Advocacy - Was: Re: Window dressings - a maddog story (Was: Any Opinions on SuSE 10.0 vs other Distros)

[David Ecklein]

Personal confessions and rants of a Linux wannabe-user:

Brian- I feel exactly the same way as your former roommate.  Perhaps it is
because I have never been a "guru" with respect to operating systems, even
though a software and hardware veteran since vacuum tube and raised floor
days.  Many of us then submitted our cards through a window where someone
else slapped JCL on the deck and worried about the operating system
plumbing.  We focussed our energy on marking up the coredumps that came back
with our decks for another shot at the problem we were trying to solve.
Now, with PCs, it is different.  We live cheek to jowl with our OSs whether
we want to or not.

I am not interested in superficial "choices" when it comes to operating
system features.  I just want it to work.  I have enough problems without
wrestling with those of the operating system, or worrying about any
non-optimal choices I might make with respect to its function.

An operating system that acts out, is largely opaque but obtrusively
irrational, is hard to fix when broken, does not play well with changed
hardware, cannot accept user-written programs without employing expensive
and largely incomprehensible vendor-supplied shoehorns, presents gratuitous
options, differences, and incompatibilities with every version,  has been
the chief drawback of OSs perpetrated by the M$ monopoly.  That is why I
have taken some interest in Linux as an alternative.  Addressing these
objections to Windows will go a long way to spreading popularity of Linux
beyond those of OS gurus and those with relatively turnkey applications.  It
is not yet clear to me that Linux will be able to do all this, but I am
staying tuned.

Dave Ecklein

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brian Chabot" <brian at gentlemanrogue.com>
To: "GNHLUG" <gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2005 12:16 PM
Subject: Advocacy - Was: Re: Window dressings - a maddog story (Was: Any
Opinions on SuSE 10.0 vs other Distros)


> Jon maddog Hall wrote:
>
> > So the next Red Hat default desktop was "FVWM95".
>
>
> You know... FVWM95 is a pretty good approximation of M$Windo$e....
>
> >The difference between windows users and unix users is that unix users
change
> >their environment to be what they want....because they can and they know
how
> >(or will find out).
> >
> >
>
> I had a roommate not too long ago who was quite intelligent but not by
> any stretch, a computer guru.  We had some long discussions about
> computers though, because I could use her as a guinea pig for usability
> testing.  Not being an expert, she was the perfect test to see if the
> general public would take to something new.
>
> And you know what?
>
> She did not want to have a choice.  Whenever I asked something like,
> "Which of these XYZ's do you think you'd like to use?" her answer was
> always "I don't want to choose anything.  Just give me something that
works"
>
> Now this mentality was completely foreign to me.  I thoroughly enjoy my
> choices... and so I have my preferences, but know that others will have
> different preferences.  Whether it be E vs KDE vs Gnome or vi vs
> emacs... *we* like our choices and *we* like one over another.  But in
> the long run, when it comes to advocacy, we need to set defaults and
> stand behind them when preaching to the masses.
>
> Long time Linux users and other computer tinkerers and experts will know
> how to change the defaults, and I think it should be pretty easy to do.
> Getting new users on board though, we need to fix a standard set of
> defaults.  We need to standardise across distros as much as we can, so a
> new user can see a disk marked "Linux" and not be shocked by yet another
> foreign environment or worse... a myriad of choices the user cares
> nothing about.
>
> I think a lot of distros have come close with KDE, and that's a great
> thing.  The KDE folks have come a LONG way to making a one-stop-shop for
> your desktop needs.  Gnome had the head start but it was too focused
> on...  choices.  Great for geeks... not for the common user.
>
> I no longer show my friends all the nifty desktop choices we have.
> When friends come over and ask to use a computer, I just fire it up into
> a KDE session and maximize Mozilla.  When they're done checking their
> Yahoo mail or LJ or whatever, I ask if they had any trouble using it.
> They look at me strange... and then I let them know they just used Linux
> and it obviously wasn't as difficult as they may have thought.
>
> Brian
>
>
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