Slashdot Mirror
UNIX for Moms
An anonymous reader sent us a link to a nifty little article
about Linux,
but what is interesting is the extremely simple description of
free software- it talks about Mom friendly unix, but the
best part of this article is that its got a Mom friendly
definition of why free software is changing things.
"Unix for Moms", not "Unix for Mom's".
What does mom own?
Never thought of that! Linux is user-friendly to everybody that isn't a clueless moron!!!
OK, moderate me down.
The beauty of Linux is all you need is a 386 to run it, and the community makes sure most older software runs with it. Your computer can probably run it if you take the time to make it work.
Actually, old hardware should probably be OK.
"Um, Seebach isn't a regular mom. She's obviously intelligent.."
I think its kinda harsh to imply most mom's aren't intelligent..
a computer.. she needs one to put free software on to of course.
But..But.. We want World Domination, and, and we want Morons to be able to use, use Linux, can't shut them out you know, and, and we have this war with MS we got to fight, and, and.. well darn it they needs to escape from MS and we're their only way out.. ;)
now, if she used TeX before, how can she be foriegn to unix?
Hmm.. Think like an end user.. While I'm at it I think I'll put my drink into this convenient cup holder that the manufacturer so thoughfully Installed for me. Slides into the computer when I don't need it too.
Well according to the stats that winvocates use Linux must get pretty lonely.
Well 99% or thereabout of all stereotypes are useful to 99% of the people who want to win 99% of their arguments with 99% of the people who disagree with them.
*Depositing 99% of his 0.2 cents.
Don't worry in the interest of getting those 99% that don't have a clue to excercise their right to a browser, Gecko will go to the page they want even before they start typing.
You have "adopt" and "leapfrog" in your sentence.
Either we are followers and hence adopt or we are leaders and hence leapfrog. Which will it be?
Point noted. Now keeping in mind that people aren't omnipotent. Were does one draw the line when it comes to designing a product to fulfil its desired function. And the end-users unlimited ability to (for lack of a better phrase) misuse the product? If one uses HCI throught a product, can you guarentee me that a end-user will not 'misuse' a product? And if the end-user does after all the above, is the designer to blame, or the gene pool that the end user comes from?
>(as root of course, since these begginers are always logged in as root). There is also a variant with chown|chmod -R that >does a very nasty job also.
.*" to get all of those pesky config directories. . it's SO easy to forget ".." is in ".*" .but it was embarassing as all hell =)
::blush:: OK, so on my first day as staff of our computer science servers (staff = root on an ultra enterprise 3000 server), i'm moving my old crappy account into my styish first-name account that staff gets; i copy everything over and do "chown -R
for some reason i only ended up up owning one other directory (i still don't understand that). .
No, NetBSD is a Unix clone. "Unix" is anything derived from the AT&T/Novell/SCO line. NetBSD (and BSDI, and FreeBSD, etc.) derive from Berkely's BSD4.4 Unix clone.
Anyway, I thought she's spot on about the differences between things. The link is just poorly titled.
Funny thing; about a day after Peter finished loading Linda's laptop, my mother called to say she wanted to try using a computer to "store stuff". My mother is still working on using a VCR.
what is "f u kn rd ts, ur wy 2 gky 4 ur wn gd."
... ... ..., you are too geeky for your own good." please fill me in. i am irc deprived. 8( never been on it actually. by choice too.
i am stupid, i realize that, but all i can make out is "fuck you
Don't slam moms. My mom was an admin for
Computervision Unix and CVMac machines for
years. She learned it all in her 50s. Mom
and I were forbidden by the rest of the
family from talking about setuid-root and
stuff at the dinner table!.
She would have been tickled pink to have her
own Linux machine to admin. Alas she did not
live to see the day.
-cary
So, is that makes Linux, NetBSD and co ready for the average Mom or your kinda one ? :)
I guess your Mom is Linux ready..
--
"Once you die, you never come back. Take care of yourself before leaving for good.."
My Dad.
No! There is no free software but Linux. There has never been any free software but Linux. All other software is unfree and therefore ungood. Citizens, do not be taken in by any suggestion to the contrary, for it is but a lie spread by Microsoft, the enemy of Linux. Praise Linux!
