Sounds like your experience with Linux is the same as Bill Joy's, but is based on Linux from 1993. Maybe you should update your knowledge before attempting another rant
Oh, I don't know about that. Most linux users would happily agree if I weren't mentioning OS X in the same post.
You may have got yourself a perfect system and may be fully capable to maintain it. That's really really cool (no sarcasm), but I'm sure I wouldn't be able to duplicate that.
Drag and drop: I'm sure you understood me right: most Linux people use different file managers that don't allow drag and drop between them. But maybe I was vague.
Anyway, drag and drop in a program is not impressive. It's system wide drag and drop, between programs, programs and the system etc. Not some programs yes, others no, depending on more rules than you want to hold inside your head.
Printing, monitor resolution, file manager: the beauty of linux is you can build yourself a nice frankenstein monster and make it rock solid. But the level of commitment and knowledge this requires is totally beyond most people and you are here talking about your system as if that experience comes out of the box.
Do tell me what box that is. But be fair and describe the install process a bit. If it doesn't include lots of separate installs, tweaking and meddling in the occult (config files) I might be tempted...
Here, read a bit of this, and all the comments. Then realize that most things said are way over the head of people who as I put it aren't into Linux.
http://www.linuxworld.com/story/37872.htm
All this inferior-superior stuff is what you're looking for. Not me, and I doubt parent poster had any of that in mind.
Most people are looking for an experience. If you dig compiling, recompiling and using x systems on top of each other, not allowing for drag and drop between them, can't set your monitor resolution without turning your machine inside out, don't have the luxury of font management, printing, etc etc. then Linux is for you!
If you're not the adventurous type, not a programmer and don't enjoy beating your own system (see above), maybe OS X is really what you're looking for.
I don't mean to bash Linux here, but you all should stop pretending Linux is easy. It's not. It's wonderful, who would have thought it, but it's not for those a lot of Linux adepts deem "dumb" - even if they might one day give you a heart transplant.
Let me put it real simple: Linux is not for people who are not into Linux. And Mac OS X - even Windows (the horror) are systems for people who basically don't give a fuck. If I had done what mr Sun has done, I would not build a computer from spare parts and program drivers to get my linux box talking with my other stuff, I'd go out and buy a monster machine running OS X - if I were him.
So put all that superior-inferior crap where the sun doesn't shine (forgot where that was, somewhere between Lancre and Badass). That most certainly was not the point.
"Bin Laden is evil too. As is anyone who purposely targets civilians"
I totally agree with you. This discussion is about some metaphysical meaning of evil and how it applies. I like your candidness way better.
But this incidentally makes the US evil. Whether they called it "Soft targets" or hospitals, farms, community gathering places, they've done horrible things in Central America, Africa and Asia, and not so long ago.
Actually, it makes most western countries and the former USSR evil. We've indulged in meddling and reinforcing horrible behaviour in those who'd happily slaughter their own people for wealth and power and discouraging or outright murdering those who wouldn't. All for raw materials and 'political balance'. Any CIA man will happily say the US was the cleverest and most vicious one in this game.
If you disagree or think this is leftist whining, I've met more than enough conservatives who abhor our recent past and are doing their damnest to rectify it - even as we continue to do more of the same.
I thought I was going to explode when spokesmen from the current Bush administration said - in mid election -they didn't think the US could support a leftist government in El Salvador. It would be disastrous for the country, a step backward, an invitation to more violence. I don't care who wins, whether it's the party that used to support death escaders and horrible army acts or the party that used to be the guerilla and has done their own share of warcrimes. They both have become moderate and it seems they know they need to cooperate in order to get things done. But if one country shouldn't impose it's will on El Salvador, it's the US.
The people who make up Bushes brains right now are the same ones who didn't care american civilians - nuns, priests, journalists, human rights workers - got raped and slaughtered by their subsedized salvadorian army buddies in the eighties - for trying to protect an abused population.
