are people who just want to get their work done. Who don't want to waste their time learning how to use their system or reading documentation. Who'd just like to get their system configured and running properly so they can type up that white paper or start on their design.
These are the "clueless" users that author has written about. Clueless not because they aren't good at what the do; clueless because they were stumped by the arcane interface they were faced with and because they didn't read (bad) documentation and asked because they wanted to get their work done quickly.
As someone has pointed out earlier, a powerful system does not necessarily have to be difficult to use. It would have lots of options at each level of complexity, offering several different tools at varying levels of customizability and ease of use. It would have a simple installer, and would end up with as intuitive an interface currently possible for a new user, with an option somewhere in the installer to produce an "advanced" version, with the more efficient to maintain and configure but harder to learn and less intuitive interface offered up. Then I'd say that the system matured.
It isn't terribly difficult or impossible to produce such a system. The drive for functionality, however, has pushed this to the background, as it should be. However, if this is how we want it to be - functionality development before usable interfaces - then we must forego the hype and trying to attract new users, at least until the interface is designed.
That, or we be more helpful to them.
More on this attitude. If you haven't liked where this is going, you may as well stop reading now.
I've found so many *NIX users, admins and tech support to be bigots. This, in the sense that they tend to be immature and tend to take pride in the fact that they know how to use a system most people cannot. This attitude must change. If Linux survives for another ten years, I look forward to seeing more mature, more helpful people who know all about it. This may be because the vast majority of Linux users tend to be so young. I'd like to see older people use Linux, and their more mature attitudes propagate among the community. Let's be responsible.
As for the argument that the use of a computer, like driving a car or flying an aircraft, should require a license, I ask you to remember when you were first learning to drive. How easy was that? Did you enjoy it? Would you prefer it if the user interface were to be improved so as to make it much harder for you to go wrong, and at the same time easier for you to get where you wanted to? (If you can drive a stick-shift, you might understand better what I mean.) If the system is foolproof and easy enough to use, complexity disappears, while at the same time, functionality and configurability are maintained.
For the record, I'm fairly proficient in *NIX system administration and I doubt I could be considered a newbie. (It's possible I've been very clueless in writing this comment, though.)
"A steep learning curve is counterintuitive to using a tool." -- says sinator.
I beg to disagree. In life there are simple tasks and complex tasks. Complex tasks require complex tools. If the complexity of the problem is high, you cannot help things by simplifying the tools.
There are actually two issues here. One is that to solve complex problems you need to learn things. Sure, a soldering iron is a simple tool. I'll teach you how to use it in five minutes. Now take it and go assemble a TV out of those resistors and other stuff over there...
The second issue is that complex problems frequently require complicated tools. I don't think anything can be done about it. Again, it is the irreducable complexity of the problem that determine what can and cannot be done simply.
I agree that a world where you have to "roll your own" for all computing that you do is not viable. But this does not mean that computers always have to be as simple as toasters. For simple tasks -- e.g. writing a letter -- yes. For complicated tasks -- e.g. tracking an intermittent hardware fault -- no.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
To add sarcasm to sarcasm...
I'm smart because I know Linux. Now I can impress my friends because I'm smart. I'm so smart that I can learn Linux. See how smart I am?
RTFM will help, but I've spent hours looking through man pages and other help areas trying to figure out some of the more simple aspects of the operating system. I for one think it would have been nice to have had someone around to give me a hand.
I was clueless, and I wanted to be cool. And now I'm cool, though still largely clueless in many areas.
Sofa King What.
I don't really know if he's right...
He obviously thinks that keeping Debian non-intuitive and non-user-friendly makes him a special person because he could figure it out.
Yet, we have to look at our goals as a community. Don't we want to replace Windows as the desktop OS of choice? Maybe. Remember that most windows users could fall into the category of clueless, not because they don't want to learn, but because they are using computers to do *other* tasks, and don't have the time. They want a *tool*, not a *toy*, and that's what differentiates the two types of users.
Putting some user-friendliness into Linux distributions isn't a bad thing, as long as we don't lose the ability to run a CLI, or however we want to customize it. I don't see the CLI ever being replaced, because who's going to take it away? Linus? Yeah, right!
In summary - putting user friendly tools on top of Linux is good. Those of us who don't want to use them just don't have to install them. Those who don't want to give technical advice to the newbies or the clueless don't have to. It's up to everyone.
Question: I was programming assembly language in high school (early 90's) but I only recently installed Linux. Am I a newbie? Am I clueless if I ask for help? I thought we were here to help each other - hacking isn't about keeping the secrets to yourself, is it?
I must say I agree with you when you say that GUI applications can be powerful, like CAD tools for instance. But it is my belief that GUIs are not the best solution for every task made on a computer. In other words the command-line will be always be useful.
Another thing that strikes me is that many seems to believe that natural-language communication with computers is the future. That may be true for some people/tasks, but I think that it will only (or mostly) be used for practical reasons, like helping disabled people or used in tasks when you hands are tied up with something else.
It may be interesting to look at other areas where man-machines-interaction is taking place. As an example, let's take a look at driving a car. I would not what to talk to the car, since I have much more precision with my hands and legs. In case of a sudden obstacle I could (almost) rely on my reflexes to save me, instead of having to think of the right phrase to stop the car or make it turn. By the time I have managed to remember the right phrase it may be too late.
I realize that this example may be a bit extreme (or even silly) but I believe there is a point. Just because we can talk to a computer it may not be a practical solution since talking is a relatively slow and indistinct communication method compared to keystrokes or mouse movements.
Just my 2....
When I was a newbe I installed MkLinux without knowing anything exept "ls" , almost. I ran it a while and messed averything up so I had to reinstall it. After totally ruining my system severaltimes I got to a point there I began to understan how things worked etc.
Whats my point?- Its only the will that is the limit. I wanted to do things so I had to figure out how to do it. I wannted to install applications, and since I had a Mac with a terrible outdated port of redhat I had to compile everything myself.
I totally agree with the author of the article.
/The users are all the problems...
De lyckliga slavarna är frihetens bittraste fiender, legalisera!!!
Rather, I think it is this sort of attitude that is bad for Debian.
Point made. Loud and clear. ;-)
I am sure you can build a transmitter/receiver from a 5-tube superhetrodyne radio and communicate around the world. (No, I'm not a ham, but I've known some.) CW is doable. If you can do voice with that you are *really* good.
