A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for OSNews entitled “Update on Red Hat’s Limbo Progress.” It was to be a short article on how much Red Hat’s beta releases have impressed me – to share with everyone some of the changes a desktop user sees and maybe generate some additional interest in my choice, Linux. Little did I know, one of my comments nearly incited a riot- it would flood my Inbox, leave me feeling silly about something that I still think is true…it was just poorly stated.
So, let’s try a little experiment.Let’s all agree to step back, forget what we know, and pretend we’re seeing Linux for the first time. Let’s pretend we don’t know too much about anything besides Windows 98. Let’s visit a world where the computer is an intimidating machine that requires a highly skilled technician for basic tweaking. You with me? Okay, here we go…
We just booted up for the first time and logged in, so far so good. The desktop is pretty comfortable; a standard Windows user will be able, in virtually every distribution that configures X and defaults to it on login, to comprehend what they are seeing. Some of the recent changes, for the better, I’d add, have stripped the confusing names, like xSane, Toaster, Evolution, Mozilla and terms like Halt from their default menus and replaced them with much more logical and self-explanatory names like “Scanner”, “Burn CDs,” “E-mail,” and “Browse the Internet.” In fact, a very basic user, who is likely using Hotmail or Yahoo Mail or some other web-based e-mail could probably navigate around and get almost all of their day to day work done just fine.
Let’s take our user a little further. Let’s say she becomes comfortable and gets used to everyday apps like OpenOffice.org, grip, and XMMS. Then one day, our fairly standard user decides she needs a new application, maybe Mr Project, which we’ll just agree didn’t come with the distribution she has installed. Let’s even assume she talks to her buddy who tells her that the app is probably on freshmeat.net, a great repository for Linux apps. She finds it there easily enough and downloads it, and now she has an RPM in her home directory. She associates her home directory to her “My Documents” folder, maybe she knows it’s more like Windows 2000 than 98 in a sense. She double clicks it and nothing happens. A minute later, it asks her with what app she would like to open this mysterious RPM. A google search, or maybe, if she’s particularly smart, a newsgroup search, later and she has her answer. In this case, she must visit the terminal and type “rpm -Uvh packagename-1.0.i386.rpm“. She does it. It fails. She doesn’t have rights. After some more research, she finds out she must type “su” at the command line first, enter the root password, and then repeat the command. Once again, it fails, she’s missing some dependencies. She finds a similar package on sourceforge.net and downloads it (from her local mirror, of course). Now she has a compressed archive file, a “tarball,” she’s told it’s called, in her home directory. But even after she figures out how to uncompress it and untar it, she doesn’t know how to install it. Thank God someone had the forethought to tell the user in the README file to visit the command line, su to root, and run ./configure with the necessary flags. “Where should I install this?” she wonders? The README says, “for SuSE, here, for Red Hat, here, for Mandrake, here….” Frustrated, our persistent user spends some time looking for a solution. Since she’s not ready to download Debian just for the .deb files she’s told resolve dependencies, she uncovers the solution: URPMI…or APT4RPM …or GnoRPM. Let’s hope she doesn’t find out that one of them is deprecated, since she has no idea what that means. But wait! Now she’s found information about IRIS, Click n’ Run, Red Hat Network, and Red Carpet. “What am I supposed to do?” she asks herself. Her solution, despite her noble effort, is to boot back into Windows 98 where nice, comfortable .exe files are waiting and the answers are any old help desk away.
People don’t hate Linux, but the community’s arrogance when it comes to addressing legitimate user concerns are continually self-defeating. The acronym “RTFM” is a great example. Why do people even know what that means? Is it really that common that we tell someone to “Read the F*cking Manual!” that we need to abbreviate it?! It’s not that Linux users are bad people, it’s that there is that much about Linux that is not fairly obvious to a new user. Most flavors are getting a lot better at addressing these concerns. Most people are too. I understand there is a learning curve when learning a new Operating System, but shouldn’t we ask ourselves if we, as a community, are doing things the best way anyway?
There IS interest in Linux, but the simple things kill it quickly. Linux’s biggest weak spot, in my opinion, is software installation. Although there are numerous solutions, here are my thoughts, from scratch – on the ideal way to install software. Installing software over the internet cannot work all the time – it relies on your sources having the software as soon as you want it, often NOT the case. Therefore, I could propose something like the following:
First off, the definitions must come from a centralized committee, perhaps the LSB. A new format is declared, perhaps *.lif, for Linux Installation File. It needs to have an extension to indicate, fairly obnoxiously, “I AM THE INSTALL FILE FOR THIS APPLICATION.” The file, when double clicked, or run from the shell with the scary ./ prefix, invoke a menu that says “You have chosen to install new software. This must be done as the “Root” user with administrative permissions. Please enter the password in the box below” or something like that.
