Sibling brings up the good point. If someone has to go to the internet and search for a way to get around a problem, the system has failed him or her and he or she is working around it. Fair enough it's difficult for open source projects like Linux to get these things to work, since it often involves reverse-engineering and the like, but this is not the user's fault, and blaming them for not wanting to use something that's horrible to use is far from productive.
Oh dear God. Regardless of the entymology of the word (which I think my sibling posts say works against you), it means both in the common tongue. Arguing either for or against its use in "Free Software" is foolish, it can mean either. You're better arguing about what "Free Software" has come to mean, not "Free".
Wow, I always thought that people who omit the apostrophe in "Hallowe'en" were just wrong (I'm Scottish). This is getting dreadfully off-topic now though.
Unfortunately, a lot of the problems lie with developers rather than the OS itself. There's precious little stopping developers from making versions of systems that work on non-admin accounts (for most types of systems), but they assume admin rights, and hence the programs don't work. Just bad practices, in a lot of cases.
I tried Ubuntu a few weeks ago. After the install, I got several errors related to the GUI, then I was dropped to a command prompt. Ubuntu was DOA for me. It was a generic, old-ish PC. W2K installed flawlessly an hour later (after an hour trying to dick around to get the GUI to start). Maybe it would've been fun to play with if I had lots of free time. Definitely not functional, though.
By contrast, my (pretty old) laptop, which was broken by both Debian Sarge and older FC releases, installed and ran Ubuntu flawlessly.
In the interests of curiosity and fairness I'm getting this new FC release. But mostly for fun.
However, in "non-geek friendlyness", there is still a lot of progress that needs to be made. Most of the configuration helpers are the default gnome ones, and they aren't too great. In particular category, Mandrake is bells and whistles above Ubuntu. Even if it cannot claim the polish that debian-based distros are characterized with.
That's true, there's definately work still to be done.
It was more using the system, rather than the actual install procedure (although being asked about desktop environments was a bit OTT for them) that got them. It's just subtle changes.
It's funny, since I gave a friend Debian (Sarge, with installer), and they couldn't work it, and gave them Hoary and they could. I wouldn't call the differences trivial -- to an experienced user perhaps, but to a novice many of the changes are invaluable. That's not to say they're not small changes, but they are valuable nontheless.
Ubuntu is just... I suppose "non-geek friendly" is about as succint as you can put it. It's Linux that's genuinely trying to make the whole system easier to use, and it's genuinely trying not to talk down to its users at the same time.
For a prospect of a widely-accepted "desktop Linux" distribution, it's not perfect (or complete) yet, but it's got a hell of a lot more potential than anything else I've seen.
I believe their solution is that, since SP2, there are no services listening by default through the firewall. Windows filesharing maybe, though, although that's only subnet-accessible.
Thanks for posting that, I'd mod you up if I had points. Which, typically, I don't.
Open source doesn't eliminate the need for testing, but it can make it easier, and specifically make it easier for knowledgable users to fix bugs themselves and contribute back. As for the testing release issues, it wouldn't be much more trouble for closed-source systems to release nightly builds to the world to test, just less tempting to test.
The fact that users can fix bugs themselves, though, is not an excuse for releasing buggy software. By all means give users who want a bleeding-edge release access to your newest and greatest (but maybe not quite fully-tested) code, but don't go around releasing such code as your official version. Give it some time, test it a bit, before putting that out. Just because people can bug test and fix their own software doesn't mean that they should be made to.
OSS can make testing easier, but it does not, as you point out, remove the need for it. For anything above a "hobby" project, for things you actually expect people to use, it's just irresponsible not to undergo at least some testing. Overuse of "caveat emptor" just makes OSS look unprofessional -- which is fine, but it could cause problems when trying to break into more corporate grounds. The people who say both that companies should use more OSS, and that OSS doesn't need to be tested, really need to re-evaluate at least one of those viewpoints.
I'd rather not rely on having to hope that each app implements its own update system, without centralized, easily accessable info
On one hand that's a good point, but on the other hand a centralised repository has a lot of problems, even with things like ethics (free/non-free software in particular). The automatic insertion into sources.list is basically all I'd like to see from a Linux package manager, actually -- just a package format that could insert itself quickly (and remove itself likewise, including references to update repositories) from a shell extension, for the file in question. This is basically what autopackage is trying to achieve, I believe, and it seems like it has (at least basically) the right idea in this regard.