There is a camaraderie among people who have survived, be it Slackware or Canadian winters. This tends to exclude people who haven't shared the experience. The trap is to assume that everybody should share that experience.
Few men climb Everest. Extremely few do it without supplemental oxygen. Real men climb Everest without supplemental oxygen? Too high a barrier. Most people don't climb mountains, but most people do walk and even climb small hills. The point I am trying to make is that as the use of Linux spreads, the barrier to entry must fall, and the clueless and the newbies are not to be despised. The clueless will be able to do a few things, sometimes very useful things, but will be helpless if anything goes wrong or is out of place. Applies to us all one way or another, doesn't it.
BTW, if you can build a PC from bare board and loose IC's, you are *not* a newbie. A Linus newbie, possibly. A newbie, no.
Donald Norman's The Psychology of Everyday Things should be required reading of anyone who designs something for use by anyone other than himself.
Please don't miss the critical point that it is VERY difficult to learn Linux. I've been doing computers for 20 years. I've a dozen books, which I've read, on Linux and I've read (not word for word) all of the main manuals in the LDP and many of the How-to's. I'm still having problems and I KNOW I'm not stupid. I would offer two suggestions to improve manuals.
1) Start simple and move outward. A good example is "Mastering the VI editor" at www.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/vi.html. Sometimes finding just the required basics is impossible in the deluge of information.
2) Use real examples in the documentation. Instead of just listing all the possiblities show an example of a commonly used implementation. For example 'TAR -xzpvf file.name' and then explain what you did and why.
I personnally would love to find more on the kernel. NOT programming but customizing and compiling and then the boot flow. The best book I have on that is the Unix Administrators Guide but it's a bit generic at times and not specific to Linux. Thanks.
I think it's redundant. There is already a site like this, except it includes those that are also willing to lend out media.
Another one certainly couldn't hurt.
Not Bullshit ;)
r y=albert+einstein&DBase=Articles
Albert Einstein dropped out of high school at age 15, moved to Switzerland with his folks. He did resume his studies at the Federal Polytechnic Academy in Zürich when he was 16 and graduated.
But he was technically a high-school drop out.
It isn't all relative. It also is quantum mechanics. String Theory ties all this together. But it was a pun.
You should quit buying your undwear two sizes too small. It'll make you more relaxed.
More reading on Einstein can be had at...
http://www.eb.com:180/bol/search?type=topic&que
Look, we don't want Linux to become the AOL of the OS market. MS does that already. 'look, ma! i installed linux all by myself!'
I'll admit to being a relatively new Linux user, but like the article read - I'm getting tired of people coming up to me and asking me questions when they just could have RTFM. It didn't take me that long to learn to do it myself so why should those of us who HAVE made the effort suffer?
I'd like to see linux easier to use, but realistically do you want your MOM to be able to install it - without knowing ANYTHING about what's going on behind the GUI?
der dee der.
I totally agree that these people are annoying, but if it wasn't for them you wouldn't have a job. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.
If they annoy you so much, what are you doing in tech support?
I've gotten better help for Linux (and faster)
Than I have with any commercial product.
Actually half the people are dumber than the median value, not the average.
The two are very close in even distributions though. If that was your point then I retract my comment. Many people confuse the two statistics though.
Let's be honest with each other, Linux documentation ranges from quite good to darned near useless. It is also often written by people who assume that the readers have some background knowledge that not everyone has. This will become more true as Linux popularity increases. I am a reasonably intellegent person but I don't have a specific computer background. It took me a while to get accustomed to the man page format (which is quite good once you get used to it). I have also hit Linux chat rooms on more than one occasion because I was stuck and the HOWTO's weren't helping. For the uninitiated, Linux takes some effort to get the hang of. I now spend more and more time is those chat rooms helping new users and sometimes admonishing others to go easy on the new guys.
On the other hand, another popular OS can be installed by just about anyone capable of finding the on switch on their computers. If any Linux distribution is serious about competing as a mainstream OS, the interface must be simple enough for the average computer user. Linux users, for now, tend to be above average in computer knowledge.
As a personal example, I have been using FVWM2 on my Linux installation and my wife is constantly pointing out areas where my interface configuration is not clear. I kinda see it as a way to improve my programming skills.
Bottom line is, if you want Linux to be mainstream, then there has to be at least one distribution that is intuitive to the average computer user....and that will not be an easy task.
"Rascal am I? TAKE THAT!" -- Errol Flynn
I was on the fence about Linux/Win98 because I adore Photoshop 5.0 and didn't know much about Wine. A friend of mine (ChrisC) stopped by my house, did some magic with Xconfigurator and gimp looked niiiice. When he saw me beaming, he said, "Aha, we have another."
I hope to do that a few dozen times to my friends and loved ones [smirk].
My 2,
Jason
j@intap.net
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
Yes, but a lot of people neither want nor need a "general-purpose information-processing engine".
They want an appliance to do e-mail, or to look at Web sites, or whatever.
Nothing wrong with that. I think it is a mistake to try "one size fits all" here. I love the power and flexibility that Linux gives me. Other people may not want it, and may not need it. I think it is a shame that those people are not better served, and have to use wretched kludges such as Windows.
Also, there is no way we should be saying "Linux needs more newbies". Linux is the last thing a newbie needs, unless they actually want to buy in to the whole "power at a price" thing. Some sort of GUI system built on top of Linux, maybe.
Everyone who has a Clue about Linux, people like me who can pick up a CD of a distribution he's never seen in his life and install it with no documentation and blindfolded (ok, I'm exaggerating) should be spending their time doing some sort of pro gratis support. I do it on #linux from time to time. This way, as the number of clueful people increases, the number of people helping the clueless become clueful increases, and the system feeds itself.
This is a much better solution than the infuriating snobbery inherant in that article. Computer culture should be inclusive, not exclusive, and if being "geeky and withdrawn" is a qualifier to being a member of the computer culture, I certainly don't want a part of it. I don't see elitism as my reason for using an operating system.
No sig.
That's how the Linux community should be.
Installation is one of the hardest parts, and often most people need some help installing. And it was great that their was someone to help you install. But a difference between you and the "stupid users" are they don't know where to go. All they do is pop in the RH cd into the cdrom and their installed in a matter of minutes. "Thinking gee whiz, this was easy. So how do you play solitaire?"
A lot of "gurus" are just tired of "How do I get my winmodem working?" questions. Which can simply be answered by doing a search on dejanews.
could you explain me rationnaly why installing a modem SHOULD be different than installing a toaster. PLEASE ?