Don't even think about using NetBSD if you want to do anything with your computer along the lines of what average users would consider "useful". It is fair to say that NetBSD is first and foremost a platform for OS hobbyists you want to experiment with an obscure and unsupported operating system.
Shame on you! Please do not try to deceive readers into believing that NetBSD should be used by normal people! NetBSD is a failure and trying to lure innocent users into the BSD trap is shameful and unforgivable
Speaking as someone planning on setting up a GNU/Linux-based desktop for my mum, I have to worry about where KDE and GNOME are really going. It seems to be a forgone conclusion among all of us newcomers that "To make things easier, we need to make it have all that kewl graphical stuff Windows has." While a lot of computer geeks (The kind who read MS-oriented computer magazines, not free software hackers) think that's the only criteria, *real* newbies - like moms - have no idea how to use Windows. GNOME and other projects like it should be working on making things simple - they're too hairy for me at times, and I'm actually computer literate. I just worry that it will get to the point where you have to tell a clueless person "well right click here, then go to that, then pick this from the menu, and type in foobar" like you have to with Windows. Maybe we should try to look at how software can be simplified. The DOM in Mozilla is giving me a headache! How will parents and secretaries understand a web browser if only a few hackers out of every hundred can?
In case someone (who's obviously not a real hacker :-)) doesn't know, Peter Seebach is one of the most eminent C gurus on Usenet.
Check out his home page. Judging from that, I think I can hazard a guess as to the identity of the submitter of this piece.. ;-)
Now, that is one cool idea, especially for setting up a machine for people coming from Windows. I don't need it myself as I've got myself and my family used to just logging out and turning off the monitor (in fact, the power switch is taped in: little fingers:).
My parents are talking about getting a machine, and mom's making noises about Linux (due to my comments). Depending on what she wants, I just might wind up using something like this when/if she gets me to set it up. Thanks.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Posted by Josefine K.:
o urse_descriptions.html), heavily supported by the "Industrial Affiliates Program"?
Teaching my mother about Linux did a lot more than allow her to search for recipes faster...As a tenured electronics instructor, her opinions count about what courses are to be developed at her college. Living in the Seattle area, local junior and higher level colleges are clogged with M$-funded tripe coursework. Structured Programming with Visual Basic, Database Theory with Access, Networking programs that require three quarters MS-DOS but Unix is an elective...I won't go on. It's been a battle, but Mom has worked with other *nix-friendly instructors to offer students decent classes that go beyond the Novell Netware installation wizard. There's still a long way to go though...
Microsoft funding skews Seattle area training options-but what are the facts? What has everyone else found? I'd love to see more in-depth investigation. Seen on "Tasty bits from the Technology Front": _Microsoft leverages education grants_ (http://www.tbtf.com/archive/1999-02-15.html#s04)
All I know is, what I wouldn't do for a decent comp sci education! The HIT lab may be hot shit, but what about the UW's comp sci dept "Professional Masters Degree" with classes on "INTRODUCTION to to the principles of database management systems (http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/masters/c
Sure would love to see a slashdot article on the effects M$ funding and course offerings-I know this isn't only happening in Redmond.
-
>Microsoft had to add a "Go" button next to the address bar with Internet Explorer v5.0 because people didn't know that after hand-typing a URL, they had to hit enter !
Note that it's also handy for "mouse-vegging" -- sitting back in a chair surfing and such with a cordless mouse -- since you can paste an address cut from elsewhere using just the mouse, and then hit the go button. Otherwise I have to get the keyboard out just to hit one key. Sheer laziness, of course, but after working all day and dealing with the kids until they go to bed, one can get rather lazy...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
No wonder so many people have Yahoo! as their homepage.
well yeah MY mom sure has :P i AM an OS nut, so yah know. What ive bought/downloaded/stolen/etc:
:P
-Windoze95(gag)
-MacOS 7.5.x and 8.1
-RhapsodyDR2
-OPENSTEP4.2
-FreeBSD
-Caldera and RH Linux
-BeOSR4
and i'm gonna burn a company copy of windoze1900 for my g/f cause she wants it...go figger
She uses a Mac w/ MacOS 8.5 (my stepdad, dad and step mom all use win9x...gotta cure them of that soon!) and when ever i visit, she hears me go ON and ON about my OSs
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
Quite right, yet quite wrong.
