What Excites You?
John Abreau
jabr at abreau.net
Mon Mar 24 19:34:13 EST 2003
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Jon Hall <maddog at dtype.org> writes:
> Hi,
>
> I am writing a talk on "What Excites Me" about Linux. The object of this
> talk is to not only talk about the philosophical things that excites me, but
> honest to goodness "neat" programs.
I don't know if you'd count this as "exciting", but I'd compare Linux to
a good pair of glasses. When I look at something through my glasses,
I generally just take the glasses for granted; I don't have to think
about how to operate them, I just put them on and use them.
By comparison, I guess Windows would be like having a clumsy,
condescending
moron who holds my glasses for me while I look through them. I can tell
him
where to point them, but he's convinced he knows better than I do what
I "really" want to see, so he points the glasses where he wants as often
as where I want.
Another way of describing this is that with Linux, when I want to do
something I can basically just go ahead and do it, and occasionally
I have to decide what additional tool I need to fetch to handle a
small part of the task. With Windows, I have to decide in advance what
huge application domain to use to handle the entire task, and if that
application doesn't handle one part of it, I have to work my way through
a file-format maze to travel back and forth between distant application
domains to handle it. Or I can redefine my task to suit the limitations
of the application I've chosen.
I've often seen people use a metaphor where they essentially describe a
computer as a digital butler. If Windows is such a butler, then in
comparison I find Linux is a prosthetic extension of my brain.
And I find a *huge* difference between doing something myself, and
asking a butler to do it for me: if you want it done right, you gotta
do it yourself.
- --
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
Email jabr at blu.org / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0xD5C7B5D9
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