Lucky for me, my video card (a Diamond VLB card back in the days when S3 didn't want to release its card specs) didn't work with X. Why lucky for me? Well, it forced me into using the console. I spend hours every day trying to learn it, and eventually became quite proficient.
I ended up getting Internet about two years later, so much of the software I was using was quite out of date. Although I regret not being to use X first off, I think hot having it there benefited me in the long run.
Debian and Redhat obviously make it too easy to install Linux - we should all go back to using SLS. CDROMs? Nah, From now on distributions will be on floppy so we can spend a whole afternoon putting floppies in and out of our computers? And delete all those FAQs and HOWTO's too. Anyone who can't be bothered to spend the time to learn a few programming languages and read the source code is just lazy and doesn't deserve to use Linux.
/. is not a good cross-section of), don't want a learning experience when they use a computer. For them it is an appliance - something they use to read email, access web pages and write letters. Unlike most of the people around here they don't have the slightest interest at all in `how it works'. They just want it to work out of the box. Kind of like me when it comes to cars :-)
Geez! What really annoys me about posts like the one to the debian list is that they spring from arrogance - that everyone who knows less than me must be either stupid or lazy. Its like these people want to belong to an `elitist club' of cool linux users and once they know whats going on don't want anyone else to join!
The vast majority of computer users (of which
I think that Linux has a lot to offer in terms of stability and efficiency as well as a platform for further innovation. Unless you want it remain primarily in the domain of techies or computer hobbyists then it will have to made easier to use (incidentally I think that the work that Debian and Redhat have done in the previous few years has made it much easier to install and administrate. Too often however, writing reams of documentation is used as a substitue for poor interface design.
amen
There are certainly a handful of individuals who install something just for experimentation.
But for the vast majority of users, they want to get something done. And you should use the right tool for the right job.
For general day to day computing tasks, Linux is not the best tool. Actually in many cases it won't even perform the job.
The hype surrounding Linux of course makes it sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread. Anybody who says otherwise is called a Microsoft coconspirator.
Tell ya what. If you see clueless-newby posts, just stick your head back in the sand. What they are showing is that the documentation is not assisting the new audience. Yes, the documentation may be there. Yes, it may be complete. However, it is not organized for someone who doesn't know what he's doing - even if that person wants to find out.
It reminds me of the Audi "unintended acceleration" problem. No, it didn't appear to be a design flaw, but clearly something was going wrong and denial sure wasn't fixing it. It took Audi ten years to get past it.
With Redhat 5.2, it must have taken me no more than ten minutes to figure out how to change the hostname (It's in /etc/sysconfig/network. You might also need to change /etc/hosts as well). Funny thing is, I didn't even know beforehand exactly where to look under /etc to change it. They still teach Unix newbies how to use grep, don't they?
Did leapfrog really meant to say that he took NINE DAYS to figure out how to change the hostname on Red Hat Linux? Sure the Redhat distribution may be a little different than the Slackware that he's used to (I've used both), but Lord help him if he ever has to use any other Unix than Linux, like AIX, HP-UX, or Solaris - all of which are but a few I've had to use in my line of work.
I just think people need to take a little more time to learn how to use any certain Linux distribution (be it Redhat, Debian, or whatever) before they start bashing it as a distribution for "clueless" Windows users. Clearly, leapfrog did not do that in the case of Redhat.
And BTW, guess who admits to using Redhat Linux on his own machine? Why none other than Linus Torvalds himself! Don't believe me? Read the answer to question 10 of Eric S. Raymond's FAQ on Linus. I think leapfrog may want to consider that fact before making statements that Redhat Linux is for clueless Windows users.
it is the fault of the 'linux booster' types
who go around saying how great it is and how
everyone should use it. how are you going to feel
if you spend 50 bucks for some hyped up product
and it wont even install right because the documentation
has errors in it? frankly linux has way too many sleazeball
marketing types trying to make a quick buck by spreading
false hopes. its not the users fault, lay the fuck off them!
Ooooooooohhhhhhh!!! Those stupid, close-minded, ignorant U**X veterans. I hate you, hate you, hate you. Every time I hear something like "GUI is for newbies only" or "if you have emacs you do not need anything else" or "if they do not know how to rewire the CPU socket to make 2 Celerons run on a SMP motherboard, they are just dumb users and should be ignored" I get very close to being torn to parts by accumulating anger and frustration. Why do you guys think that everybody who doesn't want to know anything about computers is stupid? Why don't you RTFM on your psychology manual. maybe it is not the users who are stupid not to be able to use your OS, but your OS is too stupid to understand what actual users ( hard-core fans excluded ) want from it.
Now that some steam is out, let's talk real things. I understand that it is always insulting when after you have climbed a few mountains, crossed rivers and swamps, forced your way through other dangerous terrains and finaly got to the point where you can rest and felt so proud of yourself for getting here, someone have built a nice highway and everybody is getting here in air-conditioned limos and walk the same ground without even getting soles of their showes dirty. This is where all this nonsence about "good old times" is coming from. Old timers who have got they grey hairs from wading undocumented peices of source code just to make their system do something do not like it when people stick a CD in, boot, answer a few questions and get a nice GUI with everything if not completely usable than at least pretending to be working. Being unable to make the old problems to live again they say that whoever didn't take part in them cannot appreciate whatever is going on now. It is like an old bum trying to teach a yuppie to appreciate sleeping in subway because it is much warmer then in the street. Let's get even more particular. In case of Linux and Joe users I find it very good when a Joe/Jane user actually hears about Linux and attempts to install it on his/her computer. OS installation is a big step for a non-techie person and an attempt should be regarded with respect. So when a newbie is writing to a news group or calls tech support and says "Hello, I bought my linux CD and it asks me to partition my disk, what do I do?" IMHO he should get an answer like "Hey man, welcome to the party. If you have your manual take a look at the installation chapter or go to such and such web site and read this and this. If you have any other problems call/post them here." instead of "RTFM you stupid loser". As a Linux fan and an IT professional I have found that in many cases Linux ( and I do not mean Slackware ) is much easier to install than Win95/98. I did A LOT of installs of both and I have to say that my RH 5.2 is working as a charm and I still cannot configure half of my hardware in Win95 on my home system. I agree that CLI is much more powerful and fast than GUI interfaces in most of the cases, but CLI is a resort of a power user, and a clueless user should have a place to learn to become a power user. If you tell Joe user that he has to read a 500+ pages manual before he even dares to touch his Linux CD he is going to get insulted and quite rightfuly so, for he just want to use his system and not to become a tech-wizard. Learning is required, but system should help you to learn, not discourage you. I believe that if GUI is done as it should be done ( and I do not mean MS products ) it will be exactly as powerful as that particular CLI program that it interfaces with like if we have a GUI 'tar' it should have as many different options as a regular 'tar' maybe even more for GUI version and CLI version require a little different set of functionality. Surely a person who have mastered CLI will be more productive using pipes and redirs and flow control etc etc etc. But I think that user should be able to use his/her system before he masters CLI. Many people in Linux community are saying that Linux OS is about choices. Choice of Linux vs other OSs, choice of GUI vs. CLI, KDE vs. GNOME, XFree86 vs. commercial X servers, GCC vs EGCS etc etc etc. I think I have been rambling enough to get my points through to at least somebody out there. Don't close your mind from users only because they don't know and don't know how to find out. They will learn, but after MS enslavement they have to first learn how to learn again. Sorry. Flame me if you want to, but this is what I think and this is what I said and going to say again when needed.
