I'd like to talk about a relation the girl has with this tool of the contemporary life that is the personal computer. Certainly there are plenty of people around the globe that have in their homes a tool they can no longer understand, in fact, we all have something inside our houses that goes into that dark pit of things that we (even geeks) can't know. I for sure can't figure out without some study how to dig a well to provide clean water for me, but I have one in my backyard... Even though I may have a shovel and all the required instruments, I wouldn't be able to copy it.
This is not old, we are specializing, we have been doing so since the XVII century, and this is forcing us not to look to certain things that we assume it's there and it'll work... at least my well never gave me any problem. Now, it is correct to take these things for granted? I think not.
We depend on a million of tools and gadgets that work for us, but still we know squat about them, some of these tools are so important that without them we could fail on a course, or injure ourselves. But we need them, or at least that's what the TV, the radio, outdoors and our friends tell us.
We resume ourselves to consume these devices, they are as good as food pills: we take one, it solves our problems and we are done with it until next time. We are not interested in USING them anymore, and to use it we must understand at least a little about it.
But since the market of consumer goods and software needs to satiate this "common" desire of easy consumption, we get... well, Windows... and MacOSX...
That's why I think there is this impression Linux is for geeks and initiated people... because it demands us to deal with the machine in a different way, in a way we try to understand a little bit more about it. Linux demands us to USE the computer.
And why is this so frightening for the newcomers? Because everyone is consuming Windows ever since they had to type "win" in their keyboards to have the 3.1 GUI enter in front of the black and white DOS console. And we kept consuming it as the numbers went up, then when they were changed to letters, names and now finally back no a number again. And it was so easy... But one day, the well may dry up and we no longer remember how to dig hole in the ground, and apparently we won't bother looking for solution and will die in a massive drought.
On a more pragmatic way of thinking, this means the Linux community should do a free Windows-to-Linux adaptation guide (so the dummies book doesn't count)... It could be useful...
But I'm a optimist fellow who believes someone will read the manual...
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this will be quite a long post...
I'd like to talk about a relation the girl has with this tool of the contemporary life that is the personal computer. Certainly there are plenty of people around the globe that have in their homes a tool they can no longer understand, in fact, we all have something inside our houses that goes into that dark pit of things that we (even geeks) can't know. I for sure can't figure out without some study how to dig a well to provide clean water for me, but I have one in my backyard... Even though I may have a shovel and all the required instruments, I wouldn't be able to copy it.
This is not old, we are specializing, we have been doing so since the XVII century, and this is forcing us not to look to certain things that we assume it's there and it'll work... at least my well never gave me any problem. Now, it is correct to take these things for granted? I think not.
We depend on a million of tools and gadgets that work for us, but still we know squat about them, some of these tools are so important that without them we could fail on a course, or injure ourselves. But we need them, or at least that's what the TV, the radio, outdoors and our friends tell us.
We resume ourselves to consume these devices, they are as good as food pills: we take one, it solves our problems and we are done with it until next time. We are not interested in USING them anymore, and to use it we must understand at least a little about it.
But since the market of consumer goods and software needs to satiate this "common" desire of easy consumption, we get... well, Windows... and MacOSX...
That's why I think there is this impression Linux is for geeks and initiated people... because it demands us to deal with the machine in a different way, in a way we try to understand a little bit more about it. Linux demands us to USE the computer.
And why is this so frightening for the newcomers? Because everyone is consuming Windows ever since they had to type "win" in their keyboards to have the 3.1 GUI enter in front of the black and white DOS console. And we kept consuming it as the numbers went up, then when they were changed to letters, names and now finally back no a number again. And it was so easy... But one day, the well may dry up and we no longer remember how to dig hole in the ground, and apparently we won't bother looking for solution and will die in a massive drought.
On a more pragmatic way of thinking, this means the Linux community should do a free Windows-to-Linux adaptation guide (so the dummies book doesn't count)... It could be useful...
But I'm a optimist fellow who believes someone will read the manual...
Cheers