Next comes the fun part: we must either agree that all software is installed in the same place in each distribution, or else, we invoke a second menu, this one unique to your distribution, which recommends a place to install the software. Perhaps it says “You are trying to install a new program. Distribution X recommends new software be placed in the ‘/opt’ directory.” Of course, you could install it anywhere, but the menu should tell you where it thinks it should go. The system files would go where they should, just as a Windows application puts files in C:\Windows, but most of the software would be in one place.
Incidentally, acknowledging that some people prefer to compile their applications from source, this would most definitely be possible, these suggestions are purely supplementary.
Uninstalling software must be easy as well. Perhaps an option in the Gnome or KDE launch menu that says “Uninstall software.” Here, a list of all software is kept and the necessary way to uninstall it is tracked. I’m not the most technical person out there, but I would think GConf, a registry-like control for Gnome, would be a benefit to this. A user must have the option to uninstall, sometimes simply because they don’t like the clutter of too many applications, which, ironically, is another problem (too many apps by default – too many that do the same thing.)
Lastly, continuing in my “I’m not really qualified to make these sweeping suggestions but do anyway” piece, there must be an easy way to make shortcuts to these new apps. I understand the complexity in saying that I should be able to drag an item to the desktop holding Shift or Alt or Ctrl and get a shortcut, but…well…I should. If Microsoft can pull it off in Windows, why can’t we? Many people are vocal about the limitations of X Windows. I had the honor of exchanging some e-mails with a prominent player in the Linux world a week or two ago, and he explained that the non-multi-threadedness of X Windows was a killer that continued to plague Linux. With due respect, our desktop user, trying to make the switch doesn’t care, and frankly, the term multi-threaded just confirmed her doubt. Worse, she’ll probably tell someone she tried Linux and came back, and they’ll think, “Jeez…and she’s much more technical than I am! I guess I’d never be able to figure it out.”
APT and RPM, for those of you still with me, are not competing technologies, they’re not even in the same category. But at their basest level, they can partially manage packages, and when distributions ship with either their own proprietary update agent or in a format that is confusing and, for lack of a better term, “non-clickable,” it’s time to sit down and decide if we should cut our losses and go back to the drawing board.
At the beginning of this piece, I should have explained that everything I’m saying is predicated on the fact that we want new, less technical users in the Linux community and that we want Linux on the desktop – even if it’s just the corporate desktop. I believe that with numbers come commercial vendors, more commercial applications, and in time, a better, more complete community. And in the end, isn’t that what we all want?
About the Author
Adam Scheinberg is a Network Administrator for the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA). He uses NetWare 5.1 and Windows NT/2000 at work and is currently running Red Hat Limbo II, Windows 2000, and Windows .net Server RC1 at home.
Double clicking on a file to install it is EVIL. A good distribution would provide a nice graphical installer program and documentation that says “Open RPMs with RPM-Installer to install them.” You could even top it off by giving “RPM-Installer” the power to act as a fronted for APT4RPM when I needs to resolve dependencies.
I agree with this editorial 100%. I think the biggest failing in Linux is the “nerd arrogance” Honestly, most of the programmers are not business people, the shortcoming in a lot of the community is the fact that people frankly don’t want to be presented with options, they want things to work, work fast, and work all the time. Fighting the OS to install things is not what the user wants to spend their time doing, it costs them recreational time if they’re at home, and it costs a salary if your people at work are fighting their machines.
I tryed Linux out about a year ago, and had to switch back due to the complexity of just doing simple tasks. While I have some computer experience, quite a lot compared to others, I couldn’t remember all of the procedures needed. Every time I needed to install something, I had to remember a chain of commands that, frankly, shouldn’t need to be remembered. A standard format is in the best interests of the community. As for viri (sp?) that may come out of it, security measures CAN be taken. It’s if they want to be taken…
I’ve been trying to use Linux for over half a year now, and I find the biggest problems to be what he’s talking about. Granted, I can install most software, either by compiling or using a package manager, but it’s always kind of comforting to go back to installshield wizards with windows.
I use KDE as my desktop. I find that you can easily uninstall (and install) rpms with kpackage.
>Of course, you could install it anywhere, but the menu should
>tell you where it thinks it should go.
Well, now everyone will argue that Linux is becoming more like Windows because it doesn’t allow flexibility. The linux people don’t care about the usability or support or consistency. Why? They are not paid to do it. If there will be one big company managing all of linux or if LSB is reasonable and influential enough, then things will start to improve. Of course, geeks might complain this will be the next “M$”.