Everybody Lies. But it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
Given a normal distribution (of the sort y=e(-x^2), mean=median=mode (by "mean" I mean "arithmetic mean"). Intelligence is generally accepted as having a normal distribution. Therefore, it I would not consider it incorrect to say that half the people are stupider than the average person. Surprisingly enough, even though you seem to say that the statement is incorrect, you understood the meaning, which is, after all, the purpose of language.
Furthermore, I would submit that, in fact, "average" is a standard English word and has no rigorous technical mathematical definition, so to try to use "average" in a technical context makes as much sense as trying to divide by zero: neither is rigorously defined. Therefore, attempting to correct someone's non-standard usage of "average" by explaining the technical usage is precisely nonsense.
I'm not a professional geek, although my job (university-based surgeon) certainly has its own geek-like obsession with obscure technical issues. This "Debian newbie" discussion is just like what I face trying to teach surgical residents to operate on people. The vital distinction is between ignorance and apathy. I expect my residents to come to the operating room reasonably familiar with textbook descriptions of the planned operation. I don't expect them to know everything I know. If someone is really making a good-faith effort to learn, I'll bend over backwards to help, even if the individual is "clueless". I only get upset if the resident surgeon hasn't even tried to learn and expects to be led through the operation like a dog on a leash.
The Debian guy seems to think that people should learn in the most painful, inefficient way possible, with a maximum of wasted time and effort. For someone who really wants to learn, there's nothing like finding someone who really knows his/her stuff AND who is willing to help. Refusing to answer a question because it could have been found with 30 minutes of reading doesn't help anyone. Maybe the person read for hours but didn't know where to look.
I think that the issue is choice. I prefer linux because i can choose the window manager that i find works best for me rather than what someone has decided is the most usable for the average person.
... ", (implies "they don't know what is good for them ..."), sound a lot like the mainstream operating systems.
The phrase "If you let people choose
In some configurations, Unix is no trivial toy.
It can be very powerful. An element of that power is some responsibility to not be every script kiddies network abuse gateway. NT won't be much different. It will actually be WORSE due to information hiding. MacOS 10 might be better. The rest aren't robust enough to be relevant to this discussion (if you were willing to put up with Win9x, the extra robustness of Unix/NT/OS10 is a moot issue).
People (especially Mac users) use the fact that Window$ is built on a command-line foundation as a sign of weakness. Actually it's a strength...the weakness comes from the fact that the foundation is DOS which is not a true foundation but a hack by some guy in Seattle (when it was QDOS). With the strong foundation of a UNIX OS (or UNIX-like) under it we can create powerful and friendly GUI driven programs without worrying that the system will topple under it's own weight. On the other hand we can also have powerful command-line tools without the useless (in some cases) overhead of a GUI.
The same sort of thing applies to user configuration. Developers can have defaults that defer to newbies while continuing to provide the power when needed. An example: the Gnome-find program. This program helps newbies do searches without having to learn the syntax all at once and if they want more power once they are more comfortable they can always use the command line interface. Let the user use the system first then delve into it's innards if they want once they are comfortable.
We never need to dumb-down Linux we just need to provide layers, strata of access. Here's another example - when I first setup my computer I installed it with a swap partition but the swap was never enabled. This caused my computer to crash with out-of memory errors. It didn't do very much for my appreciation for Linux's stability. It sure would have been nice if there was a program that went through my system and checked for things like that (ala Wintune). Obviously this kind of thing wouldn't be terribly useful to an experienced user (and they don't have to use it!) but it would have saved me literally months of frustration.
I think it is very sad that the Linux community, as a whole, seems to believe that Linux should be difficult to install requiring users to learn about monitor frequencies for X windows configuration, cryptic configuration file settings, file system setup, etc. I wish someone would make a distribution that litterally installed as easy on average as AmigaDos, BeOs, Windows 95, MacOS, etc.
That doesn't mean any power has to be removed from Linux just that a default configuration for most users be available. If that is not the tenant of Debian and the Linux community continues to believe that only "techies" should use Linux then Linux will never grow as large as its potential. Linux is a great OS overall but I for one would love to see a distribution for the people you deem "clueless". If such a ditribution was created perhaps it would be viable for an average Windows user to see what great alternative OS Linux is.
The fact remains most people are "clueless" because they don't have time, or the need to spend hours recompiling their kernals to get that one extra clock cycle worth of power. They want to install it and go. Linux has the ability to do this while still remaining 100% tweakable for the power hungry "techies" out there. As long as we continue to think of them as mutually exclusive we will never see Linux take over the portion of the Windows market that I'm sure would mean a wealth of software applcations for all of Linuxdom.
