Why do we always end up comparing linux to windows? OK, anti-{spy, mal, virus, windows} software is a pain in the butt to install in windows. That is fact. Does it detract from the critisisms aimed against linux? No it doesn't!! The problems still exist. Just because you can find an example of the same problem elsewhere doesn't invalidate it!
This kind of argument is like the kid in the playground who's only comeback is "Yeah? Well you smell too!!!"
Should we be able to take things for granted? Yes. I take my car for granted, why not the computer?
Shouldn't we dumb down linux to make it zero-learning curve? YES YES YES!!!! That should be the ultimate goal for EVERYTHING! Should users be able to be empowered? YES! But that is the wrong question. The real question is "Should users be forced to be empowered?" and the answer to that is a loud and definate "NO!" Zero learning curve and empowerment are NOT mutually exclusive, and you will only cripple yourself if you believe that.
The best tool for the job is always the easiest one to use. As a desktop "Mum's and Dad's" machine linux is not that tool. Can linux be that tool? YES! But there is a long way to go, and until we start to address the issues mentioned in the article we will never get there.
Sure we can encourage a user to learn, but never force! As soon as you force a user to learn something you will lose that user.
I don't know the percentages. But I do know my own experience. I've been using linux as my primary work station for a number of years now, and none of the arguments posed in the article are new. In fact they are all Very old. And yet how many of the problems have been solved? None. Nothing.
Years of development and I still get problems with the clipboard. Years of development and yet I still can't drag and drop between some applications. Years of development and software installation is still a pain in the butt. Library upgrades that break half the applications.
I see arguments against windows that talk about how windows requires a reinstall every six months just to stabalise the computer again. Well here's a news flash, I reinstall linux about every 6 months as well just to clean up the mess that gets generated by having 5 different versions of the same library installed that most likely aren't needed any more. The mess caused by heaps of config files that I have no idea what's using it. Sure, it's probably anal, but that's me.
Linux is a mess! It's a patchwork quilt jammed together with no central design, or thought.
Now I understand exactly why this is the case, and I understand exactly why it's so hard to fix. But that doesn't make it right, and it doesn't make it good.
We've come to a point in society where absolutely nothing is a learning experience because if we challenge someone that's a negative experience. Well what do you think happens in 20 years when absolutely nobody can code in ASM or C? Or hell use a shell, build tools, etc...
That is a completely theoretical situation that will never happen. How do I know that? Because we are already at that point with some aspects of computing. By your argument every programmer should be forced to learn machine code. We should all understand exactly how a CPU works. I'm a programmer and don't know how to use machine code, but I don't think it detracts from my skills. Yet there are people out there who do know how to use machine code.
We should not be forced to understand something that is ultimatly useless to us. Not knowing how to service my car doesn't detract from my experience of using my car.
For exactly the same reason I should not be forced to understand system libraries. I should not be forced to learn shell scripting. I should not forced to understand why this software won't work because I don't have the correct library versions installed. People have their own work to do, and a computer should be a tool to assist them. They should not have to become an expert to use one. That kind of elitest attitude serves no one, and only holds us back.
it just works? You've obviously never been in driver or inf hell with windows... Also, you've probably never seen a kernel panic...
Of course I have. But drivers in linux are no easier than windows. And you missed my point. We are talking about average users. An average user will NEVER experience driver hell because they purchase their computer from the local Gateway store where everything is all set up nice for them. They switch it on and it all works nice for them.
If these users start to disagree with the way windows works do you really believe they will migrate to linux and find things are better? Of course they won't. If anything they will migrate to an Mac.
Because people like their settings. They hate using the computer, and they would rather spend their time on the computer using it instead of messing about with it.
I know a guy who has never used Linux. Always uses Windows. Just recently he installed the 64bit windows as a dual boot. Despite the fact he said 64bit windows works better for all his games he still uses the old windows for all his work because he can't be arsed setting everything up again.
What a big fucking surprise this has turned out to be.
66 comments, and what do I see? The majority of posters flaming away, or covering their ears screaming "I'm not listening, I'm not listening!"
And as long as this attitude continues linux will continue to suffer. For once in your geeky lives how about you sit back and think about what people are saying about your precious holy operating system. How about you take the constructive critisism and recognise it for what it is! These people are trying to HELP YOU! But no, you don't listen, and these problems will continue to plague Linux, and normal users will take one look and turn away leaving it forever in the hands of the fanatics.
Forget windows, forget OSX, forget whatever OS people happen to be using. The point is users are comfortable, and don't want to change because what they do with their computer "Just Works", and that is something that has never been achieved by Linux.