Until then, Linux will reamin in the server zone.
Talking about an RPM installer….
I remember once using Mandrake 8.0 and I was installing a program, I forgot its name but I was amazed from what I saw however still not good enough. See, it was an RPM file, I clicked to install it and a nice message box popped up on the screen telling me in order to install the RPM I would need the — —.lib file and to please insert CD 2 (I think it was CD 2) from the Mandrake installation CDs. I go WOW, Mandrake becomes Windows! I suddenly got excited and I gladly inserted the CD 2 and clicked OK. I heard the CD spinning and the hard drive, doing something and after a while, I got an error message telling me that there was an error installing — —.lib — —.lib etc with no details of what the error is. Go figure, I had to do it manually as far as I remember but I don’t remember whether I succeeded, it was a some time ago.
I’ve been using and supporting Linux since kernel 1 – found that installing and compiling your own app from source code was a joy.. but today, there’s got to be a better handling of software packages. Granted, Red Hat had done pretty good job.. but average Joe or even technically inclined Joe usually gets frustrated over simple app. install.
If this is unified, Linux would be 80% closer to becoming average desktop OS.
I’m running OSX at home and it has a very easy installation system (by the way, I know almost nothing about Linux… yet)
Maybe this is all already known but…
Usually you download a compressed file (.sit or .zip), double click on it to uncompress it. This creates a .dmg file which is a disk image (is that similar to an RPM file?). Once the disk image is mounted, usually all I have to do is drag the application into my applications directory. If it is a system update, all I have to do is double click on the installer app. Nothing more. For the home user or end-user, this kind of simplicity is key. I would suppose that if Apple can do it, the Linux community can too.
I don’t get it, you make it look like as if it would always be like that and the comments so far just confirm this. But just because people disagree doesn’t mean they don’t want it to be easy for users (ok some freaks don’t, but those “in charge” usually do).
First you say that it should be possible to doubleclick a RPM. I would be extremely surprised if this wouldn’t be possible in RedHat 8. Even Nautilus will eventually be able to handle RPM with an integrated viewer. However, just doing nothing is not an option and I guess RedHat knows this. It should launch their new packaging tool to install the application.
Second you suggest that it asks for the root password. Of course! Packaging applications do this allready, last time I installed something with RedCarpet it did exactly this. RedHat also has this nice PAM integration in RedHat 8.0. It’s a sure thing that it will ask you nicely for your password to do anything that requires administrative rights.
Third you talk about all packages beeing installed at a common place. That’s what the LSB is for. Making this optional (and adding yet another thing the user has to answer) doesn’t sound like a good idea to me, why not just use the LSB standard.
Fourth you talk about uninstalling. Every GUI packaging tool should allow convenient uninstalling so I also expect this from the RedHat 8 packaging tool. This is IMO even one of the strengths of RPM.
Fifth you talk about making shortcuts. I’m not sure what you mean. RPM’s should register themself with the menu. If they don’t, the package is obviously broken. And if they do, all is fine for the user, isn’t it? She can drag the menuitem whereever she wants to create new shortcuts. Why make it more complicated than it has to be?
So as a conclusion, I’m pretty sure that RedHat 8 (and all other big distributions) will satisfy your needs. The only thing that still is a real problem is dependencies. What should happen if a package can’t be installed because of missing dependencies? This might be the biggest remaining problem with RPM but you make no suggestion how to improve this one.
APT for Debian solves this problem, as they have all packages at one place. The (huge) downside of this is, that it only works if all packages are provided by the Debian team and if the user has a good internet connection.
Portage also more or less solves this problem but compiling everything from source (even automatically) is most probably no option for the average user.
I have to agree. I loved Linux at first, I mean it never crashed, it was easy to update, and I managed to get 5 distributions ( Debian, Mandrake, SuSE, RedHat, and Slackware ). Out of the ones I recieved, I only really enjoyed SuSE due to the fact that it worked really well and was easy to use…so I thought. After about 6 months I totally gave up after trying to get 3D games to work ( failed on an NVidia Card ), trying to install WineX and get it to work ( installed it ok, no games worked ), and I got sick of the fact that EVERYTHING wanted to be on the start menu, but I had no option to throw it on the desktop as well. I also noticed that updating or installing anything could easily become a painfully difficult process.
Basically, I think Linux has the potential to be really cool, but fails at it due to the fact that it was generated by Nerds. Also, there’s a serious lack of consistancy in the system. Some commands have UNIX-esque syntax, others have Windows-esque syntax and even others have BSD-esque syntax!