The US pumped more money in that pityfully small country than in any other country - military support and guidance. No peace, blast those commies to kingdom come. Afterwards conservative observers stated they "had no idea about the willingness of the Salvadorian government to slaughter and torture their own". They could have had, if they'd taken the time to grill their CIA observers and desision makers. They didn't. So they could gladly say "Ich habe es nicht gewusst"
There's nothing mothers of murdered children can do to make powerful countries change their politics, nothing at all. That is evil. This arrogant blindness, this unwillingness to know.
And trying to "define" who's the more evil, (in the left corner a crazed Saudi who preys on disillusioned muslims to kill wholesale... aaand in the right corner some equally crazed powermongers who deside without blinking which dictator to support and which one to blast to oblivion...) it's a bit futile.
The configuration you speak about - if I read correctly - is single processor.
And it's not designed to do what a Mac does without blinking. It doesn't run PSD, i-apps, FCP,... It runs Linux. Fine for you, totally inapropriate for me and many more people.
Ripping people off would be trying to offer all that hardware without any added value. Apple's added value is huge.
The whole point of buying a Mac instead of something else is you get OS X and really worthwile goodies.
When Jobs gave that cute speach about the digital hub I thought "Yeah, right. I just bought my Cube and now he wants me to buy another mac to do all this?"
I still work solely on my Cube.
But now I have over 5000 family pictures in iPhoto, the best I export to web on a regular basis so that friends and family in Europe can share our joy. iTunes? Wow! iMovie same here. And I start my day clicking my News bookmark in Safari which loads 15 tabs simultaneously of US-, Belgian and Peruvian news-sites. There's a lot more I enjoy daily, but you get the point.
We don't look for the same in Computers, so much is clear, but even knowing Apple takes a big bite out of my budget, I don't agree with your statement: they're not ripping me off, they're offering extreme value.
I don't doubt you, but I've had the incredible luck to see a bit of South and Middle America and everywhere they sell MS on the street for next to nothing ($3.00, mas o menos). XP, Office, you name it. It works too.
Only people who get originals are those who buy a PC with software included -or big organizations.
But computers are big here, that's for sure.
Have seen a lot of advertising for Linux too btw. There's a brand here of Linux distributions that's supposed to be good (and spanish).
That's because for the offered infrastructure it is an extremely cheap machine. It's expensive as in "Costs a lot of money, more than I want to - scrap that - can pay". It's cheap as in "extreme bang for your buck".
On another note:
This is normal: "I want one, I'm jealous, I hate you!"
This is also normal: "For the same buck I can build me a machine just as impressive AND be in game heaven. Ahahahahaaaaahaaaaaaarghl!"
This is irrational: "I'm absolutely certain, despite all the evidence to the contrary that this machine simply cannot be priced right. It's an Apple, so it's got to be expensive. Whatwhat?"
This is pittyful: "Oh, you know, speed isn't everything. Just as with size..."
You have to realize that the US is by far the biggest software market, so this won't be a problem money wise - at least for the next few years.
While Brazil has a huge potential, it also has a huge black market. You can buy your copy of XP on the street for next to nothing.
Most official organizations have to have licenses, so there's some money made, which MS now might stand to lose, but it's more about market share.
MS would rather have you use MS warez than OSS. Because when you buy your new computer, you'll have bought a new OS. And one day you won't be able to run copys anymore...
And they of course are afraid of free initiative. Those countries might have huge social and economical problems, their programmers are just as smart. Look at what Asia is doing now and extrapolate.
Latin America is a huge *potential* market, and moves like this might make MS lose them before the potential comes to fruition.
While I think the author is full of it, comparing non-existing OS's is sort of "in".
Jobs on OSX whatever going to be superior to Longhorn when it finally hits the real world is king, second everybody talking about the Linux Desktop - ok, that's a joke! - Gates on the superior safety of Longhorn - which could be considered a joke? - and so on...