My $(1/50): 1) Most people don't need/want to figure out how to use what makes linux powerful. 2) The current trend (syndrome) in the mainstream software market seems to be to provide bells & whistles/cooler interfaces before really useable (and useful) features and capabilities. Take M$ Office 97, for example. Essentially, it's just Office 95 with a toolbar whose buttons raise when the mouse pointer moves over them, and a really, really damn annoying talking paperclip. (Who doesn't turn that damn thing off??) The new "features" are rarely used, because 1) they're too specialized, and 2) PC users already know how to get things done, so there's no reason to provide a different way to do it, especially one that isn't any easier. 3) Linux is free. 99% of the software that runs on it is free. Linux users are already used to the idea, and wouldn't want to buy any other software. Linux software is (mostly) written by computer programmers/college students/etc. in their spare time. If 1000000000s of people started using Linux, it would be impossible to keep up with any kind of developer-provided technical support. Who in their right mind would do that for free? In order to use free and open-source software, you either have to figure it out yourself, or look in any number of places for an answer. Average users don't have the patience for that. In essence: The ocean is free, but you gotta learn how to swim to use it. I'm not being elitist, just realistic.
Clueless users?
If I were a new Linux user, this kind of arrogance would be enough to make immediately pass by Debian and find another distro.
If you want to increase the size of your user base, then get a clue!
TedC
a perfect program will of course be a combination of two things: a CLI and a GUI. You keep the CLI part of the program powerful and robust, with tons of arcane switchs and crap, and you use the GUI as a frontend for it, in fact, most GUIs right now are infact just frontends to CLI programs. Even though its must faster for me to type in the exact long line of text to make a cd image from a directory and pipe it to the cd recorder, i still prefer to use a GUI frontend, just because i am lazy.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
An unlicensed & untrained driver is more likely to kill someone or themselves with their car. An untrained computer user is not going to kill anyone with it. Last I checked, a crashed OS has never killed anyone, with the possible exception of an NT box running a life-support system in hospital.
...get a job working in any type of support capacity or become a developer that has to work with any end-users. With the attitude he's got, he'll be lucky to hold a given job for more than a few months before other employees or customers begin asking for his head on a platter. If I had someone working for me that took that attitude with another employee or customer they'd better have their resume up to date. Perhaps it was just the writing style but the author came across as impossibly pompous and condescending.
This is off-topic but having been a Linux user for some years now (originally w/ Slackware but currently RedHat) I fail to see the usefullness of the Holy War of the Distributions that seems to have developed. Each has it's own strengths and weaknesses. Besides, what I see as a strength, you might think of as a weakness; and vice versa. For example, Slackware was a great introduction to Linux. As a long-time UNIX user/admin it was just complicated enough; for a new user it might be too much. I switched to RedHat not because it was any easier to use (it was, at the time, only a little bit easier to install) but because of its being easier to apply upgrades with RPM. Upgrading Slackware was more accurately, and maybe still is, described as a reinstallation and too time consuming and my time is worth something (or at least my family seems to think so). Another Linux user might not mind doing upgrades that way but, IMHO, time not spent performing upgrades to Linux is more time to use Linux. I say let's just congratulate yourselves on using the best damned software that money can't buy (unless you want to) and expend out energies in making it better. Fighting over distributions makes the Linux community appear like a bunch of assinine teenagers arguing over which heavy metal band "rules". Grow up! Please! Quit making us look like idiots!
Damn! I just reread what I wrote above and I seem to be in a much better mood than the Trucluster snafu I'm working through at work should justify.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
These are people who want a computer to be a toaster. Plug it in, and it works. When something doesn't work with their system, they flip out.
//e and all you had to do is have a disk in the drive when you turned it on. Even with the Commodore 64 for most things all you had to do was type LOAD "*",8,1 and you were in business. There was nothing to fix either. If it broke, you had to take it to your local computer repair shop, where they figured out which chip was bad and replaced it. Yes, Virginia, at one time you could plug a computer in and it would work. Strangely enough, that was about the same time you could go to Service Merchandise and choose from several computers that looked AND ACTED different! Unfortunately, times change, and so far, not for the better.
Then I guess pretty much all the computers made in the 80s were toasters then, becasue most of those you just plugged in, turned on, and they worked. Maybe you had to program them, but then again I've used the Apple
So what happened? Simply put, computers got more complex, so that even if the UI appears the same, the innards aren't always. As a result there's more work for the user to do, especially if the user has to configure the system manually as is the case with Linux, as for most distributions (I don't know about Red Hat) stuff like the sound isn't configured at install time. And when the user learns that he has to recompile the kernel to get sound, it's kind of understandable that they would prefer a system that comes already configured.
It's also true, though, that people should read the HOWTOs, as they contain just about everything there is to know about anything you would ever want to use your system for, broken up neatly by category. That's how I learned Linux.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Should Linux be useable by everyone? Of course.
Should we let the good design and programming be swarmed into something bad by the onslaught of new users like Usenet almost devoured by the AOL-masses?
Certainly not.
(no offense to AOL'ers, you weren't given any guidlines and it was AOL's interface that dumped the five or so lines of "AOL AOL AOL AOL..." on the bottom of every post.)
--
Erskin
geek.
It is a tremendous fallacy to think the OS does not need a cli and attendant tools. The main application for cli's is system administration, but there are many other places where a normal user would benefit.
However, I disagree with you one one point: there really is a trade off between power and ease of use. This is not to say there is a trade off between power and good design or simplicity (which I think was really your point after all). Ease of use generally involves limiting one's options or obfuscating them; there really isn't any other way.
support gun control: take guns from cops
Although it may "require" a sysadmin or root user, the beauty of OS X is that it sheilds that functionality from the user.
It'll be great for multi-user machines, but for the detatched, single-user Mac, the OS hides the complexity of the "multi-user" paradigm from the user. It may do everything in root mode, but the Users shouldn't have to care about that...
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
"It is true that computers are not as simple to use a televisions. But they should be. Most people just use their systems for web surfing, email, word processing, and the like. These people should not have to dig through arcane config files in order to use their systems."
Fuck 'em. You've decribed the WebTV customer, for whom an appliance as easy to use as the TV exists. Linux is for computer users, not glorified typists who have a screen to look at.
I've read the article, and several of the response posts, and it seems that the thrust of the article has been sidestepped by the respondents.
Yes, the article claims that GUIs are a waste of time, that RH is a toy Linux, yadda, yadda... But that's not the point, that's the opinion of the author.
The point, to me at least, is this: Hackers appreciate Debian for the control and raw power it gives them. (I've never used it, I'm more the Slacker type) It is 'expert-friendly', and the shortcuts required to make is 'user-frindly' would require compromises to be made, that would take the control away from the hacker.
There is some 'need' to bring in new users - it's a Good Thing to make Linux popular. But that's RH's job. They have the spotlight, and they're willing to give support to the newbies.
The newbies will need LOTS of support before they can even hope to run Debian, without getting their eyebrows singed.
