People just want a computer that works, they don't spend hours masturbating over how many settings they can change. But apparently, to you, that makes them dummies. I suppose you think you're Einstein because you can use a gradient in your wallpaper or something.
This argument is analogous to protectionism in economics. If the Windows programs are free and good, then they add value to Linux. If not, then Linux programs will replace them. Either way, Linux users don't lose; and the Linux community will gain by making it possible to use existing software on their machine, thus allowing Windows users to move over, expanding the user base and giving more consumers the chance to use Linux programs.
The point of Linux is to be better for computer users. If it's just an employment program for software developers, then we shouldn't bother.
90% of the world don't run autocad, but 90% of computer users probably do run at least one specialist program for which there is not an open source replacement with equivalent functionality. Open source has great programming languages, great databases, a great webserver; fine web browsers,email programs, text editors and other general purpose stuff; two excellent desktop environments; fine IDEs; but music programs, artistic applications and so forth are not yet at the level of their closed source replacements. Nor can you get a CD at the newsagent, plug it into Linux and be sure it will run.
The solution? We should all donate to WINE. When Windows programs run without problems on Linux, we'll have full interoperability and be ready to take the world over.
And corresponding to that, until we have binary driver compatibility between kernel versions, this problem is not going to improve, because hardware manufacturers have better things to do than spend time rewriting drivers; and in any case, drivers should work out of the box without requiring a compile.
The organisation isn't an MS front, it's a German company which did the study off its own bat - and was helpful enough to provide the link to the KDE usability mailing list.
You are deluding yourself if you seriously think that KDE is as usable as WinXP. A lot of the replies to this article say things like "KDE [or FVWM or BlackBox (FFS)] has this great feature that I use, that means KDE is more usable than WinXP". Bollocks. That's not what usability is about.
True. However, here is one KDE feature that I think is useful and easy to understand: window shading and unshading. Very helpful when you just want to peek under your window or momentarily hide it. And I don't think it's too confusing for the average user.
Virtual desktops are definitely a power user item and personally I find them more of a hassle than they are worth; a workaround for the fundamental usability problem that your desktop gets confusing and cluttered when there are too many windows open. It's also dead easy, with session management, to find a window open on your backup desktop which has been there unused for months.
But this is a side issue. The "just works" thing is more important. Unfortunately, open source developers tend to be interested in adding features and customisability, which means that usability can actually get worse.
True, but as he pointed out for chmod, chown etc., most of these command line user tools could still be implemented, sometimes even as shell scripts.
Obviously, no clever new idea will go anywhere (except on e.g. embedded systems) unless it is compatible with the huge base of existing Unix software, command line tools included.
Heh heh. Well, old bean, we don't actually having anything as vulgar as a written constitution. We have an unwritten constitution, passed down by the venerable hand of tradition - the little platoons, the cows under a country sky [wipes away a tear]. What this boils down to is that the bastards in power can do what they like (barring only the European Court of Human Rights). The merits of this system... well, I'd prefer a constitution. And actually I very much admire the US one. I was just pointing out that the US constitution, however great it is for US citizens, is small comfort me or the poor sods in Iraq.
Gee whiz, I sure feel stupid. Yes, I know Arrow's theorem is based on his criteria, but as they are widely interpreted to be relevant criteria, isn't it down to you to show that they are flawed? And re: Condorcet - what's so special about Condorcet? It equally has well-documented flaws as detailed in e.g. Riker, "Liberalism Versus Populism". (Put that in yer pipe and smoke it.)
Approval Voting suffers from the same documented flaws as... well, all other methods! Viz, it violates at least one of:
* pareto optimality * independence of irrelevant alternatives * non-dictatorship * universal domain * [dammit there's one other but I can't recall!]
and it leads people to misrepresent their preferences. (Actually, choice between two alternatives by simple plurality doesn't have this last problem - but IIRC ALL other voting systems do.)
And more specifically, see http://forum.icann.org/election/395B12D400000003.h tml for some more problems. Essentially it still gives you too little granularity in expressing your choice because you can only say "yes" or "no" to each candidate, rather than saying "I prefer X to Y to Z".
As another poster said, "threatening or attacking countries that get in the US' way" is just a particular way to "defend US interests". And for what it's worth, I don't give a monkey's nuts for your constitution because I don't live in your country.
Before you start drooling over all the awesome technology that this thing possesses, remind yourself that its sole function is to take human life and destroy property, and its sole purpose is to threaten or attack other countries that get in America's way.
Eeeeh... well, I don't entirely agree. I think you have to remember that millions of people have done useful things with computers, while nevertheless fundamentally not knowing how they work. That is, they might know how the applications work, but not the computer itself. For example, my Mum writes up posters for the Save the Village Green fund using Word. Or - just to not be too snotty - I am in the same boat. I use applications like Perl, PHP and gcc, but I don't actually know how a computer works - e.g. how the chip works.
And in fact people can have very deep knowledge of a particular tool, and still not know anything about the computer. For example, a graphic designer can do incredible things with Photoshop. Or a sound engineer can use Protools.