A nice installer would be great. But really as friendly as installers get, if there is still 50 billion files and 20 million sym link in /usr/lib that installers are dumping files to the useability of linux will still be lower than any desktop os’. Anybody here ever go from glibc 1.0 to 2.0 (I might have the version numbers wrong) Holy crap was it a pain in the ass. Deleting a library is also equally a pain. Gotta delete the lib, the sym links from previous versions to that lib, and older non-binary compatible version plus it’s sym links. etc etc (yes yes, there are tools to do this, I know. But there shouldn’t need to be) Whew….
OS X packages are a nice (Tho not perfect) solution. Multiple versions of the same library? No problem! What about header files? Yep. Single command removal either via finder or terminal. Got that also.
I’m using gentoo and having fun with it
actually I’m thinking about setting up some systems with gentoo installed and then sell them to the user
portage is quite powerful for such task and the portagemaster makes everything even more confortable for “user not yet used”
(just a prebuilt tbz2 gentoo package repo and you got the perfect desktop distribution for the application mangement issue)
Portage has screwed up with binary compatibility and dependancies many times here.
As for the five (!) GUI front ends to Portage so far (and none of them is actually done!), none of them is actually a no-brainer for simple users. They all try to include the advanced features of Portage on their Gui, making it an absolute no-go for a user. They are just no simple enough. And there are not many precompiled builds, most of the apps come with source on Gentoo, which is a problem on a desktop’s user OS.
It’s not going to happen until they figure out a way to solve the dependencies problem. It’s worse than Windows DLL hell (MFC42.DLL).
Do some research, listen to users. Copy existing ideas and make them better. What’s wrong with copying Windows’ installation manager? Look at some of the successful commercial Installation Management products for Windows and get some ideas.
Here are some:
o InstallShield (www.installshield.com)
o gInstall (http://www.ginstall.com)
o Setup2Go (http://www.dev4pc.com/)
o Many more (http://download.com.com/3150-2216-0.html?tag=stbc.gp)
—
Quang
> It’s not going to happen until they figure out a way to solve the dependencies problem. It’s worse than Windows DLL hell
Microsoft has solved the dependancy hell with XP. Now a single DLL file includes many different versions of itself.
Unix truly has the worse dependancy hell anyone could imagine.
take kportagemaster
just browse the app an ask for mergin it
if if comes from source (common case if you don’t have a package repo to use) it will take a bit to install, just that
Maybe is just me (since I have not do any specimen test with unyu (user not yet used) of that part)
Great article Adam. Here is my main gripe with all OS’s:
– why the heck do we need to install small apps. Why cant I simply unzip a small app into a certain directory and *presto*, its finished. This way I can move the app directory anywhere I want to, and remove it when I want to. Shared libraries are constantly in a state of flux for small apps. Link the libraries into the app.
– Big globally shared libraries (ie. OpenGL32, SDL, posix etc) are a different story, and should be independant from apps. The whole KDE libraries should be 1 single library, not 22 with dependancies intertwined. Its silly to force users to install libraries in a predetermined sequence (and the sequence is not publically published).
I like the idea of seperating apps into categries – ie. newbies dont know that Galeon/Konqueror and web browsers – a nice alias called ‘Browse the Internet’ with these 2 files under it can sure help a lot of new users evaluating a new system.
I can’t tell you the number of programs that I’ve come across that I ran into a dead end just like you’ve described. BUT unlike most people, I’m too damned stubborn to give up. I refuse to give in that easy. I’d like to think there are alot of people as stubborn as me, but I’d be wrong.
Now the drag and drop shortscuts thing? Hmmm. For some, that may be an issue, but in KDE you can just right click and choose to make a short cut from there as long as you know where the program resides.
RPMs are great as long as they were designed for your distro, but if not, it’s the old tar ball thang. I couldn’t agree more about an installer file format.
And this thing about viri? Pfft. Unless you’re running as root and you got your file from Joe’s backdoor Files website, you should be fine.
If the desktop users aren’t coming to Linux, then Linux needs to go to the desktop users. Simple as that.
I don’t know why no one has mentioned FreeBSD’s packages and ports system yet. With FreeBSD, I can install a program with from source or by package – all I need to know is the package name. To compile, I simply type “make install” and it downloads the source, any dependencies, compiles them all, installs them, and registers the installation. Later, a make uninstall will remove the package. If I don’t want to compile, I can use pkgadd, which will add the programs to the same registry. Portage is a step in the right direction, but I don’t know why more Linux distro’s don’t adopt the BSD approach.