Oh well, each to his own and whatever gets it up...
But as I an XP user (and one time fan) wrote me this weekend: "Things got a little better with iTunes, makes me wonder why we put up with this. And how on earth could I have ever liked WMP? It's bud-ugly and stupid! This whole OS is ugly and stupid, man, I need a drink!"
You're right and insightful, and I was talking about home users.
I'm very much in favor of linux in the enterprise - as long as it's the most user-friendly one around.
I incidentally think that such a move would benefit linux for the not so technically inclined tremendously.
Since GUI's in the office are important, complaints would have to be followed up and resources would have to be aimed at them.
Thus ultimately one day bringing Linux to the desktop.
btw: I don't think "bringing linux to the desktop" (home users) is such an important goal in itself, I don't see the merits right now.
Well alright, I see one merit: the emergence of a very weird economical model that actually makes it into people's everyday lives. That's interesting in itself.
Well, I don't want to shake your belief in mankind, but if it's not a walk-through installer (with buttons and clear choices) it's already too hard.
And although I confess not to have tinkered with linux the last year, I just tried to install GIMP for OS X. Still not running, don't know why, and the install process was really the way I described it.
The point here being that I could very well have done something wrong, but finding out just what is too much of an exercise to my taste. It's not for those who are tickled by this kind of puzzles, but your average program on OS X installs either with drag and drop or with an installer a five year old can do without explanation. Those things generally do it for me and I don't have *any* incentive to go and do something "arcane". Still, I am grateful for the fact that such a free app excists and don't want to piss on the programmers and communities that provide it.
Disclaimer: I think Linux is just great. The fact that it excists, that it's growing so rapidly, that it does such a great job on the server side and is crawling in niches we wouldn't have dreamed of two years back (PDA, Cell Phones, Appliances, Home Entertainment Systems,...). I'm not complaining or bashing. I love the penguin.
What I'm doing is: I'm giving my 5c's on Linux and the desktop. Put another way: from the *user's* point of view it doesn't make sense to go back to Win3.11 (not comparing linux with that, comparing the user experience). Now, carefully engineered bussiness/organization desktops is something else entirely. And in that environment I don't expect anybody to have to install anything.
Here however there's still another problem to face: providing non-tech training and manuals for those who want to be power-users in their field or application *without* having to know anything more than is reasonable about the innards of the OS or the computer.
You're right, compared to take one year, two years ago, tinkering has really gone down.
But compared to OS X or even XP you're still up that proverbial creek without a paddle with a lot of peripherials.
And installing new programs is NOT easy at all. "First do this, then that, then consult those pages on what to do next, but hey, they were written for the previous version so might not apply anymore,..."
You'll see how fast things will change when average users are "forced" to upgrade to linux. (I'm all for that in a lot of corporate environments btw)
I'm not saying you're wrong, but most people (and by this I don't mean/.) would react to your example by saying: "What the? My job largely depends on *making*.doc files, I don't want to learn cute commands to delete them."
OK, so they miss the point, but so do you. Things that are "easy" in Linux (Unix, BSD,...) are useless to the average user. When their harddisk is full, they complain. That's most of the times enough;-)
I find all this command line stuff very interesting, but just as with GREP I don't really do stuff with it, since I'd really have to study before I could do things I really really know 100% sure I won't regret later. And even then... No Undo button in the terminal...
I've enhanced *my* computer experience by using OS X without the terminal, and know I miss part of the fun, but that's alright, I get some of my kicks by watching other people do their magic on linux/unix/bsd.
IF - and that's a big if in the linux world - you're a "Linux desktop for the rest of us" fan, you're in for a real treat.
You'll have the pleasure of handling with a lot of gripes and user requests that you suddenly have to take serious.
The moment you say "Whip out Terminal" you'll have lost 90% of your user-base. Compare with W95 "Go to DOS" comments. Yeah, right, that's why users like GUI's, so that they can give commands.