The ultimate point: Newbie education is in Linux's best interest. This does not mean hand-holding the school-marm whose 'cup-holder' is broken though. Direct those to www.apple.com and be done with it. There's no cure for the stupid - the ignorant we can save.
The Linux community needs to consider the newbie's predicament. Linux is complex, even in it's most user friendly incarnation.
We need to rate the distributions. i.e. RH = Linux95, Debian = Linux Professional, Slackware = some assembly required, S.U.S.E = Sprachen sie Deutsch, Amigo??
We need to collate and make newbie accessible the wealth of Linux documentation that is out there. It would also be helpful if we got some good tech-writers to pore over it, and take it out of Hacker mode... A 'man' page, after all, is pretty hostile to a newbie.
Most importantly, we need to ask the potential Linux newbie "WHY?".. Most become interested because they hear the buzz. They hear it's better than Windows, so they want it. To them, better means easier - we live in a world made convenient. Linux is the greatest hobby a geek can have and/or it is the most powerful OS you will ever need.
We must make it clear that Linux is an end in itself - for those who don't know any better. Those who know better, need not be educated.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
> Sprachen sie Deutsch, Amigo??
"Sprechen Sie Deutsch" might work better,
but I'd go with
"kannst Du Deutsch?"
if you don't want to sound like a Lehrbuch
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
Joe User wants to be able to get his system going out of the box (preferably by inserting a CD, answering a few questions that are easily understood, and having the option to say 'I don't understand that' and getting help along the way).
Exactly! I too was one of those "clueless users" who struggled with Slackware forever, and then discovered the SuSe dist. That was the out-of-box experience that is needed to get people into the Linus OS. Sure, some may object to a distribution that doesn't force newbies to roll their own, but by using this dist. I have been able to convince many people to switch to a SuSe/KDE/Netscape/StarOffice combo rather than using a Windows box. Just my $.02
Irrational? I've had to teach Windows over the phone to people who don't get the concept of single click vs. double click. After about the three hundredth iteration, you start having nothing but contempt for clueless idiots who think that installing a modem is like installing a toaster, and then take it out on you when it's not. All they want to do is download dirty pictures, not turn into computer techies.
Yeah, there are people who don't know. There are people who even admit their ignorance. But some try. They at least try to anticipate the kinds of questions they might get asked, and they find the answers before they seek help. And they're not the ones I'm ranting against. It's the ones who Just Don't Get It (tm, pat pending) and don't want to.
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
1-
I have just realised that my sentence :
' I had never installed Linux before, only NetBSD (and DOS,Win user for 10 years), and it was not a good experience'
could be misinterpreted.
NetBSD was not a good experience. Debian was good
2-
Moreover, I have forgotten to say that you don't learn by reading documentaion. You have to experiment, so to install......
Of course, this assumes the documentation is well-written and well-organized. It's possible to have information which technically is in the documentation, but which will take forever to find by anyone who doesn't already know where it is.
And then, of course, there's the opposite problem: you're a caller, you have a problem which is not in the documentation, or which is buried obscurely. You contact technical support and explain that (say) news is putting messages in the wrong group, you confirm it by telnetting to the nntp port, and they reply with questions about your Netscape newsreading configuration. They didn't even _read_ all of your message. You could actually say "I looked in the FAQ" and they'll tell you to go look in the FAQ.
A corresponding problem to clueless users is support people who assume that everybody is a clueless user.
I have been using windows for a long time because that's what is most common where I work/learn/play so logically that would be the way to go. Recently I got so sick of all the crap it was giving me and I wiped my box and set out to install Linux. This was the first time I ever really used linux. I installed Debian and had it up and running (including X and various usefull daemons) in a couple of hours. This is from never having really used linux before. I found Debian fairly easy to install. In fact the install process is about the same as RedHat not to mention how great dselect is. I think Debian can easily be used by clueless users if those clueless users are willing to try a little bit. Oh well, people are lame.
and so was everyone else. I feel this what the writer lost when he wrote his arragont article. He forgot to mention that he too was a newbie once. That he too asked for help/read when he needed to login to an UNIX terminal that he too had problems trying to setup a reasonably secure UNIX box.
I help people, not cause I want linux to take over the world or not cause I live and breath linux, I help people cause once not long ago, I too was like one of them, asking for help, getting help and understanding more of my beast. Eventually I have had it tamed and got it to worship every single gesture I make at it. But this takes time, and a helping hand is always welcome.
There is no easy way to get rid of newbies, let them learn, help them, if they cant make it.. they would leave on their own, if not they would become like one of us.
And remember, it takes a master to teach a jedi how to swing his word.
--
I saw an article a few years (10 or so) ago that ...).
claimed that a "proper" application ought to have
a robust core, a concise help system (why am I so
happy about man pages and so frustrated with Win9
help?) and both beginner and expert modes.
Incidentially, I worked for the WordPerfect help
desk and I was quite taken by the WP expert mode
(switch off the menus and disable the mouse
When WP went "windows" it lost its command structure
and its macros. What a shame.
Yeah, that's what happened 90 some years ago with
the automobile, in America at least.
But then again, look where we're at today. Does a
day go by when you drive on the highway and don't
see many people that have done stupid things on
the road? Sure, cars are better and safer now, but
is it any safer to drive on our roads then it was
50 years ago?
When I was able to do my own spam-armoring, you got a chance to email me. Now you can only hope I see your reply.
Once again, Linux folk seem to believe that they are the only ones entitled to Linux. Does this make sense? My father owns a company that, right now, is running windows on several computers to get basic work done. When I'm home from college he complains how much windows crashes all the time. So I guess because he doesn't know what "tar xfvz" means, he shouldn't be allowed to run linux then, huh? No gimp, pop, you aren't worthy!
This is an elitist and xenophobic position that will only harm the linux movement. Unix gurus are afraid that their dominance in their own little world is threatened by masses of consumers wishing for something better than windows. What right do you have to tell them they can't run unix just because they aren't a computer science major? Another example. I run linux on my machine almost full time. My roommate is a complete computer-phobe who is the type of person that is constantly afraid they will somehow "break" the computer by pressing the wrong button. I gave him an account on my machine, set up GNOME and window maker, and told him: "Even if you tried to break the machine, you couldn't, because you need a password to." He now happily logs in a uses netscape to check email, play cds, etc. I'm waiting for the day he says how much he likes it better than windows.