Apt can and does use rpm, deb and so on. Apt is a retrieval system, rpm is a package management system. There is no such thing as an .apt package.
Also people, the RTFM comments are misguided and apply not only to Linux users, but newsgroup etiquette period. You do not ask for help on a NG of any subject, Linux, or Basket Weaving, without showing that you tried to find the answer on your own. Nobody wants to spoon feed the unwilling and people get fed up with people demanding help when it would have taken two seconds on Google to find the info. The RTFM responses are much more than you could possibly expect as most people will ignore you all together for not doing a search on your own and posting what you tried and what you did come up with. Making a simplistic request on a NG such as, “konqueror doesn’t start, please help”. This kind of all to common stsyle of request is very lazy and disrespectful to other NG readers.
>I don’t know why no one has mentioned FreeBSD’s packages and ports system yet.
Don’t worry, Adam is also a FreeBSD user. If that is what he had in mind that he wants, he would have mention it in his article.
>all I need to know is the package name.
And Adam talks about knowing nothing. Just doubleclick the file you just downloaded.
FreeBSD is similar to Gentoo’s Portage in action. And if you read my previous messages, Portage ain’t invulnerable of compatibility/weird dependancy probs.
Easy and comfortable software installation/upgrading (and community tolerance) are needed. But how many time do we/you need to:
– get that inside the head of the Linux representatives/leaders/devellopers heads? Years or a decade ?
And there is the file format issue – which one: apt, rpm, “lif” or tgz (as in Slackware, good packaging stuff) ?
I find that the biggest problem is that there isn’t enough software out there for Linux to worry about installing.
—
Seriously, if a user wants to install a program, it probably comes with the distro already. And if not, then I don’t find it is that hard to read the readme file. And there is lots of help out there, it just needs to be hunted down.
I know many people who don’t even know how to install games in Windows, so why would Linux developers worry about the people who can’t even do that? And while we’re talking about installing, why can’t there be one standardized installer for the actual OS itself? Is this what we want, or not? I mean… We don’t want choice, do we?
Of course, I agree with the fact that there should be a standard method of installing programs, but I think that some points are wrong.
Software should follow one policy as to where it gets installed. I shouldn’t be able to choose to install OpenOffice.org into /etc/samba/. Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn’t it be a lot harder to help people out over the internet if they have X installed in some crazy location? If we tell them to edit the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file, and they say “File not found… What do I do???” because they installed it into /home/joeblow/.kde/uselesscrapidontunderstand/??
I, personally, like the way software is installed right now. I don’t know where a lot of it goes, but it is nice.
I don’t know about double-clicking on a file or whatever either… Since Mandrake does open RPMs to install them in rpmdrake, I don’t see what the problem is with that. Many other distros are starting this too.
Have you seen screenshots of the upcoming Red Hat? They have done a cartload of work on the Add/Remove Packages interface by the looks of it. That should make it easy to add and remove packages that come with Red Hat. Easier than Mandrake. And that says a lot for Red Hat.
Blah blah. I’m rambling, I probably offended someone, and I’m tired so I’m ending my message here – unfinished, incomplete, and incoherent.
I would have to agree Linux’s problem is a few, one is the people are just to happy that they was able to install it. They are very pisswe meet some good people that have helped me for weeks on one problem, but others if they never had a problem then they can care less about your problem. If you install BeOS and ask for help you never hear someone say they won’t be willing to help you. Macintosh is the second nicest people under BeOS, third FreeBSD (in my experiences).
Next is not just how to install something but where it is installed. Mozilla /usr/lib/mozilla plus not to mention /usr/bin/mozilla is the program and /home/user/.mozilla is the settings. Mac OS X has it right almost with here things should be placed and BeOS has it almost perfect. Even if you go into beos system folder you can still understand where things need to go. Applications in Application folder. But still it should be more like this… These should be the main folders
Applications
Multimedia
Internet
Tools
System
Users
Preferences
And whatever else I can’t think of but it should be few and organized. in Users they should be just like OS X a Movie folder Photo, Text, anything you can think of to organize that user even Mail, News, whatever Maybe even the User folder is organized like the folder. Mostly with a UsersusernameSettings folder. Mozilla UsersusernameSettingsMozilla guess what has mozillas settings. Everything should be in a folder as well InternetMozilla has Mozilla the program even if a program is just one file it should be setup like that. So you don’t even need an uninstall program. If there is an unistall then there should be an uninstall program in Preferences called Uninstall. Or you can do it by hand go to Internet and Delete the Mozilla folder then go to UsersusernameSettings and delete the Mozilla folder… thats it Mozilla is now uninstalled.