Linux has never reached the "It Just Works" stage. I have been using linux for years and sometimes installing software is a pain in the butt. "You require X library", "You have X library, but you require Y version". As soon as I upgrade 1 library 10 other bits of software stops working!
Now I know how to solve those problems, and I know why certain quirks happen, but why should anyone else have to deal with that shit? Those people are not stupid, they are not ignorant, and they are not lazy. They just DON'T CARE! And they shouldn't have to care because they already have a system that "Just Works".
We don't need better man pages, or instructions, because no one reads them! I have never ever read a manual for windows software, why does linux force me to read the manual all the time?
Now I like linux. I think it has great potential, but in all the years I have used it I have yet to see it really progress in the areas it has to, and I'm not going to wait any more. As soon as the x86 Macs are out, I am migrating.
Because Hasbro are world leaders in cancer research!
In fact they will probably use it as the theme for their next monopoly game. "Go directly to chemotherapy. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200 health insurance."
A single failure can already kill a diver. A crack in your regulator hose can empty your tank in a few seconds. A stretched bourden tube in your pressure guage can make you think you still have 50atm of air left when really your tank is empty. It doesn't matter what system you use, it will go wrong.
Go meet some divers and you can be guaranteed of meeting people who have had things go wrong with their equipment, and had to make an emergency ascent.
They already tried to do that once. I can't remember where I read about it, but they were trying to teach a computer what a tank looked like.
They thought they had finally taught the machine what it looked like, but occasionally it got things completely wrong. After a long analasis they finally worked out that it thought the shades of the sky was a tank, or something like that.
That is the biggest problem they have yet to overcome, and that is computers can't determine what is an object in a picture, and what isn't.
Except they DID show an actual game on the PS3. Epic had a demo of UT2007 working on the PS3 which they put together after only 2 months with a dev kit.
It was a scripted movie that they played through once, and then played through a second time with Tim Sweeney moving the camera around to prove it wasn't pre-rendered.
Watch this video, it's a much more accurate representation. It shows replays the journey a number of times, each time adding a new mathmatical distortion until you get exactly what you would see if travelling close to the speed of light. http://www.anu.edu.au/Physics/Searle/
Whenever I have installed it it's been rediculously slow. Even the pages that are linked to from the main page take 10 minutes to load, if they work at all. You cannot tell me that is acceptable performance.
Are you one of the developers? Because if you are it sounds like you are just trying to ignore a problem hoping that if you pretend it doesn't exist it will disapear.
I don't want them to see my site the way they want to see it. I want them to see it the way it was meant to be seen.
So you are in full support of the MPAA and the RIAA who want to have full control over their content and only allow people to access it, and use it they way they want you to use it?
This is the best example I can remember being told to explain it.
Think about when you are travelling in a car. Outside it is raining. There is no wind and the rain is falling straight down. As you travel through the rain you look out the window, the rain appears to be falling in a diagonal direction.
Exactly the same things is happening here. The light is the rain things behind you start to move forward and appear in your field of view.
I can't remember that much about my physics classes, but I think there is more to it than just the visual distortion simulated here. There would also be shifts in colour etc etc.
Unfortunatly it's ingrained in our culture. Australians have a lack of faith in our own abilities and power. The result is we allow ourselves to be bullied like this because we are afraid to make a mistake.
We are a country of mummies boys looking to others to tell us what to do. We won't do anything original until someone else does it first. If one of us has a fantastic idea, or invention it is almost always completely ignored here until the inventer is forced to sell it to an overseas company.
It's really quite sad. We may be the "Clever Country", but we don't utilise all our potential.
No he didn't. All of this is nothing but posturing and bickering between children and something that should be allowed to die. The facts of this whole saga right from when Linux first decided to use BitKeeper is Linus got a few good years using it. The kernel development pace improved dramatically, and he learnt a better way to look after the source code.
No matter what happened he would of had to change eventually anyway. So Linus, now having a good understanding of what is needed, has a new tool that will get better and soon be up to the same standard as BitKeeper.
Those are the benefits of all of this. After that why should we really give a crap. There is no way McVoy can do anything to Tridge. As has been pointed out many times Reverse Engineering is protected by the law, and Tridge never used BitKeeper and isn't bound by it's license.
Everyone involved in the matter has had their say. They aren't going to change their opinion any time soon, so anyone else wading into the argument is just shit stiring.
I had a guy do it to one of our servers. Although he accidently did rm -rf..
Luckily he realised what was happening and stopped it before it took out the entire disk and we were able to restore a lot of it by copying all the system files from another machine. As long as the machine was never rebooted it was fine.