Linux is tough, but does it have to be? Because of its nature, there will always be the Happy Hacker Valley Command Line for people like the author to play in. You don't want GNOME, fine. Don't install it. But for people who are looking for something better than windows, we have NO RIGHT to tell them "no." Give them KDE to give them a start. Tell them what it means to "mount" a drive. They want to install a theme? Explain tar xfvz. Explain symbolic links. Eventually, a newbie can learn to master unix commands that were once reserved for people like the author.
Or is that what he is afraid of?
Owen Williams
>As the Melissa debacle demonstrated: a system has
>to be engineered to deal with the stupidity of
>it's users.
How has RedHat failed to do this? They regularly post security updates that can be downloaded and installed with a simple command line, or even a graphical tool if that's your thing.
>Redhat has some SERIOUS security issues they need
>to deal with.
Every Linux distribution -- indeed, any OS distribution -- has security holes. RedHat does its part to make fixes available. What's your problem?
>In this respect, Redhat suffers from being 'too
>easy'.
You are conflating the issues of ease of use and insecurity. If anything, ease of updating and fixing security holes can INCREASE security.
Some keywords for the NSA in the Lord of the Rings universe: One Ring bind find Sauron quest Nazgul freedom
>
Ooooooooohhhhhhh!!! Those stupid, close-minded, ignorant U**X veterans. I hate you, hate you, hate you. Every time I hear something like "GUI is for newbies only" or "if you have emacs you do not need anything else" or "if they do not know how to rewire the CPU socket to make 2 Celerons run on a SMP motherboard, they are just dumb users and should be ignored" I get very close to being torn to parts by accumulating anger and frustration. Why do you guys think that everybody who doesn't want to know anything about computers is stupid? Why don't you RTFM on your psychology manual. maybe it is not the users who are stupid not to be able to use your OS, but your OS is too stupid to understand what actual users ( hard-core fans excluded ) want from it.
>
Now that some steam is out, let's talk real things. I understand that it is always insulting when after you have climbed a few mountains, crossed rivers and swamps, forced your way through other dangerous terrains and finaly got to the point where you can rest and felt so proud of yourself for getting here, someone have built a nice highway and everybody is getting here in air-conditioned limos and walk the same ground without even getting soles of their showes dirty. This is where all this nonsence about "good old times" is coming from. Old timers who have got they grey hairs from wading undocumented peices of source code just to make their system do something do not like it when people stick a CD in, boot, answer a few questions and get a nice GUI with everything if not completely usable than at least pretending to be working. Being unable to make the old problems to live again they say that whoever didn't take part in them cannot appreciate whatever is going on now. It is like an old bum trying to teach a yuppie to appreciate sleeping in subway because it is much warmer then in the street. Let's get even more particular. In case of Linux and Joe users I find it very good when a Joe/Jane user actually hears about Linux and attempts to install it on his/her computer. OS installation is a big step for a non-techie person and an attempt should be regarded with respect. So when a newbie is writing to a news group or calls tech support and says "Hello, I bought my linux CD and it asks me to partition my disk, what do I do?" IMHO he should get an answer like "Hey man, welcome to the party. If you have your manual take a look at the installation chapter or go to such and such web site and read this and this. If you have any other problems call/post them here." instead of "RTFM you stupid loser". As a Linux fan and an IT professional I have found that in many cases Linux ( and I do not mean Slackware ) is much easier to install than Win95/98. I did A LOT of installs of both and I have to say that my RH 5.2 is working as a charm and I still cannot configure half of my hardware in Win95 on my home system. I agree that CLI is much more powerful and fast than GUI interfaces in most of the cases, but CLI is a resort of a power user, and a clueless user should have a place to learn to become a power user. If you tell Joe user that he has to read a 500+ pages manual before he even dares to touch his Linux CD he is going to get insulted and quite rightfuly so, for he just want to use his system and not to become a tech-wizard. Learning is required, but system should help you to learn, not discourage you. I believe that if GUI is done as it should be done ( and I do not mean MS products ) it will be exactly as powerful as that particular CLI program that it interfaces with like if we have a GUI 'tar' it should have as many different options as a regular 'tar' maybe even more for GUI version and CLI version require a little different set of functionality. Surely a person who have mastered CLI will be more productive using pipes and redirs and flow control etc etc etc. But I think that user should be able to use his/her system before he masters CLI. Many people in Linux community are saying that Linux OS is about choices. Choice of Linux vs other OSs, choice of GUI vs. CLI, KDE vs. GNOME, XFree86 vs. commercial X servers, GCC vs EGCS etc etc etc. I think I have been rambling enough to get my points through to at least somebody out there. Don't close your mind from users only because they don't know and don't know how to find out. They will learn, but after MS enslavement they have to first learn how to learn again. Sorry. Flame me if you want to, but this is what I think and this is what I said and going to say again when needed.
Everybody Lies. But it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
I think there's the wrong mentality out there about the level of effort needed to do tasks in Linux. There's this idea that people should have the willingness to learn before they accomplish tasks in Linux. That's all fine and good for people who are interested in computers, and a certain level of competency should be expected. However, there are plenty of people who are not interested in the way a computer works and just want to use it, and leaving them out in the cold does no good to the spreading of Linux. Not everyone should to be a computer guru to use Linux; if George Lucas wanted to use Linux and send an e-mail of his next Star Wars script to his production team, do you really want him to expend his creative energies learning how to set up a connection, recompiling the kernel? If I were him, and the idea came to me now, I wouldn't bother. There are plenty of people in the world who have no interest in the innards of an OS, but have a vested interest in another field. If they want to use the computer, then it is wrong for them to be deprived of a simple interface to accomplish exactly what they want, and nothing more.
I see the current incarnation of Linux as a car without a hood, with the engine exposed. Sure, it's one hell of a powerful engine, and it'll speed along, but not a lot of people will buy it. It's not a family car, since it requires a lot of understanding of the complex, powerful engine to even use (think stick shift with lots of sticks, or something). It's not a sports car, because that ugly engine won't attract any babes. Right now, lots of people like making the engine go faster, but not as many people like covering the engine with something pretty to make it more appealing and _streamlined_.
I think that in a situation where there are a ton of tech support complaints involves something wrong with the users and the product. It's a sign that the users are at fault for not learning how to use the system correctly, and the product is at fault for not being easier to use. Either eventually the number of users will die down as the less technically-savvy get disgusted with the need to learn lots just to accomplish little, or the product makers will create simpler interfaces to keep the number of users happy. Which will it be?