Just type in apt-get <pkg_name> and be done with it. The problem with your hypothetical user is this: She is arrogant. She does not for one moment want to learn anything about the environment she is using. She does not take one moment to read the RedHat (or whatever) user guide for how to install new software. The Open Source community doesn’t need to do anything (and morally, shouldn’t) to allow people to be oblivious like they are now. 10 minutes with a good HOWTO, and any user could be smart enough to install software via apt-get. If they don’t want to spare these 10 minutse, well, they’re everything that is wrong with the world today.
> She is arrogant. She does not for one moment want to learn anything about the environment she is using.
Why does she have to do that? I completely disagree that people should read guides and manuals to use everyday machinery (because that is what a computer is today). The UI should be intuitive enough to compensate for the lack of experience. Like the automated bank machines or IAs.
This is one of the reasons why Linux will never get to the desktop. People like you, developers who control the fate of Linux and its surrounding apps, DO NOT GET IT.
Stay with your command line. I am surprised you even created X for Unix at the first place.
I, personally, like the way software is installed right now. I don’t know where a lot of it goes, but it is nice.
————–
I think if you put the software in one location you don’t limit yourself to having to pick the best inastaller. Some apps like OOo, Kylix, Netscape etc. have their own (well done) installer rather than use a packaging system. If you put applications into a folder, you can use any number of install methods (even extract, and copy) to install the applications, and still know where it is and how to remove it.
IMO, software installation is pretty much a solved problem with MacOS X. There are basically two types of installs. Simple, and complex. The simple ones are usually done by downloading a compressed disk image, mounting it, and dragging the program into the /Applications directory. The complex ones (which involve, for example, moving several files) are usually an install package, which you double click, you enter an admin password, click the “OK” button, and that’s it. In both cases, you have a choice of installing in nonstandard places, multiple install locations, etc., but the defaults are what most people do, so it is really just a matter of a couple of mouse clicks. MacOS X is unix, so there really isn’t a reason why Linux couldn’t do the same thing.
You have got to be joking, mate!
Most people want a computer to be an appliance. You know, plug it in, switch on, use it.
This article makes the most sense I have seen in a long time about Linux. Several times over the last few years I have installed it into various families computers, only to have to replace it with youknowwhat98.
Its superiority is masked by its arcanity. Users aren’t arrogant, they’re users. They have the right to expect a computer OS to be easy to use.
Linux is great for Geeks and people who feel their superiority is enhanced by using it. It is also great for the rest of us, but until it is easier to use on the desktop, it will lose the battle to M$ and OSX.
I think that Adam is 95% correct and 100% aiming in the right direction.
Why not expand on the LSB? We have OS’s that are LSB compliant. That opens the door for applications to be *.lif (or whatever it was) compliant. This ain’t Windows we’re talking about, btw. We don’t have to limit our extensions to 3 letters. But, I digress.
For the OS to be *.lif compliant, all they have to do is be LSB compliant. The lif file would know where to go.
Here’s a how a typical install might go:
Jane sees an app she likes. She sees that they have built a *.lif file for it, so she decides to download it. Now, she opens Konqueror and double clicks the file. An installer opens up and welcomes her by her user name and says, you have asked to install this package, would you like to continue? Jane says “yes”. Then, the installer asks her “would you like to attempt to install this for all users or just for herself”? Jane says “for all users”. The installer replies, “you may need administrative privileges and may need additional support files, would you like to continue”? Jane says “yes”. After a little dependancy and privaledge checking the installer says, “you need this version library. You only have this version. Would you like to update this library?” Jane says, “yes”. The installer says, “you must have administrative priv. to update that library. Please supply root’s password.” The installer fetches a *.lfi compliant library, installs it, finishes the original install and says, “installation complete. Would you like to place an icon on 1. this desktop 2. all of your desktops (a new central desktop.conf file to support this) 3. All desktops for all users”? Jane chooses. The installer says, “thank you for installing this. To uninstall, right click the file icon and choose uninstall”.
Now, not all applications have to support that. But, Jane might want to wait until she has more experience before she attempts to try those apps.
I think this would work and should be followed up on.