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Why do we always end up comparing linux to windows? OK, anti-{spy, mal, virus, windows} software is a pain in the butt to install in windows. That is fact. Does it detract from the critisisms aimed against linux? No it doesn't!! The problems still exist. Just because you can find an example of the same problem elsewhere doesn't invalidate it!
This kind of argument is like the kid in the playground who's only comeback is "Yeah? Well you smell too!!!"
Should we be able to take things for granted? Yes. I take my car for granted, why not the computer?
Shouldn't we dumb down linux to make it zero-learning curve? YES YES YES!!!! That should be the ultimate goal for EVERYTHING! Should users be able to be empowered? YES! But that is the wrong question. The real question is "Should users be forced to be empowered?" and the answer to that is a loud and definate "NO!" Zero learning curve and empowerment are NOT mutually exclusive, and you will only cripple yourself if you believe that.
The best tool for the job is always the easiest one to use. As a desktop "Mum's and Dad's" machine linux is not that tool. Can linux be that tool? YES! But there is a long way to go, and until we start to address the issues mentioned in the article we will never get there.
Sure we can encourage a user to learn, but never force! As soon as you force a user to learn something you will lose that user.
I don't know the percentages. But I do know my own experience. I've been using linux as my primary work station for a number of years now, and none of the arguments posed in the article are new. In fact they are all Very old. And yet how many of the problems have been solved? None. Nothing.
Years of development and I still get problems with the clipboard. Years of development and yet I still can't drag and drop between some applications. Years of development and software installation is still a pain in the butt. Library upgrades that break half the applications.
I see arguments against windows that talk about how windows requires a reinstall every six months just to stabalise the computer again. Well here's a news flash, I reinstall linux about every 6 months as well just to clean up the mess that gets generated by having 5 different versions of the same library installed that most likely aren't needed any more. The mess caused by heaps of config files that I have no idea what's using it. Sure, it's probably anal, but that's me.
Linux is a mess! It's a patchwork quilt jammed together with no central design, or thought.
Now I understand exactly why this is the case, and I understand exactly why it's so hard to fix. But that doesn't make it right, and it doesn't make it good.
That is a completely theoretical situation that will never happen. How do I know that? Because we are already at that point with some aspects of computing. By your argument every programmer should be forced to learn machine code. We should all understand exactly how a CPU works. I'm a programmer and don't know how to use machine code, but I don't think it detracts from my skills. Yet there are people out there who do know how to use machine code.
We should not be forced to understand something that is ultimatly useless to us. Not knowing how to service my car doesn't detract from my experience of using my car.
For exactly the same reason I should not be forced to understand system libraries. I should not be forced to learn shell scripting. I should not forced to understand why this software won't work because I don't have the correct library versions installed. People have their own work to do, and a computer should be a tool to assist them. They should not have to become an expert to use one. That kind of elitest attitude serves no one, and only holds us back.
Of course I have. But drivers in linux are no easier than windows. And you missed my point. We are talking about average users. An average user will NEVER experience driver hell because they purchase their computer from the local Gateway store where everything is all set up nice for them. They switch it on and it all works nice for them.
If these users start to disagree with the way windows works do you really believe they will migrate to linux and find things are better? Of course they won't. If anything they will migrate to an Mac.
Because people like their settings. They hate using the computer, and they would rather spend their time on the computer using it instead of messing about with it.
I know a guy who has never used Linux. Always uses Windows. Just recently he installed the 64bit windows as a dual boot. Despite the fact he said 64bit windows works better for all his games he still uses the old windows for all his work because he can't be arsed setting everything up again.
And yet nothing has changed.
What a big fucking surprise this has turned out to be.
66 comments, and what do I see? The majority of posters flaming away, or covering their ears screaming "I'm not listening, I'm not listening!"
And as long as this attitude continues linux will continue to suffer. For once in your geeky lives how about you sit back and think about what people are saying about your precious holy operating system. How about you take the constructive critisism and recognise it for what it is! These people are trying to HELP YOU! But no, you don't listen, and these problems will continue to plague Linux, and normal users will take one look and turn away leaving it forever in the hands of the fanatics.
You didn't actually read the article did you?
Forget windows, forget OSX, forget whatever OS people happen to be using. The point is users are comfortable, and don't want to change because what they do with their computer "Just Works", and that is something that has never been achieved by Linux.
Linux has never reached the "It Just Works" stage. I have been using linux for years and sometimes installing software is a pain in the butt. "You require X library", "You have X library, but you require Y version". As soon as I upgrade 1 library 10 other bits of software stops working!
