Well, I was a small-timer four years ago, but not planning on staying that way, I hired out the development, since books and onlne documentation reflect the utter inability of writers to sequence a series of steps in the natural order of an uninitiated person's need to know (except I suppose when it comes to vaulting their boogers).
Once it was developed, I was able to grow from 100 products to over 3000, and now I am building a mirror site as a backup to the production site using what I see in the structure of the current one via phpmyadmin. That and consulting the programmer I originally hired have been far more instructive than any book or online documentation. And considering the time factor saved, it's actually costing less than trying to disentangle the usual convoluted book or documentation.
If Linux companies want to make quick progress, they are going to have to go into companies and individual homes and offer to run a parallel desktop for one (1) user and go back to the drawing board on an on-going basis for each and every question, complaint, and frustration of that one (1) user vis-a-vis that experience alongside the Windows machine. Nothing like the real world to settle the issue.
Once the one (1) user is wildly enthusiastic about the Linux box over against the Windows box, word of mouth will do its job.
Until some sort of real-world experience like this is forced to be played out, and reacted to with radical ease-of-use design changes, it's going to be slow-going for Linux generally.
I've tried several implementations of Linux, and ended up making fun of them all. Why spend my time hassling with driver compatibility and convoluted install/config logic, when I am productive already with 2000 and XP Pro, even 98SE? That's the bottom line: I don't want to repeat the DOS/XT/286/386 years with Linux, regardless of how much such activities are glorified by individuals with great technical skills.
Sure, I'd love to run a Linux implementation that I could just either install and configure myself as easy as Windows, or just buy a Linux machine from Wal-Mart and not have to fret over my already-existing files, how to do this and that with the new machine, network connectivity, Web-based Outlook needs for work, etc.
People can argue all they want about what is "better", because "better" is in the eye of the user, whether in a megacorp, a small business, or an individual home. And those users do not think like Linux evangelists: they think like the users they are, even in the largest corporations.
If Linux developers would concentrate on ease of installation, configuration, and use, and really listen to all the complaints people have about Windows, they would not have to argue their case, because the market would make their case for them---intuitively, user by user, and user *to* user. After all, I began using DOS and Windows because someone *showed* me them, not because of arguments about how much "better" they were than my typewriter.
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Well, I was a small-timer four years ago, but not planning on staying that way, I hired out the development, since books and onlne documentation reflect the utter inability of writers to sequence a series of steps in the natural order of an uninitiated person's need to know (except I suppose when it comes to vaulting their boogers).
Once it was developed, I was able to grow from 100 products to over 3000, and now I am building a mirror site as a backup to the production site using what I see in the structure of the current one via phpmyadmin. That and consulting the programmer I originally hired have been far more instructive than any book or online documentation. And considering the time factor saved, it's actually costing less than trying to disentangle the usual convoluted book or documentation.
If Linux companies want to make quick progress, they are going to have to go into companies and individual homes and offer to run a parallel desktop for one (1) user and go back to the drawing board on an on-going basis for each and every question, complaint, and frustration of that one (1) user vis-a-vis that experience alongside the Windows machine. Nothing like the real world to settle the issue.
Once the one (1) user is wildly enthusiastic about the Linux box over against the Windows box, word of mouth will do its job.
Until some sort of real-world experience like this is forced to be played out, and reacted to with radical ease-of-use design changes, it's going to be slow-going for Linux generally.
I've tried several implementations of Linux, and ended up making fun of them all. Why spend my time hassling with driver compatibility and convoluted install/config logic, when I am productive already with 2000 and XP Pro, even 98SE? That's the bottom line: I don't want to repeat the DOS/XT/286/386 years with Linux, regardless of how much such activities are glorified by individuals with great technical skills.
Sure, I'd love to run a Linux implementation that I could just either install and configure myself as easy as Windows, or just buy a Linux machine from Wal-Mart and not have to fret over my already-existing files, how to do this and that with the new machine, network connectivity, Web-based Outlook needs for work, etc.
People can argue all they want about what is "better", because "better" is in the eye of the user, whether in a megacorp, a small business, or an individual home. And those users do not think like Linux evangelists: they think like the users they are, even in the largest corporations.
If Linux developers would concentrate on ease of installation, configuration, and use, and really listen to all the complaints people have about Windows, they would not have to argue their case, because the market would make their case for them---intuitively, user by user, and user *to* user. After all, I began using DOS and Windows because someone *showed* me them, not because of arguments about how much "better" they were than my typewriter.