The original poster was correct...the possessive is unwarranted here. It seems you dropped a comma, too...along with capitalization...
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
True, but how many mothers have a Masters in chemistry? The original poster is (probably) right, most mothers don't care about what an OS is (just as many non-technically-minded young folks don't give a rat's ass, either. :^)
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Can't agree with you on two points:
1. To make everything easier, we need to make [Linux] have all "that kewl graphical stuff" Windows has. Microsoft Windows stole most of it's ideas from other systems, including NeXT. What we think of as the modern GUI originated at Xerox in the late 60s.
2. Only a few out of every hundred hackers can understand a web browser. Wow, the hacking world has gotten *really* dumb.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
what is "f u kn rd ts, ur wy 2 gky 4 ur wn gd."
i am stupid, i realize that, but all i can make out is "fuck you ... ... ..., you are too geeky for your own good." please fill me in. i am irc deprived. 8( never been on it actually. by choice too.
Hmm...feel bad for reading "fuck you" in that sentence :-)
"If you can read this, you're way too geeky for your own good."
*sigh*
dylan_-
--
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
Analyzing the statement "It's not ready for your mom to use it yet" I think the flaw is not the state of readyness, it's the sterotype of what a mom is.
I can honestly say, an iMac isn't ready for my mom yet, she can't even handle point and click only very well. On the other hand, we see this artical where this "mom" is using NetBSD on a laptop. I think the error is not how ready *NIX is, it's the mistake of sterotyping older women (well, technically, a mom can be a 16 year old female, but let's not go there).
So, I think by using a "mom" criteria, the UNIX community is fooling itself. What really needs to be focused on is the real issues.
Where are we now? Well, IMHO, installation and GUI "friendlyness" are moving along just fine. Configuration still has a bit of a way to go (but, setting up IP and modem config on any OS isn't exactly perfect, but that's not an excuse to not make ti better). Software avaliablity is getting there, when Gnome and KDE finish a stable and polished office suite, it will be there. Software installation is still a bear, and one that I think needs a lot of attention, and IMHO I believe the LSB will address that.
So, throw out the "mom" thing, it's a sterotype, and if one were to judge an OS based on a sterotype, we have now read the artical by a "mom" and that would be the end of it. I think there is still a way to go... ;-) But I have no doubt progress has been made, and will continue.
When I moved cities my mother decided to "learn how to use the computer" so she could keep in touch with me by email.
Mum still doesn't have a clue about how to use windows. Mum wouldn't know a spreadsheet from a paint program. She certainly couldn't tell the difference between RAM and ROM. And forget hooking up a printer or grabbing an image with the scanner.
But Mum does email me at least twice a week. She also hangs out in the gardening forum in Yahoo chat which is one of many bookmarks she visits every day. She has customised IE so that the CNN weather for Dunedin is the default website. And last month my mother installed the shockwave activex control by herself - answering two yes/no questions was pretty tough but she got through it!
My point is that Mum-friendly software doesn't depend on the OS it is running on. As long as the app that Mum uses is simple, easy and does what she expects then she will be happy.
In an ideal world, software could be radically customised depending on the type of user. Net based software could implement this with relative ease. Perhaps that's why Mum likes the net so much?
my blog: good times, man, good times
I once tried and succeeded in running X and Netscape on an AMD 386sx40 with 16MB of RAM(30 pin SIMM style). Anyway, it worked and still does. It took about four minutes to start ns. I use the box to surf sometimes with Netscape being run remotely from a 300MHz box. This is much better as far as performance goes. Usually this happens when the kids have taken over the modern boxes for online games and I can't honestly justify booting them off for 'work'. It happens every other weekend or so. Add it up and you get a working, completely viable, linux based X server that was built from junk parts including an ISA only 386sx, zero cache motherboard, a 100MB disk drive(84MB root and 16MB swap), an ISA NIC and some spare cable for the ethernet to the fast box. I don't even have to mess with ipfwadm/ipchains/ipmasq since all the apps run on the remote box.