None of these people really want to learn anything outside their specific field. I don't want to understand how "make" works. The graphic artist doesn't want to know what an IRQ is. My Mum just wants to type out her notices. All of use do have to learn some of these things, but the promise of the WIMP interface is that you only need to learn a simple, graphical language in order to do everything outside your speciality. Click on this link. Use the "OK" button. Choose from a menu, and so forth.
So I think making the user a passive participant is a good idea. Nobody should have to learn about hotplug, no matter how cool it is. (I now know more than I should ever have done... ) Obviously, when things go wrong, they are difficult to fix on this model. But that is like saying, when my car goes wrong, it is difficult to fix. The solution is not for everybody to become car mechanics. It is to make cars that break less.
Anyway, back to the topic. I actually think we ought to preserve and guarantee binary compatibility for drivers, across kernel releases. If you buy a piece of hardware with a driver, you shouldn't have to recompile it for your kernel - a n unreliable and difficult process. It should just work.
There's an interesting theory about Windows, that the reason it beat the Mac was that it provided backwards compatibility with software written for previous versions. Thus, its software market bloomed while the Mac people kept having to rewrite stuff. I think Linux should learn this lesson. It's great to see KDE and Gnome make real efforts to keep their libraries binary-compatible.
OK smart guy, calm down. I've been using Linux for many years. I have nothing else installed. I'm on your side, alright? Sheesh. Yes, old no-name scanners won't probably have XP drivers. But my point was that when you buy new hardware, it will have a windows driver with it. That means that Joe Average can go home, plug it in, put the CD in the drive, and it will very likely be working. The same cannot always be said for Linux, as my experience reveals. And if something doesn't work, you can expect long hours searching through HOWTOs, asking questions on obscure user forums, et cetera; and the tech support for the hardware may not help you. For you this may be irrelevant. For me, I accept it because I love free software and I think Microsoft are evil shits. For my Mum, it means installing Linux would be a very silly thing to do. She's not interested in finding better end-user software. She just wants things to work without having to install them herself.
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People just want a computer that works, they don't spend hours masturbating over how many settings they can change. But apparently, to you, that makes them dummies. I suppose you think you're Einstein because you can use a gradient in your wallpaper or something.
You haven't been looking very hard. Rightclick the windowbar in KDE (from about version 2) and choose, er, "Always on top".
This argument is analogous to protectionism in economics. If the Windows programs are free and good, then they add value to Linux. If not, then Linux programs will replace them. Either way, Linux users don't lose; and the Linux community will gain by making it possible to use existing software on their machine, thus allowing Windows users to move over, expanding the user base and giving more consumers the chance to use Linux programs.
The point of Linux is to be better for computer users. If it's just an employment program for software developers, then we shouldn't bother.
90% of the world don't run autocad, but 90% of computer users probably do run at least one specialist program for which there is not an open source replacement with equivalent functionality. Open source has great programming languages, great databases, a great webserver; fine web browsers,email programs, text editors and other general purpose stuff; two excellent desktop environments; fine IDEs; but music programs, artistic applications and so forth are not yet at the level of their closed source replacements. Nor can you get a CD at the newsagent, plug it into Linux and be sure it will run.
The solution? We should all donate to WINE. When Windows programs run without problems on Linux, we'll have full interoperability and be ready to take the world over.
And corresponding to that, until we have binary driver compatibility between kernel versions, this problem is not going to improve, because hardware manufacturers have better things to do than spend time rewriting drivers; and in any case, drivers should work out of the box without requiring a compile.
The organisation isn't an MS front, it's a German company which did the study off its own bat - and was helpful enough to provide the link to the KDE usability mailing list.
You are deluding yourself if you seriously think that KDE is as usable as WinXP. A lot of the replies to this article say things like "KDE [or FVWM or BlackBox (FFS)] has this great feature that I use, that means KDE is more usable than WinXP". Bollocks. That's not what usability is about.
True. However, here is one KDE feature that I think is useful and easy to understand: window shading and unshading. Very helpful when you just want to peek under your window or momentarily hide it. And I don't think it's too confusing for the average user.
Mod parent up!
Virtual desktops are definitely a power user item and personally I find them more of a hassle than they are worth; a workaround for the fundamental usability problem that your desktop gets confusing and cluttered when there are too many windows open. It's also dead easy, with session management, to find a window open on your backup desktop which has been there unused for months.
But this is a side issue. The "just works" thing is more important. Unfortunately, open source developers tend to be interested in adding features and customisability, which means that usability can actually get worse.
Amen to that, brother. I get tired of people who are basically not interested in art or poetry going "it's all about interpretation".
commercial != proprietary, and BTW have you ever considered being polite?
4.1 heroes
4.1.1 romantic heroes
4.1.1.1 Osama bin Laden
4.1.1.2 Satan
:-)
Because Linux wants to take market share from windows, and to do that, you have to make it easy for windows users to switch.
Once we have 60% market share, we can start making the running ourselves.
ROTFL. Indeed not. Great sig as well, by the way.
