On 4/12/11 9:45 AM, Tim wrote:
On Tue, 2011-04-12 at 08:18 -0700, James McKenzie wrote:
> Sad to say, but if we want 'Joe Average User' to use Linux, we are
> going to have to dumb it down.
Who says *we* want that to happen, or even *they* want that to happen?
Is that actually a goal? When did it become a goal to aim for Linux
being just another consumer product?
It is not the *AIM* for Linux to be a consumer
product but to penetrate
MORE of the desktop marketplace. Android, which is just a modified
Linux, is beating its competition, iOS and Windows Mobile. And it has a
'fancy' interface to boot. Nothing says that 'under the hood' has to be
changed, just the HID (GUI) so that folks will not shoot themselves in
the foot. Yes, those of us who 'grew up' with Linux are going to be
upset, but we learned, sometimes from very bad incidents, what not to do.
Is it even an achievable goal, or even a desirable thing to attempt
to
do? History has shown that when you dumb down computers to the point
where stupid people can use them, they do stupid things with them.
This is very
true. It drove the folks absolutely crazy when Windows95
came out at most technical support lines. The running joke about the
guy breaking off the coffee cup holder is just the tip of the iceberg.
Most folks are now more computer savvy but they don't want to have to
deal with 'tweaking' their system just to get it to start. I come from
the old CLI days (mouse what is that thing). However, most of my
computer using 'buddies' cannot remember the days before Windows98SE.
Why does everything have to get dragged down to that level?
There's no
point in being another Windows clone, just use Windows if you want that
level of crap.
They don't want an OS that they have to reboot everyday. I use a Mac,
with MacOSX. The Cocoa interface is just a cover for a very modified
and hardened version of FreeBSD. The same could be done for Linux and
it looks like it is in progress. Those of us who know how to use the
CLI will not be inhibited from crashing our systems (and I build Wine on
my Mac, so I have to know a thing or two about the CLI.)
Good grief, I use Linux, and so do many others, precisely because we
don't want to use crap like Windows. It's not just an issue of the
dollar cost of using it, but the huge amount of time wasting Windows
inflicts upon you, the unstableness, it shooting itself in the foot, the
sheer and utter stupidity of its design basis.
So, if I change the front door to my house, does that mean the toilet
stops working and I have to change my stove from Natural Gas to
Electric? No. That is all Gnome/KDE are. Front Doors. You may have
to learn to use a different key and maybe it is sealed a little better,
but you still have available all of the little goodies behind the
scenes. If this were not true, a lot of folks would have abandoned
Ubuntu/RH/Debian when KDE 4 was released. They did not and more folks
have come to use Linux. Of course the fact that we have more powerful
machines means that more things have moved to Graphics vice CLI.
However, the CLI tools should still exist just in case that wonderful
front door will not unlock.
If you want an example of what not to do with computing, Windows is
*the* example of the worst possible way that you could ever do it.
Don't copy it.
Windows was a really bad way to throw a graphical interface onto a very
broken operating system that was stolen in the first place. The folks
on the Gnome and KDE projects have been working on just adding a HID GUI
for a long, long time. They have not tried to change the kernel, which
was needed for WindowsNT and its ilk. I don't see this as a 'deal
breaker' for Linux, I see it as a way to get more folks off of a broken
OS and onto an OS that actually can run more than a day or two without
serious breakage.
BTW, you can change the front door on your Linux system or choose to
break a hole in the wall if you wish (run no GUI at all), not so with
Windows.
James McKenzie