Admittedly the picture is not as nice as a 19 incher accellerated at 1600x1200x16 on a 300MHz box with 128K and gigs to spare, but it works and is worthwile.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
>On Redhat at least, runlevel 5 will start up with XDM on console 5 and switch to it, so you get a nice graphical login prompt and a "shutdown" button.
Sure, but a login prompt and shutdown button are unnecessary complications, since my mother is the only one using the machine at the moment. When/if my dad wants to use the machine as well, I will change over to kdm (which has a very nice-looking SGI-style login screen) and teach them how to use it. For now, an Amiga-style single-user mode is the best fit to her needs. Of course, thanks to virtual consoles, I can always log in as another user and run a second X server without disturbing the default setup. Try *THAT* on Micro$oft-ware...
>I would imagine that 99% of mothers don't know what an OS is, nor do they want to know.
/etc/inittab to launch this script automatically.
I completely agree. My mom is presently running RedHat 5.2 and KDE, but she doesn't know it.
All she knows is that when she turns on the power and waits a few minutes, a desktop appears. She knows which icon to click when she wants to send E-mail or look up an article on the PBS website. One of her hobbies is photography, and she knows which icon brings up a WordPerfect document containing a sorted subject index of her photo albums (and how to add new entries). She knows that when she's finished using the computer, she selects "Logout" and waits for it to say 'system halted' before turning off the power. [1]
My mom is intelligent but non-technical. I don't think she had used a computer since GUIs came around (she used to use my Commodore 128 for word processing and stuff). She wanted to get onto the Internet but didn't want to spend the money for a new computer, so I put together a system (P75 / 48M RAM / 1.2G HD) from parts I had left over after upgrading my computer. I considered buying Microsoft Windows 98, but it was over CDN$250 (www.megadepot.com lists it as MSRP $296.18, their price $261.46) [2]. That's about as much as the rest of the hardware was worth, and it wouldn't have made the computer any easier for the things she does with it (and would have made it harder for me to install / maintain). Sure she may miss out on a few web sites that require specialized plug-ins, but on the other hand she won't have to deal with a deluge of BSOD's and macro viruses either. It's my job to make the computer do what she wants it to, just like it's my job to fix any electronic devices which have broken since my last visit (which I consider a fair trade for a few days of food and lodging).
[1] This auto-login, auto-shutdown required two minor customizations: a script to 'su' to her userid, run 'startx', wait for it to exit, then run 'shutdown -h now'; and a change to
[2] Sure I could have obtained an illegal copy for less, but I wouldn't feel right giving my mother stolen goods.
Microsoft have some very bright people, and are good at skimming the cream of the meme-pool (the Windows 95 UI lifts some of the catchiest features from MacOS, NeXTSTEP and OS/2), and every so often comes up with a good original idea. However, the Microsoft environment is one centred around market domination and profits, to the exclusion of technical elegance or quality control; hence, a lot of their ideas end up being watered down, adulterated or otherwise butchered. The Windows 95 UI contains some glaring inconsistencies which impair usability and engender confusion; though it looks slick and high-tech enough to sell, so that's good enough for MSFT.
One answer to why Windows (mis)features are copied could be that Windows is so pervasive that it's more beneficial for a UI to look like Windows than to do things differently (even if the latter case is more logical). It's sort of like the semi-mythical QWERTY effect.
As for Neptune, perhaps that should be a separate UI from KDE/GNOME. One Microsoftism which should not be emulated is the tendency to integrate everything into one great big sticky lump.
When I first started running linux, my mom was so mad because she didn't know how to do anything---that qickly changed. I made a login for her, and now she is quite happy with windowmaker.
Who says that moms don't like change?
:)
Yea!
Tiffany
What most people, including most moms, dads, little sisters and neighbors want in a computer is just a machine that does what they want it to do. They don't care how it actually works, they don't care about the many different ways to configure it, they just want it to do what they want it to do.