Furthermore, you'll have the pleasure of contemplating a shitheap of philosophical and usability issues, resort to real-world testing, redesigns and what not ALL FOR SOME STUPID BUTTONS!
And this is only the enterprise desktop we're looking at. These people can still be trained (although after 20 years of mass computing we finally know training is the worst waste of your time and money since you could have put the effort in making a better application...).
As for manuals... I want to see the IT geek who for the first time explains to a group of account executives they should read the MAN pages.:-)))
A note to Europeans: if you want to criticize anything US, say you live there, own three guns and drive a huuuuge SUV - which you can't drive since you're working all the time.
Slashdot Mirror
Two users pointed out that the distro they use is indeed extremely friendly (Gnome).
I am going to have to see this for myself, can't wait.
BTW My own experience indeed is from two years back, but many comments from linux users now say exactly the same things I did. Wasn't joking.
OK, well well...
:-)
This actually sounds amazing. I'm going to look for this and try it out for myself.
Sounds like your experience with Linux is the same as Bill Joy's, but is based on Linux from 1993. Maybe you should update your knowledge before attempting another rant
Oh, I don't know about that. Most linux users would happily agree if I weren't mentioning OS X in the same post.
You may have got yourself a perfect system and may be fully capable to maintain it. That's really really cool (no sarcasm), but I'm sure I wouldn't be able to duplicate that.
Drag and drop: I'm sure you understood me right: most Linux people use different file managers that don't allow drag and drop between them. But maybe I was vague. Anyway, drag and drop in a program is not impressive. It's system wide drag and drop, between programs, programs and the system etc. Not some programs yes, others no, depending on more rules than you want to hold inside your head. Printing, monitor resolution, file manager: the beauty of linux is you can build yourself a nice frankenstein monster and make it rock solid. But the level of commitment and knowledge this requires is totally beyond most people and you are here talking about your system as if that experience comes out of the box.
Do tell me what box that is. But be fair and describe the install process a bit. If it doesn't include lots of separate installs, tweaking and meddling in the occult (config files) I might be tempted...
Here, read a bit of this, and all the comments. Then realize that most things said are way over the head of people who as I put it aren't into Linux. http://www.linuxworld.com/story/37872.htm
I do enjoy a good rant. Today is a good day!
Well let me run with this a bit.
All this inferior-superior stuff is what you're looking for. Not me, and I doubt parent poster had any of that in mind.
Most people are looking for an experience. If you dig compiling, recompiling and using x systems on top of each other, not allowing for drag and drop between them, can't set your monitor resolution without turning your machine inside out, don't have the luxury of font management, printing, etc etc. then Linux is for you!
If you're not the adventurous type, not a programmer and don't enjoy beating your own system (see above), maybe OS X is really what you're looking for.
I don't mean to bash Linux here, but you all should stop pretending Linux is easy. It's not. It's wonderful, who would have thought it, but it's not for those a lot of Linux adepts deem "dumb" - even if they might one day give you a heart transplant.
Let me put it real simple: Linux is not for people who are not into Linux. And Mac OS X - even Windows (the horror) are systems for people who basically don't give a fuck. If I had done what mr Sun has done, I would not build a computer from spare parts and program drivers to get my linux box talking with my other stuff, I'd go out and buy a monster machine running OS X - if I were him.
So put all that superior-inferior crap where the sun doesn't shine (forgot where that was, somewhere between Lancre and Badass). That most certainly was not the point.
Hope you enjoyed my rant, Cheers!
I'm still using my Cube. It's fully supported and looks like it still has some years in it.
:-)
If they discontinue a model it's always a good moment to buy end of stocks.
And afterwards it keeps resell values up. I can still sell my machine for more than half it's initial value.
Pray they discontinue the mac you bought
"Bin Laden is evil too. As is anyone who purposely targets civilians"
... aaand in the right corner some equally crazed powermongers who deside without blinking which dictator to support and which one to blast to oblivion...) it's a bit futile.