True, but as he pointed out for chmod, chown etc., most of these command line user tools could still be implemented, sometimes even as shell scripts.
Obviously, no clever new idea will go anywhere (except on e.g. embedded systems) unless it is compatible with the huge base of existing Unix software, command line tools included.
Heh heh. Well, old bean, we don't actually having anything as vulgar as a written constitution. We have an unwritten constitution, passed down by the venerable hand of tradition - the little platoons, the cows under a country sky [wipes away a tear]. What this boils down to is that the bastards in power can do what they like (barring only the European Court of Human Rights). The merits of this system... well, I'd prefer a constitution. And actually I very much admire the US one. I was just pointing out that the US constitution, however great it is for US citizens, is small comfort me or the poor sods in Iraq.
Gee whiz, I sure feel stupid. Yes, I know Arrow's theorem is based on his criteria, but as they are widely interpreted to be relevant criteria, isn't it down to you to show that they are flawed? And re: Condorcet - what's so special about Condorcet? It equally has well-documented flaws as detailed in e.g. Riker, "Liberalism Versus Populism". (Put that in yer pipe and smoke it.)
Approval Voting suffers from the same documented flaws as... well, all other methods! Viz, it violates at least one of:
h tml
* pareto optimality
* independence of irrelevant alternatives
* non-dictatorship
* universal domain
* [dammit there's one other but I can't recall!]
and it leads people to misrepresent their preferences. (Actually, choice between two alternatives by simple plurality doesn't have this last problem - but IIRC ALL other voting systems do.)
And more specifically, see http://forum.icann.org/election/395B12D400000003.
for some more problems. Essentially it still gives you too little granularity in expressing your choice because you can only say "yes" or "no" to each candidate, rather than saying "I prefer X to Y to Z".
Dave
The hackers of the world know... how to tell there own.
Yeah, and so do I: by their bad spelling and grammar.
As another poster said, "threatening or attacking countries that get in the US' way" is just a particular way to "defend US interests". And for what it's worth, I don't give a monkey's nuts for your constitution because I don't live in your country.
Before you start drooling over all the awesome technology that this thing possesses, remind yourself that its sole function is to take human life and destroy property, and its sole purpose is to threaten or attack other countries that get in America's way.
W00T! First Smiths fanboy post!
and btw, that should be "hard-faced three word gesture". Obviously.
Yeah... you built it from source? How would my Mum do that?
Oh, wait a second, you rebuilt the kernel? No, sorry, forget it. This is not the way to prove a point about linux ease of use.
Eeeeh... well, I don't entirely agree. I think you have to remember that millions of people have done useful things with computers, while nevertheless fundamentally not knowing how they work. That is, they might know how the applications work, but not the computer itself. For example, my Mum writes up posters for the Save the Village Green fund using Word. Or - just to not be too snotty - I am in the same boat. I use applications like Perl, PHP and gcc, but I don't actually know how a computer works - e.g. how the chip works.
And in fact people can have very deep knowledge of a particular tool, and still not know anything about the computer. For example, a graphic designer can do incredible things with Photoshop. Or a sound engineer can use Protools.
None of these people really want to learn anything outside their specific field. I don't want to understand how "make" works. The graphic artist doesn't want to know what an IRQ is. My Mum just wants to type out her notices. All of use do have to learn some of these things, but the promise of the WIMP interface is that you only need to learn a simple, graphical language in order to do everything outside your speciality. Click on this link. Use the "OK" button. Choose from a menu, and so forth.
So I think making the user a passive participant is a good idea. Nobody should have to learn about hotplug, no matter how cool it is. (I now know more than I should ever have done... ) Obviously, when things go wrong, they are difficult to fix on this model. But that is like saying, when my car goes wrong, it is difficult to fix. The solution is not for everybody to become car mechanics. It is to make cars that break less.
Anyway, back to the topic. I actually think we ought to preserve and guarantee binary compatibility for drivers, across kernel releases. If you buy a piece of hardware with a driver, you shouldn't have to recompile it for your kernel - a n unreliable and difficult process. It should just work.
There's an interesting theory about Windows, that the reason it beat the Mac was that it provided backwards compatibility with software written for previous versions. Thus, its software market bloomed while the Mac people kept having to rewrite stuff. I think Linux should learn this lesson. It's great to see KDE and Gnome make real efforts to keep their libraries binary-compatible.
Dave
OK smart guy, calm down. I've been using Linux for many years. I have nothing else installed. I'm on your side, alright? Sheesh.
Yes, old no-name scanners won't probably have XP drivers. But my point was that when you buy new hardware, it will have a windows driver with it. That means that Joe Average can go home, plug it in, put the CD in the drive, and it will very likely be working. The same cannot always be said for Linux, as my experience reveals. And if something doesn't work, you can expect long hours searching through HOWTOs, asking questions on obscure user forums, et cetera; and the tech support for the hardware may not help you.
For you this may be irrelevant. For me, I accept it because I love free software and I think Microsoft are evil shits. For my Mum, it means installing Linux would be a very silly thing to do. She's not interested in finding better end-user software. She just wants things to work without having to install them herself.