Another problem is something that just isn't an issue on Mac or Windows. If you want something to, for instance, be tied to a shell extension in a desktop environment, you have to do Gnome, KDE, etc., etc. We need more standardisation, even if it's only in a source "installer" format and some automated system to interpret the command relevant to the installed environment or environments.
In a lot of ways, though, Linux/OSS isntallers have the potential to be better than what exist now. It's just a matter of looking critically at where we are, and deciding where to move.
Why couldn't the package format include update information?
And most Mac/Windows software susceptible to security problems automatically updates itself via the web. It's not a single, unified system, but they do do it.
I want to download a.deb (or whatever package format you want) and double-click it, and I want that to be it installed. If there's dependencies, go fetch.
Playing with sources.list is not an option.
Systems don't have to be paid-for to constitute "products", is my understanding of it. So you've got:
GMail Google Maps Local Search Google Suggest All the "labs" stuff, which is many projects in itself. Hello Blogger Toolbar Desktop Search Groups (and Groups 2)...and so on, all falling into the pretty wide term of "product".
This is true. Of course, providers who are providing an apt-enough service should have the clout to ask people to turn it back on, or at least provide an exception for their service. Enabling JavaScript is safer and more convenient than installing a full-fledged app on your system for things like this, and a lot of the time JS is disabled by users simply because it rarely has "any good use". With popup blockers combatting a large proportion of the "downside", and systems fast enough to have a significant "upside" with JS systems, it might be time for people to re-evaluate their policies here.
I think that time will tell on this issue, though. Since the only large implementations of this system that are currently widespread are written by Google, it's hard to tell its real validity right now.
Well, the point here is that with the whole AJAX "thing", people have realised that they can make client-side systems be a lot more responsive than the simple request/response model. GMail and Google Maps are good examples of rich client-side apps written in JS. A lot of people wish to emulate these new systems, and so there's been an increased interest in JavaScript development. I think that's the basic point.
I feel guilty about wasting space on Slashdot for this little diversion now though. Although that said, there's plenty more wasted space on Slashdot that it won't be noticed...
Slashdot Mirror
Sibling brings up the good point. If someone has to go to the internet and search for a way to get around a problem, the system has failed him or her and he or she is working around it. Fair enough it's difficult for open source projects like Linux to get these things to work, since it often involves reverse-engineering and the like, but this is not the user's fault, and blaming them for not wanting to use something that's horrible to use is far from productive.
I can verify that the figures given are typical. I believe that the person talking was in the UK, though.
Oh dear God. Regardless of the entymology of the word (which I think my sibling posts say works against you), it means both in the common tongue. Arguing either for or against its use in "Free Software" is foolish, it can mean either. You're better arguing about what "Free Software" has come to mean, not "Free".
Wow, I always thought that people who omit the apostrophe in "Hallowe'en" were just wrong (I'm Scottish). This is getting dreadfully off-topic now though.
Exactly ;)
It is possible to run a program as another user though.
Unfortunately, a lot of the problems lie with developers rather than the OS itself. There's precious little stopping developers from making versions of systems that work on non-admin accounts (for most types of systems), but they assume admin rights, and hence the programs don't work. Just bad practices, in a lot of cases.
By contrast, my (pretty old) laptop, which was broken by both Debian Sarge and older FC releases, installed and ran Ubuntu flawlessly.
In the interests of curiosity and fairness I'm getting this new FC release. But mostly for fun.
That's true, there's definately work still to be done.
It was more using the system, rather than the actual install procedure (although being asked about desktop environments was a bit OTT for them) that got them. It's just subtle changes.
It's funny, since I gave a friend Debian (Sarge, with installer), and they couldn't work it, and gave them Hoary and they could. I wouldn't call the differences trivial -- to an experienced user perhaps, but to a novice many of the changes are invaluable. That's not to say they're not small changes, but they are valuable nontheless.
Ubuntu is just... I suppose "non-geek friendly" is about as succint as you can put it. It's Linux that's genuinely trying to make the whole system easier to use, and it's genuinely trying not to talk down to its users at the same time.
For a prospect of a widely-accepted "desktop Linux" distribution, it's not perfect (or complete) yet, but it's got a hell of a lot more potential than anything else I've seen.