I totally agree with you. This discussion is about some metaphysical meaning of evil and how it applies. I like your candidness way better.
But this incidentally makes the US evil. Whether they called it "Soft targets" or hospitals, farms, community gathering places, they've done horrible things in Central America, Africa and Asia, and not so long ago.
Actually, it makes most western countries and the former USSR evil. We've indulged in meddling and reinforcing horrible behaviour in those who'd happily slaughter their own people for wealth and power and discouraging or outright murdering those who wouldn't. All for raw materials and 'political balance'. Any CIA man will happily say the US was the cleverest and most vicious one in this game.
If you disagree or think this is leftist whining, I've met more than enough conservatives who abhor our recent past and are doing their damnest to rectify it - even as we continue to do more of the same.
I thought I was going to explode when spokesmen from the current Bush administration said - in mid election -they didn't think the US could support a leftist government in El Salvador. It would be disastrous for the country, a step backward, an invitation to more violence. I don't care who wins, whether it's the party that used to support death escaders and horrible army acts or the party that used to be the guerilla and has done their own share of warcrimes. They both have become moderate and it seems they know they need to cooperate in order to get things done. But if one country shouldn't impose it's will on El Salvador, it's the US.
The people who make up Bushes brains right now are the same ones who didn't care american civilians - nuns, priests, journalists, human rights workers - got raped and slaughtered by their subsedized salvadorian army buddies in the eighties - for trying to protect an abused population.
The US pumped more money in that pityfully small country than in any other country - military support and guidance. No peace, blast those commies to kingdom come. Afterwards conservative observers stated they "had no idea about the willingness of the Salvadorian government to slaughter and torture their own". They could have had, if they'd taken the time to grill their CIA observers and desision makers. They didn't. So they could gladly say "Ich habe es nicht gewusst"
There's nothing mothers of murdered children can do to make powerful countries change their politics, nothing at all. That is evil. This arrogant blindness, this unwillingness to know.
And trying to "define" who's the more evil, (in the left corner a crazed Saudi who preys on disillusioned muslims to kill wholesale
The configuration you speak about - if I read correctly - is single processor.
... It runs Linux. Fine for you, totally inapropriate for me and many more people.
And it's not designed to do what a Mac does without blinking. It doesn't run PSD, i-apps, FCP,
Ripping people off would be trying to offer all that hardware without any added value. Apple's added value is huge.
The whole point of buying a Mac instead of something else is you get OS X and really worthwile goodies.
When Jobs gave that cute speach about the digital hub I thought "Yeah, right. I just bought my Cube and now he wants me to buy another mac to do all this?"
I still work solely on my Cube.
But now I have over 5000 family pictures in iPhoto, the best I export to web on a regular basis so that friends and family in Europe can share our joy. iTunes? Wow! iMovie same here. And I start my day clicking my News bookmark in Safari which loads 15 tabs simultaneously of US-, Belgian and Peruvian news-sites. There's a lot more I enjoy daily, but you get the point.
We don't look for the same in Computers, so much is clear, but even knowing Apple takes a big bite out of my budget, I don't agree with your statement: they're not ripping me off, they're offering extreme value.
I don't doubt you, but I've had the incredible luck to see a bit of South and Middle America and everywhere they sell MS on the street for next to nothing ($3.00, mas o menos). XP, Office, you name it. It works too.
Only people who get originals are those who buy a PC with software included -or big organizations.
But computers are big here, that's for sure.
Have seen a lot of advertising for Linux too btw. There's a brand here of Linux distributions that's supposed to be good (and spanish).
That's because for the offered infrastructure it is an extremely cheap machine.
It's expensive as in "Costs a lot of money, more than I want to - scrap that - can pay".
It's cheap as in "extreme bang for your buck".
On another note:
This is normal: "I want one, I'm jealous, I hate you!"