The Linux Kernel, the GNU tools, and the numerous other bits of software that make up our systems are _not_ created by some third party. They are created from within the community of people who use the software. They are not asked to give monetary compensation to the many hackers who have worked many hours to create the gifts they so flippantly wield.
A question: are these people simply taking advantage of Free Software without giving anything whatsoever back? Do they have every right to continue as they do, reaping the fruits of other's labour? Sadly, yes, they do.
You're seeing the Linux community making the transition from having a majority of developers, and few "just users", to the situation of having many users and few developers.
The open software paradigm just isn't meant for the latter situation. People who are clueless about recompiling things to get them to work *and* who won't or can't learn to do it never will be "community members". And that's why the article's writer has this instinctive revulsion to them.
IMHO the right approach is the one which Apple seems to be taking (supposing they get their license debugged). Open Source for developers and geeks who want to tweak the kernel. Fully downloadable source up to and including the command line. So whoever fits that profile can learn and tweak and strut about.
But for the casual user, or clueless newbie, or whoever doesn't want to waste time reading man pages or tweaking things, there's a 5-minute installer, GUI configurations, and compatibility layers to run his old software.
Now there are people clamoring for open source release of the GUI stuff. I've got news for them... it won't work. See the situation with Gnome/KDE/whatnot. Buggy, slow, inconsistent, and everybody turns into an UI guru... but I've never met two UI guru who agreed 100% on something. if you see Apple's mailing lists on UI design, there's endless flaming about how Apple should change this or that pixel about, or throw everything away and get into this new religion, and on all levels inbetween.
The "community" approach works for Linux because there's much less possible variation on command line parameters, and all reasonable approaches have been tried out long ago. And APIs are simple and fixed (well, mostly). But for GUIs this never works.
In other words, the Mac OS GUI is so successful precisely because Apple has a defined API, more-or-less fixed styles, and enforces them, and the users often go along by simply not buying applications who try to break out of the mold (Kai Krause's stuff excepted).
So my advice to the Linux community is, open your minds to commercial, proprietary, non-open GUIs and installers. And you won't be bothered by clueless newbies anymore.
Like the original author I am replying to, I am a long time lurker, first time poster.
I would like to post a few thoughts on the hacker v. user mentality which is seeming to pervade the current long-time Linux community, and then a couple of ideas. Shoot them down as you will.
I am a recovering Microserf. I learned the MacOS, discovered there were ways of facing the world outside of Windows and, basking in the warmth of my newfound OS bilingualism, I had a friend mention the word "Linux". Naturally, I was interested.
When first I was given a copy of Redhat, it was while I was working at an ISP. As I was given it, I could have sworn there was a halo of light surrounding it, and while I couldn't swear to it, I think I heard a choir in the background. Naturally I was excited.
But then I put the disk in.
Four days later I was up and running. As most recovering Microserfs will do, my first command was "startx". The next day, after I got my Xserver to work, I did it again. And it looked like Windows 95. Cursing under my breath, I got Afterstep running. Nix another day.
Yes, this is a long post, but I'm getting to the point. I promise.
After a few weeks, and long hours of reading, I declared Linux unusable on my destop and deleted. Yet a few months ago, I needed to get a personal webserver up and running. After trying to get (laugh if you will) Microsoft products to work, and work reliably) I asked the same friend for advice. Mutely, he passed me SuSE 5.3. You know, the one that comes with 5 discs.
My eyes were opened. Flawless installation. Wonderful tools, and over 99% uptime. The choir returned, and my server is constantly wreathed in an ethereal glow. Linux is wonderful, life is good.
But, woe. My desktop still prominently says "Start" in the lower left-hand corner.
So what to do? I have a humble thought about it. Why not split Linux?
Calm down, let me explain. With Linux getting so popular, CNN, The Times, and Andy Ihnatko [1] all doing articles on it, Linux is expanding at a scientifically measured rate of "ungodly". So the usual end-user is of course intrigued. And let's face it, the average user uses their computer to write email, play solitaire, and look at smut online.
So why not make a "slimmed-down" Linux for them.
Give them a rock-solid OS. Give them lots and lots of eyecandy. But don't worry with ftpd, sendmail, or any other server setups.
In other words, wizards and themes. This will give the user time. Time to get used to Linux. Time to sit down, play solitare, get online, and say "Hey, this is great!"
And what do you know... while most users will never migrate from Linux Lite (for lack of a better name) some will learn. Some will grow out of it and order (or better yet download) the full blown distribution. Because I think everyone agrees, Linux is not for desktops, not yet. In a few years it will be, but in the meantime, Linux Lite will cover the average Joe Schmoe user. Then, as the tools are completed, and Linux has matured, we can slowly stop making the "Lite" versions, and use Linux to it's full, magnificent power.
The users will win, they're using Linux. And Linux will win, they're using Linux. And we can increase market share like you wouldn't believe.
And isn't that what it's all about? As Linus says, "Total World Domination!"
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[1] Bonus points if you know who he is!
"Responsibility for my career? I'm just a freakin' phone monkey!"
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
My $(1/50):
1) Most people don't need/want to figure out how to use what makes linux powerful.
2) The current trend (syndrome) in the mainstream software market seems to be to provide bells & whistles/cooler interfaces before really useable (and useful) features and capabilities. Take M$ Office 97, for example. Essentially, it's just Office 95 with a toolbar whose buttons raise when the mouse pointer moves over them, and a really, really damn annoying talking paperclip. (Who doesn't turn that damn thing off??) The new "features" are rarely used, because 1) they're too specialized, and 2) PC users already know how to get things done, so there's no reason to provide a different way to do it, especially one that isn't any easier.
3) Linux is free. 99% of the software that runs on it is free. Linux users are already used to the idea, and wouldn't want to buy any other software. Linux software is (mostly) written by computer programmers/college students/etc. in their spare time. If 1000000000s of people started using Linux, it would be impossible to keep up with any kind of developer-provided technical support. Who in their right mind would do that for free? In order to use free and open-source software, you either have to figure it out yourself, or look in any number of places for an answer. Average users don't have the patience for that.
In essence:
The ocean is free, but you gotta learn how to swim to use it.
I'm not being elitist, just realistic.
Sometimes there are just too many of them, or they get too loud.
Everybody Lies. But it doesn't matter since nobody listens.