:-)
I've given up on trying to teach my parents (and my sister) to actually use a computer. my sister knows how to start her 486SX33, her printer, Word 2.0 and how to print stuff. she doesn't need more, she doesn't even play games. it's just a fancy typewriter to her, and that 486SX33 is sufficient to do that.
my father is a transport planner; he can figure out the best way to shove many tons of freight all across Europe and constantly have most trucks filled to the brim for maximum efficiency, and does that faster than a super computer. but when it comes to anything technical he's a complete moron, with the result that I fix everything around the house, from light switches to setting the time on the stereo and the vcr, to programming the TVs... all he does with the computer at home (my old P166) is play a few games, mainly sol.exe and mines.exe
my mother is a grade school teacher (4 and 5 year olds), so she is mostly interested in computers for their educational purposes. she actually knows how to install programs and how to switch themes, but most of what she does with the computer at home is word processing and the odd simple game.
I've given up on trying to teach them you can do much more with a computer. they're simply not interested. it does what they want and/or need it to do, and when it doesn't they ask me to have a look at it. on the old machine was Win3.11 with Calypso to create a task bar. on the new machine is Win98, and I don't think my father noticed the difference. my mother did, but mainly because she could now more easily switch themes and screen savers.
most "dummies" aren't dumb. they're just not interested.
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humor,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
Not only is Linda intelligent, she mentions "the typesetting program TeX, which I used twenty years before...". So she didn't merely give birth to a computer geek but is one herself. Gosh, a computer geek doesn't find UNIX that hard -- that's newsworthy?
I think you're pretty much right there. As a prime example:
:-)
I was talking to my mother a couple of weeks ago about what I do, and why I don't like Windows.
Basically, my mum isn't interested in computers. As far as she's concerned, a computer is just a tool to get a job done. That's not to say she's ignorant about computers or afraid of them, but her personal interest stretches as far as running an accounting package where she works.
(Oh, and playing the odd game of Scrabble on a old ZX Spectrum from when I was still living at home, but that's beside the point
But anyway, she doesn't know what Unix is, she's only ever used DOS and Windows. And she doesn't like Windows. It's slower, it's less stable, and there's too much graphical fluff which just distracts her from the job in hand. DOS was easier and quicker from her point of view.
By those criteria, she'd be happy with a command-line Linux shell and a Unix version of whatever accounting package she uses (a fairly obscure bespoke package, I believe). She'd dislike KDE (too much graphical fluff), and she'd absolutely loathe GNOME (waaay over the top, and slow with it).
In this mad rush to make Linux "mom-friendly", how many people have actually spoken to the very people they're trying to accomodate?
A lot of our mothers started out as typists.
Mine did, which is why she liked the old DOS+Word Perfect 5.1 combination. When her PHB made the office switch to MS Word, my mother developed long lasting hatred towards Bill Gates.
GUI != user friendly.
Seriously, my mother has her masters in chemestry and was a 7th and 8th grade teacher for about 18 years before she retired about three years ago. She had a computer someone donated to the school (an old SYKES running BASIC) back in the early 70's that I sometimes wrote programs for. My father was a programmer when computers were built from discrete transformers wirewrapped to boards.
Both of them love to hear me talk about what I'm working on. They have fallen a little behind on technology (they are retired, and sort of enjoy not having to worry about all those things now), but they know what I'm talking about.
Don't discount people just because they are in the "older" generation!
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Yes and no. You can run it on a 386, bit don't even think about running X11 on less than a P75. On the other hand, the support for old hardware is pretty good, especially with some of the newer installation packages (RH and such). If you have an old system that is already running under Windows, you shouldn't have any trouble setting up Linux on it.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
While the blurb on Slashdot says the article is "about Linux," I'd like to point out that it's about free software in general, and Mom was running NetBSD in particular.
Installing from source tar balls is not much harder.
cd
tar xzf app.tar.gz
cd appdir
./configure
make
make install
ROFL! Thanks, you just made my day... Honestly, the days of you being a complete computer novice (better: *nix novice) seem to far enough behind you so you've forgotten all about them.
First of all: There are *plenty* occasions where your fixed set of instructions described above doesn't work ("What does
No, tarball installs will remain the domain of the computer literate, though for sufficiently low values of "literate". For novices and non-techies (especially those coming from a 'dows background), we'll have to do better than that. Run an install script (preferably in X), answer a few questions (maybe - prefereably not), run program. Finished. *That* would be the ideal. How close can we come to that?