I believe their solution is that, since SP2, there are no services listening by default through the firewall. Windows filesharing maybe, though, although that's only subnet-accessible.
Thanks for posting that, I'd mod you up if I had points. Which, typically, I don't.
Open source doesn't eliminate the need for testing, but it can make it easier, and specifically make it easier for knowledgable users to fix bugs themselves and contribute back. As for the testing release issues, it wouldn't be much more trouble for closed-source systems to release nightly builds to the world to test, just less tempting to test.
The fact that users can fix bugs themselves, though, is not an excuse for releasing buggy software. By all means give users who want a bleeding-edge release access to your newest and greatest (but maybe not quite fully-tested) code, but don't go around releasing such code as your official version. Give it some time, test it a bit, before putting that out. Just because people can bug test and fix their own software doesn't mean that they should be made to.
OSS can make testing easier, but it does not, as you point out, remove the need for it. For anything above a "hobby" project, for things you actually expect people to use, it's just irresponsible not to undergo at least some testing. Overuse of "caveat emptor" just makes OSS look unprofessional -- which is fine, but it could cause problems when trying to break into more corporate grounds. The people who say both that companies should use more OSS, and that OSS doesn't need to be tested, really need to re-evaluate at least one of those viewpoints.
I sense I'm ranting, so I'll stop.
On one hand that's a good point, but on the other hand a centralised repository has a lot of problems, even with things like ethics (free/non-free software in particular). The automatic insertion into sources.list is basically all I'd like to see from a Linux package manager, actually -- just a package format that could insert itself quickly (and remove itself likewise, including references to update repositories) from a shell extension, for the file in question. This is basically what autopackage is trying to achieve, I believe, and it seems like it has (at least basically) the right idea in this regard.
Another problem is something that just isn't an issue on Mac or Windows. If you want something to, for instance, be tied to a shell extension in a desktop environment, you have to do Gnome, KDE, etc., etc. We need more standardisation, even if it's only in a source "installer" format and some automated system to interpret the command relevant to the installed environment or environments.
In a lot of ways, though, Linux/OSS isntallers have the potential to be better than what exist now. It's just a matter of looking critically at where we are, and deciding where to move.
Why couldn't the package format include update information?
And most Mac/Windows software susceptible to security problems automatically updates itself via the web. It's not a single, unified system, but they do do it.
I want to download a .deb (or whatever package format you want) and double-click it, and I want that to be it installed. If there's dependencies, go fetch.
Playing with sources.list is not an option.
The "If he's innocent..." assumption which you oh-so-cleverly edited out seems to answer that.
Good point. I knew I'd never be able to get them all, that's what the "...and so on" was about :)
Systems don't have to be paid-for to constitute "products", is my understanding of it. So you've got:
...and so on, all falling into the pretty wide term of "product".
GMail
Google Maps
Local Search
Google Suggest
All the "labs" stuff, which is many projects in itself.
Hello
Blogger
Toolbar
Desktop Search
Groups (and Groups 2)
The reply to you explains it. I was using Firefox though. I had assumed it was a Windows thing!
Interesting stats. I wonder how microsoft.com is ahead of msn.com? Or for that matter, how is microsoft.com in 3rd place?
Try typing a URL without the : on a windows box, for example http//google.com (you'll need to paste that into a new window).
This is true. Of course, providers who are providing an apt-enough service should have the clout to ask people to turn it back on, or at least provide an exception for their service. Enabling JavaScript is safer and more convenient than installing a full-fledged app on your system for things like this, and a lot of the time JS is disabled by users simply because it rarely has "any good use". With popup blockers combatting a large proportion of the "downside", and systems fast enough to have a significant "upside" with JS systems, it might be time for people to re-evaluate their policies here.
I think that time will tell on this issue, though. Since the only large implementations of this system that are currently widespread are written by Google, it's hard to tell its real validity right now.
Well, the point here is that with the whole AJAX "thing", people have realised that they can make client-side systems be a lot more responsive than the simple request/response model. GMail and Google Maps are good examples of rich client-side apps written in JS. A lot of people wish to emulate these new systems, and so there's been an increased interest in JavaScript development. I think that's the basic point.
Thanks :)
I feel guilty about wasting space on Slashdot for this little diversion now though. Although that said, there's plenty more wasted space on Slashdot that it won't be noticed...
Should I be happy or sad that you don't? :D