This is also normal: "For the same buck I can build me a machine just as impressive AND be in game heaven. Ahahahahaaaaahaaaaaaarghl!"
This is irrational: "I'm absolutely certain, despite all the evidence to the contrary that this machine simply cannot be priced right. It's an Apple, so it's got to be expensive. Whatwhat?"
This is pittyful: "Oh, you know, speed isn't everything. Just as with size..."
You have to realize that the US is by far the biggest software market, so this won't be a problem money wise - at least for the next few years.
While Brazil has a huge potential, it also has a huge black market. You can buy your copy of XP on the street for next to nothing.
Most official organizations have to have licenses, so there's some money made, which MS now might stand to lose, but it's more about market share.
MS would rather have you use MS warez than OSS. Because when you buy your new computer, you'll have bought a new OS. And one day you won't be able to run copys anymore...
And they of course are afraid of free initiative. Those countries might have huge social and economical problems, their programmers are just as smart.
Look at what Asia is doing now and extrapolate.
Latin America is a huge *potential* market, and moves like this might make MS lose them before the potential comes to fruition.
While I think the author is full of it, comparing non-existing OS's is sort of "in".
...
Jobs on OSX whatever going to be superior to Longhorn when it finally hits the real world is king, second everybody talking about the Linux Desktop - ok, that's a joke! - Gates on the superior safety of Longhorn - which could be considered a joke? - and so on
Oh well, each to his own and whatever gets it up...
But as I an XP user (and one time fan) wrote me this weekend: "Things got a little better with iTunes, makes me wonder why we put up with this. And how on earth could I have ever liked WMP? It's bud-ugly and stupid! This whole OS is ugly and stupid, man, I need a drink!"
explain yourself.
The mirror exe is different from the developer's exe?
All exe's have a backdoor program?
What doesn't sound right?
Your vcr and cd-burner come with the same two messages:
"You can do this and this - potentially illegal acts- and with great ease and panache!"
And then you get the legal message:
"This and this is illegal. Don't do anything illegal. We don't condone it - however easy we make it."
According to some reviews it definitely deserves a good installer. Things could be better under OS X Panther. Haven't got my copy yet.
Still, I'm lucky enough to have Photoshop 7 and really like it.
It seems GIMP is more like Photoshop 5.
I wish I had some mod points to spare :-)
You're right and insightful, and I was talking about home users.
I'm very much in favor of linux in the enterprise - as long as it's the most user-friendly one around.
I incidentally think that such a move would benefit linux for the not so technically inclined tremendously.
Since GUI's in the office are important, complaints would have to be followed up and resources would have to be aimed at them.
Thus ultimately one day bringing Linux to the desktop.
btw: I don't think "bringing linux to the desktop" (home users) is such an important goal in itself, I don't see the merits right now.
Well alright, I see one merit: the emergence of a very weird economical model that actually makes it into people's everyday lives. That's interesting in itself.
I didn't know it could be that easy.
...
...
On OS X there's a great installer, but you have to first install X11 and Fink and then it should work.
I've done all that, installed GIMP with the standard OS X installer, started up X11, told it "gimp" and nothing
With other applications I can figure out what's wrong, but I can't even find the GIMP application
Well, I don't want to shake your belief in mankind, but if it's not a walk-through installer (with buttons and clear choices) it's already too hard.
...).
And although I confess not to have tinkered with linux the last year, I just tried to install GIMP for OS X. Still not running, don't know why, and the install process was really the way I described it.
The point here being that I could very well have done something wrong, but finding out just what is too much of an exercise to my taste. It's not for those who are tickled by this kind of puzzles, but your average program on OS X installs either with drag and drop or with an installer a five year old can do without explanation. Those things generally do it for me and I don't have *any* incentive to go and do something "arcane". Still, I am grateful for the fact that such a free app excists and don't want to piss on the programmers and communities that provide it.
