'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.
"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.
I gotta add my voice to the chorus of agreement. I learned to type on a selectric II, (c'mon guys, I'm not THAT old...) and for years I dreamed of finding a keyboard with that sort of positive feedback. Then one day, curb-crawling, I found a pile of stuff some rich guy was tossing out, and it had The Keyboard in it. Yup, one of those old AT keyboards. Beautiful, beautiful - 10 foot cord, mechanical click action, heavy enough to use as an anti-mugger device w/o damaging it's intended function.
Ok, ok. Enough raving, you all know the good qualities of this thing.
I just wish that 1) It had F11 & F12 keys, 2) It had a separate cursor keypad, and 3) There was a split-hand design available.
[!]Sorry, DSC is right.
on
1984, today.
·
· Score: 1
1) Suppose Mr. Brown wants to find out if his employer has any interest in joining him in a venture based on an idea he had in his spare time. He can either: a) send an official letter to the company while not at work or b) bring up the idea to his supervisor/whatever while at work.
Since you're stating that (b) constitutes doing work on his idea while on company time, you might do a bit of work backing up your assertion.
The late Italian artist Piero Manzoni canned his own feces back in 1961 as "art objects". The latest sale was $28,000 for one tin in July 1998. (source: News of the Weird) So tell me...since canned feces are apparently so valuable, if marketed with the right spin, do they count as inventions? And does your employer own any that you "work on" while on the clock? Can they sue you if you flush without first giving them a chance to cash in?
Slashdot Mirror
'Another simple relationship "the easier Linux is to use and set up then the more people will use it".'
Possibly. But what price do we pay for trying to make linux easier to use and set up?
1) We pay the price that anyone who seeks to introduce additional layers between the user and the machine does:
a) increased complexity, which opens up new room for bugs.
b) additional code to support through hardware and supporting software changes.
c) potentially increased library dependencies, which requires users to have more libraries on their systems, and which opens up the whole can of worms that library updates brings.
2) We pay a more subtle price in terms of expectations. Computers by their very nature are complex. If we try to make linux too easy, then when the end-user is unable to understand something, he or she will not be trained to go RTFM before hassling someone else to tell him or her the answer, which he or she will probably not remember when the problem happens again.
Please remember, I don't advocate making linux a @#$#@ 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
"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
I gotta add my voice to the chorus of agreement. I learned to type on a selectric II, (c'mon guys, I'm not THAT old...) and for years I dreamed of finding a keyboard with that sort of positive feedback. Then one day, curb-crawling, I found a pile of stuff some rich guy was tossing out, and it had The Keyboard in it. Yup, one of those old AT keyboards. Beautiful, beautiful - 10 foot cord, mechanical click action, heavy enough to use as an anti-mugger device w/o damaging it's intended function.
Ok, ok. Enough raving, you all know the good qualities of this thing.
I just wish that 1) It had F11 & F12 keys, 2) It had a separate cursor keypad, and 3) There was a split-hand design available.
1) Suppose Mr. Brown wants to find out if his employer has any interest in joining him in a venture based on an idea he had in his spare time.
He can either: a) send an official letter to the company while not at work or b) bring up the idea to his supervisor/whatever while at work.
Since you're stating that (b) constitutes doing work on his idea while on company time, you might do a bit of work backing up your assertion.
The late Italian artist Piero Manzoni canned his
own feces back in 1961 as "art objects". The latest sale was $28,000 for one tin in July 1998.
(source: News of the Weird) So tell me...since
canned feces are apparently so valuable, if marketed with the right spin, do they count as inventions? And does your employer own any that you "work on" while on the clock? Can they sue you if you flush without first giving them a chance to cash in?