Desktop Linux (fwd)

[Dana S. Tellier]

From: "Mark Komarinski" <mkomarinski at wayga.org>

<snip>
But my little sister IM'd me a little while ago.  Seems her XP
is giving her grief.  Her printer doesn't work and she has no idea
where the problem is.  If I could ssh or have her get some logs out
of the system, I might be able to tell her what the problem was and
how to fix it.  Then she complained that she can't get her digital
camera to connect.  Same thing - if I could poke around the system or
get some detailed information from her, I might be able to figure it
out.  But Windows either doesn't tell you, or tells you in far
too much detail, when and how something goes wrong.  And when
things go wrong is when you need help, and when good impressions
are made.  It's not usability, it's not ease of install - it's what
happens when things go wrong.
<snip>

    Well, I'd have to disagree that there ARE options now to diagnose
Windows systems remotely, as long as their network connection is up.  The
Remote Desktop Connection tool lets you log in remotely and you can pretty
much play around with anything.  I've fixed MANY a friend's system that way,
and the program has a client side application that works on Windows 98, NT,
and 2000.
    I'd agree that obviously there's much to be desired in Windows XP's
information about problems, but there ARE methods to find out, you just need
to learn--just like finding out how to patch problems in Linux--something
that I'm currently learning myself!

 - Dana Tellier