Now I know how to solve those problems, and I know why certain quirks happen, but why should anyone else have to deal with that shit? Those people are not stupid, they are not ignorant, and they are not lazy. They just DON'T CARE! And they shouldn't have to care because they already have a system that "Just Works".
We don't need better man pages, or instructions, because no one reads them! I have never ever read a manual for windows software, why does linux force me to read the manual all the time?
Now I like linux. I think it has great potential, but in all the years I have used it I have yet to see it really progress in the areas it has to, and I'm not going to wait any more. As soon as the x86 Macs are out, I am migrating.
Produced by George Lucas?
Because Hasbro are world leaders in cancer research!
In fact they will probably use it as the theme for their next monopoly game. "Go directly to chemotherapy. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200 health insurance."
A single failure can already kill a diver. A crack in your regulator hose can empty your tank in a few seconds. A stretched bourden tube in your pressure guage can make you think you still have 50atm of air left when really your tank is empty. It doesn't matter what system you use, it will go wrong.
Go meet some divers and you can be guaranteed of meeting people who have had things go wrong with their equipment, and had to make an emergency ascent.
They already tried to do that once. I can't remember where I read about it, but they were trying to teach a computer what a tank looked like.
They thought they had finally taught the machine what it looked like, but occasionally it got things completely wrong. After a long analasis they finally worked out that it thought the shades of the sky was a tank, or something like that.
That is the biggest problem they have yet to overcome, and that is computers can't determine what is an object in a picture, and what isn't.
It's not a mountain, it's more like a hill.
Except they DID show an actual game on the PS3. Epic had a demo of UT2007 working on the PS3 which they put together after only 2 months with a dev kit.
It was a scripted movie that they played through once, and then played through a second time with Tim Sweeney moving the camera around to prove it wasn't pre-rendered.
Watch this video, it's a much more accurate representation. It shows replays the journey a number of times, each time adding a new mathmatical distortion until you get exactly what you would see if travelling close to the speed of light.
http://www.anu.edu.au/Physics/Searle/
Oh yep, that's a great attitude that is, and is sure to fix everything and make Freenet the greatest piece of software ever created.
Total crap.
Whenever I have installed it it's been rediculously slow. Even the pages that are linked to from the main page take 10 minutes to load, if they work at all. You cannot tell me that is acceptable performance.
Are you one of the developers? Because if you are it sounds like you are just trying to ignore a problem hoping that if you pretend it doesn't exist it will disapear.
So you are in full support of the MPAA and the RIAA who want to have full control over their content and only allow people to access it, and use it they way they want you to use it?
This is the best example I can remember being told to explain it.
Think about when you are travelling in a car. Outside it is raining. There is no wind and the rain is falling straight down. As you travel through the rain you look out the window, the rain appears to be falling in a diagonal direction.
Exactly the same things is happening here. The light is the rain things behind you start to move forward and appear in your field of view.
I can't remember that much about my physics classes, but I think there is more to it than just the visual distortion simulated here. There would also be shifts in colour etc etc.
Actually we are excelent at sports in general, and it's the one area that we really push ourselves and support to it's fullest.
:)
If only we adopted the same attitude in all areas
Unfortunatly it's ingrained in our culture. Australians have a lack of faith in our own abilities and power. The result is we allow ourselves to be bullied like this because we are afraid to make a mistake.
We are a country of mummies boys looking to others to tell us what to do. We won't do anything original until someone else does it first. If one of us has a fantastic idea, or invention it is almost always completely ignored here until the inventer is forced to sell it to an overseas company.
It's really quite sad. We may be the "Clever Country", but we don't utilise all our potential.
No he didn't. All of this is nothing but posturing and bickering between children and something that should be allowed to die. The facts of this whole saga right from when Linux first decided to use BitKeeper is Linus got a few good years using it. The kernel development pace improved dramatically, and he learnt a better way to look after the source code.
No matter what happened he would of had to change eventually anyway. So Linus, now having a good understanding of what is needed, has a new tool that will get better and soon be up to the same standard as BitKeeper.
Those are the benefits of all of this. After that why should we really give a crap. There is no way McVoy can do anything to Tridge. As has been pointed out many times Reverse Engineering is protected by the law, and Tridge never used BitKeeper and isn't bound by it's license.
Everyone involved in the matter has had their say. They aren't going to change their opinion any time soon, so anyone else wading into the argument is just shit stiring.
I had a guy do it to one of our servers. Although he accidently did rm -rf ..
Luckily he realised what was happening and stopped it before it took out the entire disk and we were able to restore a lot of it by copying all the system files from another machine. As long as the machine was never rebooted it was fine.