Darren
The other day, I was talking my 12 year old brother through an SSH session (via a windows program called putty) into our network server. Just telling him what to click and what to type (the exact commands we meaningless to him) something anybody could do. Then, I asked him the IP address of the computer he was on. He asked what an IP address was. I told him it was a number of the form 1.2.3.4 He said okay, then replied with the IP address. I was totally taken aback. I asked him how he had found it. He told me that when he logged in via SSH, it had given him the message “Welcome to neo. Last login from 192.168.0.4 on <date>” He had taken the tiny mental step and connected the two ideas. I refuse to believe that the “averge” person is not smart enough to make connections like these. I refuse to believe that they cannot get the hang of ./configure && ./make && ./make install. The fault lies on both sides. On one hand, no nerds take the time to really explain how the computer works. For example, when was the last time you say a manual explain the difference between software and hardware? Or what an OS was? Or how the hierarchical filesystem metaphor worked? Hell, when was it that manuals ever explained what metaphors were used? Its absolutely pathetic! These people have passed high school, they do their taxes, and many are professionals in fields with material far more complex than computers. Sure, this stuff is very abstract, but hell, so is Algebra, and its a required course in high school! You’re right. The problem is with the nerds. We think people are much more stupid than they really are, never take the time to teach them anything, and then foist inefficient, unweildy, and productivity-destroying (ex: the new WinXP search dialog that requires numerous clicks just to search for a f*cking file) software on them.
Maybe what should be developped, and I think some distros are doing this, is cater a version specifically to new Linux users, giving them a simple desktop and get rid of all the directories that they don’t need access to or are too confusing to look at. They don’t need to see /var /etc and so on. This is, in some way, what Apple did with OSX. Using either KDE or GNOME and some other “hacks” to X I’m sure someone’s going to come up with it. Lycoris, I belive, seems to be headed that way and I would think RedHat will probably do the same.
OTOH, even some Windows users are confused when they use any Windows from version 3.1 up to XP. Partly to blame is the fact that users still have access to the “system” which to them looks confusing and not just the word processor and Internet.
More specifically, users don’t read instructions. No matter how much time people spend writing good documentation, people never even spend 5 minutes to read it, they just know “its there if I need it” but they’ll spend countless hours calling technical support or constantly asking someone else for help.
I’m all for helping people with Linux, I’ve had very helpful advice from some people when I started a few years ago. They’re still some people who say RTFM. Find another wayt or place on the Net to get help. Almost 99.9% of the time, the people who say RTFM, quote it frequently and they themselves don’t know the answer. RTFM is really a way to sound technically literate, but those who know the answer are usually the ones to actually help. Unless of course someone just asked the same question and they couldn’t be bothered to read it.
The Howtos and man pages are hard to read even for the technically literate. They are very thourough, but if Linux is going to get on the desktop there’s going to have to be a better way to convey to users what to do on the system. Yes, I just said almost no one reads the manuals, which is why a good GUI goes a long way in helping users.
“10 minutes with a good HOWTO, and any user could be smart enough to install software via apt-get”
Try reading a dns-howto… in 10 minutes
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DNS-HOWTO.html
I get so frustrated when i read this type of stuff. Why? Cause people tend to only look at the BAD stuff, and blow it out of porportion. People tend to find it VERY hard to say “linux does this right, or atleast partly right”.
Give a stupid user a debian-based made-for-tards distro, and a frontend to apt (although if you really need a front end to that you are quite sad), and i can pretty much garantee that they can get around.
Never have i needed to even TOUCH library stuff on a debian install, and stuff just works. Dependency hell? What? huh? no such thing. Want to upgrade all your software, 1 command, done. Get it through your heads, its not a Linux problem, its a Moronic-Distro problem. I’m not trying to advertise for Debian, im trying to make it clear that the problem is really distro specific. If you want to bash the RedHat way of doing things, fine, do so, but dont label it as a Linux problem cause it really isnt.
I saw someone say how they thought that it would be nice if apps were categorised in the menu. Good lord, i pitty that person. Its all done for you in other distros.
Rayiner, your way is the way it’s currently done. It ain’t working.
The way I proposed isn’t necessarily perfect, but I’m trying to get creative to make *nix better. Your brother isn’t typical. My mother uses a PC every single day. She e-mails me. She uses IM through AOL. She writes Word documents. She’s a bright woman. ** She still doesn’t completely understand the desktop/folder metaphor. **
I support 5000+ users at my job, I know what a “user” is. I don’t think you really partook in my experiment, because ./make and ./make install are pretty complex concepts, one our hypothetical user probably won’t even get to. My mother couldn’t EXECUTE a command from the command line, let alone compile it.
The foundation of your beliefs are old school and obsolete. Let go of *nix the way you know it, and you’ll begin to see the problems it faces winning over the masses.
Who’s more arrogant?