Disclaimer:
I think Linux is just great. The fact that it excists, that it's growing so rapidly, that it does such a great job on the server side and is crawling in niches we wouldn't have dreamed of two years back (PDA, Cell Phones, Appliances, Home Entertainment Systems,
I'm not complaining or bashing. I love the penguin.
What I'm doing is: I'm giving my 5c's on Linux and the desktop. Put another way: from the *user's* point of view it doesn't make sense to go back to Win3.11 (not comparing linux with that, comparing the user experience).
Now, carefully engineered bussiness/organization desktops
is something else entirely. And in that environment I don't expect anybody to have to install anything.
Here however there's still another problem to face: providing non-tech training and manuals for those who want to be power-users in their field or application *without* having to know anything more than is reasonable about the innards of the OS or the computer.
You're right, compared to take one year, two years ago, tinkering has really gone down.
..."
But compared to OS X or even XP you're still up that proverbial creek without a paddle with a lot of peripherials.
And installing new programs is NOT easy at all.
"First do this, then that, then consult those pages on what to do next, but hey, they were written for the previous version so might not apply anymore,
You'll see how fast things will change when average users are "forced" to upgrade to linux. (I'm all for that in a lot of corporate environments btw)
Yes, I've heard the same comments regarding GREP.
/.) would react to your example by saying: "What the? My job largely depends on *making* .doc files, I don't want to learn cute commands to delete them."
...) are useless to the average user. When their harddisk is full, they complain. That's most of the times enough ;-)
I'm not saying you're wrong, but most people (and by this I don't mean
OK, so they miss the point, but so do you. Things that are "easy" in Linux (Unix, BSD,
I find all this command line stuff very interesting, but just as with GREP I don't really do stuff with it, since I'd really have to study before I could do things I really really know 100% sure I won't regret later. And even then...
No Undo button in the terminal...
I've enhanced *my* computer experience by using OS X without the terminal, and know I miss part of the fun, but that's alright, I get some of my kicks by watching other people do their magic on linux/unix/bsd.
IF - and that's a big if in the linux world - you're a "Linux desktop for the rest of us" fan, you're in for a real treat.
:-)))
You'll have the pleasure of handling with a lot of gripes and user requests that you suddenly have to take serious.
The moment you say "Whip out Terminal" you'll have lost 90% of your user-base. Compare with W95 "Go to DOS" comments. Yeah, right, that's why users like GUI's, so that they can give commands.
Furthermore, you'll have the pleasure of contemplating a shitheap of philosophical and usability issues, resort to real-world testing, redesigns and what not ALL FOR SOME STUPID BUTTONS!
And this is only the enterprise desktop we're looking at. These people can still be trained (although after 20 years of mass computing we finally know training is the worst waste of your time and money since you could have put the effort in making a better application...).
As for manuals... I want to see the IT geek who for the first time explains to a group of account executives they should read the MAN pages.
Linux-desktop is for those who either put some effort into it themselves or those who loooove to tinker.
As such it's really cool.
If you don't fit in that category - I don't- just buy a mac and be happy.
It's easy, powerful, doesn't have a lot of the Windows hassles and still has a world of Unix complexity to tinker with if you're so inclined.
"...most of the new Linux users are expected to stick with their PCs thanks to the fanatical level of support provided by the Thai Linux user groups."
There's your answer.
Go to the folder "../Applications/AppleScript/Example Scripts/Mail Scripts/"
There you'll find "Manage SMTP Servers.scpt".
Double-click it and you'll get a nice little window with all SMTP servers you don't use and a button to delete them.
Cheers,
"I could go on and on."
Please do, I was rather enjoying this.
A note to Europeans: if you want to criticize anything US, say you live there, own three guns and drive a huuuuge SUV - which you can't drive since you're working all the time.
"Stallman's precision is less than that of most members of the law profession."
I totally agree. If they put him on the stand, the judge is going to fall in love.