Argathin
Software installation is normally not bad.
/usr/local/src
./configure
Using a tool such as SuSe's Yast installing a package is just point and click. Installing from source tar balls is not much harder.
cd
tar xzf app.tar.gz
cd appdir
make
make install
This is no harder than using Installshield under windows.
On Redhat at least, runlevel 5 will start up with XDM on console 5 and switch to it, so you get a nice graphical login prompt and a "shutdown" button. I gather you could probably just symlink xdm to kdm to get kde's login screen. XDM usually gives you a "shutdown" option and the ability to let anyone on the console use it.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Motif menus don't scroll. They cascade with a "more..." entry. It's fantastically annoying and one of the things I despise about bloatif. Perhaps you're thinking of listboxes?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I have taught middle-aged adults who have never used a computer before to write their own web pages in notepad (actually, PFE). I found that one of the biggest stumbling blocks for new computer users is the mouse. So here's how my lesson went (about 8 people in the lesson, I'd already introduced them to the hardware, like what the mouse is)
:)
"All right, put your hand on the mouse, push it up to the back of your desk. Far as it'll go. Now leave it there."
I then proceeded to tell them how to use alt-tab and f5 for refresh (we were using IE, netscape for win3.1 was not being friendly with me). Fairly soon I had people looking at their page, flipping back to notepad, making some edits, flipping back, hitting f5, repeat. refresh, flip, edit, flip, refresh. I just had to say "flip" and by the end of the lesson, a timid older woman had alt-tab down as a learned reflex.
No, f5 and alt-tab are not intuitive metaphors, but they didn't care. Once it was learned, the action was as meaningful as any other symbol, like red meaning stop (in western cultures anyhow).
When they stopped fumbling with the mouse and started getting real work done with immediate feedback on their results, their confidence picked up immediately.
Oh, and I pointed them at solitaire so they could learn mouse jockeying in their spare time
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
>NeXT. What we think of as the modern GUI
l
>originated at Xerox in the late 60s.
That's not true. Xerox's Alto GUI was backwards from what we use today. First you selected an action, then you selected an object. Apple flipped it 'round, set it straight. Object then action. And that's for what little GUI Alto had. Most of it was just a bunch of "xterms" doing CLI stuff.
If you're not refering to implementation, but ideas, then it goes way back, before Xerox, before Parc, before computers.
http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_history.htm
--"In dreams begin responsibilities" - Delmore Schwartz
The problem is generally over-designed GUIs, of which Microsoft especially are guilty. A GUI is not user friendly if it's not friendly to the user.
Also, mundanes seem to be afraid of computers more than actually clueless: They don't learn how to use it not because they cannot, but because they're afraid that they'll muck up things. They're very passive about it, and tell themselves they cannot learn it.
As for Linux, I find it strange that adults that are supposed to learn traffic regulations, fill out tax returns, or for that matter juggle the characters and story of 5-10 soap operas cannot learn a simple, consistent and productive command-line interface.:-)
My mom is clueless about Windows. I finally taught her how to use Netscape in Windows 3.1, but I had to write down all the steps. However, she had used Unix at work for 10 years. (The "real" UNIX, AT&T variety.) When I told her about Linux, she was shocked. "Unix is popular? There is a free kind? What can it do for a family?" Apparently she likes the command-line interface more than GUI...
:o)
So, in the end, it turns out she isn't scared of Linux, and we just might end up installing it on the old Win3.1 box. The bad part is that I still haven't gotten around to putting in the RAM I was supposed to have put in 2 years ago, and the components are probably not Linux-compatible. I guess Linux is only free if your time has no value, as has been frequently stated around here
Yes. BUT IT ISN'T LINUX, IT'S NETBSD DAMMIT!
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
What makes someone who can use TeX a computer
geek? Lots of mathematicians who aren't particularly
computer oriented learn enough TeX to write
a paper or two.
That said, she *is* a mathematician, and that
counts for a lot. The main coolness of this is
positive reporting in the press.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I work in support, and I'm *very* tired of
people who need to be told to hit enter.
That said, that's not their problem entirely.
Go read _The Design Of Everyday Things_.
Learn to think like an end-user; even expert
users will find your applications easier to
use.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
If memory serves, we were using PCTeX on a Zenith
Z-100 running MS-DOS 3.3. I think it also ran
on our luggable Z-171.
(Admittedly, we were a computer family from way
back.)
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Wouldn't it have been a good idea if the person
designing the drive had known that would happen,
and had come up with a way for the computer to
notify the moron?
"Your CD-ROM drive has been open for 15 minutes."
:)
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Yes and no. You can run it on a 386, bit don't even think about running X11 on less than a P75.
Bullpucky. I run X (even Gnome and KDE) on a 486SX-33 all the time (laptop). I've got numerous desktop machines around here that are 486DX2-66 to 486DX4-100 that I use X on. I've even got a couple of 486DLC-40's I run X on. Sure, none of those really fly, but they aren't completely unusable. X on a 386 isn't all that usable, but it will work if you are patient.
RAM is actually the important thing. You absolutely must have 8M or X will crawl. It will work on 4M (although some installations won't work on 4M). You will find X pokey with less than 16M, and KDE or Gnome would really like 32M.
On the other hand, the support for old hardware is pretty good, especially with some of the newer installation packages (RH and such). If you have an old system that is already running under Windows, you shouldn't have any trouble setting up Linux on it.br Now that is absolutely correct. Linux supports old and funky hardware a lot better than people might think, even goofy proprietary CD-ROM drives and such.
....its just very picky about who it makes friends with. :)
Bowie J. Poag
Um, Seebach isn't a regular mom. She's obviously intelligent, her son is apparently a big-time computer geek, and she's willing to change. That puts her nowhere near your common, 'King of the Hill' American mom.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
I live in friggin' Brazil, land of the 6-month-late episodes.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Is it? I don't think so. I think it's pretty obvious that most people aren't very intelligent. As a matter of fact, that's one of the reasons why we computer people have so much trouble selling their mindshare - because they are dealing with people that are incredibly below their own level of mental achievement.
Simply put, we need the eventual brainless marketroid to level us down with our average consumers.
(YMMV, of course.)
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
So, the woman seemed a little confused about the diffrence between Linux and UNIX.
She said that NetBSD was a UNIX clone. Isn't it a UNIX member of the BSD familly ?
Anyways, the point is that it is possible for beginners to use something else than windows, and that makes me happy.
Papi
- Chernobyl used windows
Don't worry, we still have our health
(you're not sick, now are you, because if you are, I'm sure you have something that would be worth not giving up for, or do you.. Arghhh!!!! My brain is swelling and those spiders won't stop walking all over me....)
Anyways, It's just that some people shouldn't be allowed to use the word root. As for microsoft, they don't need to be clueless to crash they're products. I guess they will stick to that because that way, they can always blame windows...
Papi
- Chernobyl used windows
I've read (in a motif book) that motif was the project that invented many of these concepts.
Like beleveled buttons, scrolling menus etc. Does anyone know how much of that is true ???
Papi
- Chernobyl used windows
Well,
I guess everybody makes mistakes. I did some pretty stupid things to my box too. But, what matters, is that I don't make them anymore, or if I still make them, I know how to fix them fast.
It must have been embarassing, espacially since you've just started. But, that's a bit why it is so great to have Linux at home. At least, you've probably fixed this very quickly because you had practice on some kind of UNIX before, as root.
Papi
- Chernobyl used windows
Well, it's true. Maybe this wil sound rude, but... some people are just plain stupid (with computers).
/etc/passwd. Ok this isn't fatal, but, without a boot disk it is. Especially when the guy reboots his machine because he realizes that he cannot log in as root anymore.
/etc/passwd and /etc/shadow and just changed the numbers... There are also some classics like:
/mnt/cdrom or /mnt/floppy and their stuff isn't on the device anymore, Linux must have erased it somehow....
I have a buisness of Linux installation/configuration in exchange of beer (lots of it). And, I've lived to regret installing it for some people. Just to give some examples, one morning the phone rings, and this guy tells me he couldn't log in. I've created him a user, but I said to myself, he must have forgotten his password or something, so I tell him to log in as root to change the password back.
So I tell him to type root at the login prompt (and I hear some pencil writing) and then to type qwerty (the root password, for people worring about security, he uses a slirp connection to get on the net, so no harm can be done).
And, he kept telling me this didn't work, so I go to his place to realize he didn't press enter after typing root. Now, I don't know about you guys, but I have a lot of trouble to explain such simple matters without it getting on my nerves.
And this is just an example, I have a friend who first started using Linux 5 years ago, and still can't keep it for 2 strait weeks without doing something to demolish it (once he blamed the partition beeing full, so Linux must have written over the master boopt record...).
I also recall a guy typing echo "loging::502:502::/home/login:/bin/bash" >
Once, this guy just felt like changing his root uid and gid (for whatever reason), so he just edited
rm -rf / home/login/somefile
(as root of course, since these begginers are always logged in as root). There is also a variant with chown|chmod -R that does a very nasty job also.
And don't even think of telling these people how to use mount. No, for some reason, it is too abstract for them to understand. So they call you all the time to tell you that they've cd to
Anyway, I feel a lot less pressure now.....
Papi
- Chernobyl used windows
This might be true, but keep in mind that it is the mother who wrote the article.
l a-and-be-able-to-pee-standing-blablabla stuff on me...
Also, I beleive that as a matter of fact, in general, women are not as intersted in computers than men.
Therefore, this means that they spend less time in front of a screen. This gives them less experience with computers. This brings us to the point, that, in general (with some exceptions, but very few), women are less comp... hmm, well.. goo... Hmm, no.. knowl... oh, you know what I'm trying to say...
This is not due to the fact that they are an inferior beeing, but to the fact that they don't care about computers (and other electonic devices). If there is one (good looking) woman out there that spends as much time as me in front of a computer (not chating and playing games) I WILL MARRY HER!!!!
This is not a stereotype. It is a fact that can be mesured by serveys.
Hope not to many feminists will read this. They might lay some we-are-not-blablabla-we-should-be-treated-blablab
Papi
- Chernobyl used windows
I'm not subscribed to c.l.c and still I knew I came across the name before. Altavista quickly gave me 217 hits on the name. He's like high provile ;-)
Hamal is an yellow star in the constallation Aries.
It is 66ly away, so it doesn't alter your personality.
I agree that Microsoft usually butchers the implementation of good UI ideas. But what if projects like KDE or Gnome adopt some of the cool "browser-like shell" ideas from Neptune.. and do it right! KDE and Gnome seem to just be copying all of Microsoft and Apple's UI mistakes. Why not leapfrog them with a clean, powerful implementation of something new?
cpeterso
Regardless of whether the browser is part of the OS or not, I think Micorosoft's Neptune project looks promising. Dvorak has an article describing it "Microsoft's Secret OS Plan" and a screenshot. Most users are not tool-oriented, they are task-oriented. They think "I want to copy my resume to that floppy disk", not "I need to mount my /dev/fd0 and blah blah".
For more info (and strong opinions) about UI usability, check out Alan Cooper's company. His book About Face : The Essentials of User Interface Design focuses on Windows (including many jabs a Microsoft Word), but it's applicable to any UI.
cpeterso
,,, don't know how to use a computer. But then, most dads don't know how to use a computer, either. The "mom test" is sexist in the extreme. There just aren't enough intelligent people in the world that we can afford to alienate any of them, no matter what their age or sex. One article does very little harm, and can be laughed off. A persistent culteral bias towards considering women inferior in technical matters hurts everyone.
My mom came home from work one day extremely excited that she had solved her problem about not being able to send messages to other people at work. She found out that she had to click a button that said "Send" :). My mom is very bright, but when it comes to computers she's a clueless as can be. But, given that Linux/Unix wa already installed on the machine she had to use, as long as someone showed her what she would need to do to get her stuff done, I'm sure she could do it fine. I think most computer newbies would be this way, as long as they can figure out or be shown exactly what to do for their tasks, they couldn't care less about what's underneath.
Kas
--
Yeah, but Peg's into Photoshop -- cf. the last episode.