The person who gave Linux the oportunity and eventually went back to windows because they didn’t know how to get something working or perhaps the developers who knowingly do not make an attempt to make their programs that the average Joe can use straight out of the box without having to dive into some crypt MAN page or surf through damn near hundreds of websites to hopefully find an answer to their problem because they feel that everyone should be above doing things the mainstream way?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m very appriative for the programs that are out there now for the open source community, but if we paint ourselves into an inflexible corner by not making it easier for the average Joe, then people will do as they have done for years and side step OSS all together and pay hard earned money to buy software from a known convicted monopolist company like MS because it works out of the box.
Excellent comment Adam!
I completely agree with you Rayiner, I also think people should write patches for anything that does not work, and all things should be open source, if they can’t handle that, they should just keep using MickeyShit or put the computer back in the box. Closed Source software is for stupid evil people that love Bill Gates. I also think people should just RTFM and work on their own cars, and rewire their houses rather than hire an electrician. Whey to the have resteraunts when people can just cook stuff at home. Anyone that is too lazy to read a recipe and cook on their own is an example of all that is wrong with the world. Frankly, I just don’t have time for such lesser mortals.
I’m sorry, but Rayiner is everything that is wrong with Linux. He reads an article about how some in the Linux community are hurting Linux’s growth by telling newbies to “RTFM”, and then he replies brilliantly that all that needs to be done is to “RTFM”. WOW. Talk about ignorant.
-G
> She is arrogant. She does not for one moment want to learn anything about the environment she is using.
Why does she have to do that? I completely disagree that people should read guides and manuals to use everyday machinery (because that is what a computer is today). The UI should be intuitive enough to compensate for the lack of experience. Like the automated bank machines or IAs.
>>>>>>>
I’m trying to resist the urge to curse. A computer is not a simple single-task device like an ATM or a toaster. The computer is a highly sophisticated tool that is often a primary component of someone’s work environmen. Given that, it is entirely acceptable to have user interfaces that are highly productive but more difficult to learn. Look at it this way. The people whom Limbo is aimed at (corporate desktop users) use their computer as much as they use their car. They spend months learning how to drive a car. Surely they can spend a few weeks learning how to use a computer. Especially since they’ll never have to do it again (if the industry behaves properly) and it will pay off massively in terms of gained productivity.
This is one of the reasons why Linux will never get to the desktop. People like you, developers who control the fate of Linux and its surrounding apps, DO NOT GET IT.
>>>>
We might not see eye to eye on this, but let me tell you my experience. I’ve taught numerous people to be well-educated computer users. Sure, it takes a little patience, but the result is users that really get a lot more out of their computer than people who refuse to read a manual. It seems to me like you’re just making excuses for people too lazy to read the manual. Those kind of people are what is destroying our society.
Stay with your command line. I am surprised you even created X for Unix at the first place.
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The command line is not the most efficient interface for many things. I’m in KDE 90% of the time. However, I do value using the right tool for the right job. Dumbed down user interfaces that trade ease of use for productivity hurt users, not help them. I suppose there is a place for that sort of interface (like in an IA as you say) but the desktop is not that place. Look, I’m not rooting for complex, hard to use programs. I think UIs should be stream-lined and as intuitive as possible. If Einstien were alive, he’d say that “Interfaces should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.” I think it is taking a step backwards to jack up the complexity and inefficiency (a full GUI tool vs a simple few words typed at the command line) in return for the dubious luxury of making a product that doesn’t require a manual.
I think where Rayiner (and many others) might be misguided is in the fact that he believes our ideas about trying to make Linux easier is that stupid people can use it. It’s not that at all. It’s about making it easier and better than Windows so people will want to switch. It’s because most people would rather be spending their time doing something else. I would venture to say that, like me, Rayiner and everyone else reading this has a passion for computers and craves learning everything about computers that we can get our hands on. MOST PEOPLE AREN’T EVEN CLOSE TO THAT! So, if you think Linux is great and you want other people to think so, too, then you have to put yourself in their shoes.
“10 minutes with a good HOWTO, and any user could be smart enough to install software via apt-get”
Try reading a dns-howto… in 10 minutes
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DNS-HOWTO.html
Read your response, read my comment. Smack self in head for being stupid.
Usually you download a compressed file (.sit or .zip), double click on it to uncompress it. This creates a .dmg file which is a disk image (is that similar to an RPM file?). Once the disk image is mounted, usually all I have to do is drag the application into my applications directory. If it is a system update, all I have to do is double click on the installer app. Nothing more. For the home user or end-user, this kind of simplicity is key. I would suppose that if Apple can do it, the Linux community can too.
>>>>>>>
How is this easier than apt-get <app-name>?
The longer the OSS community stays inflexible about bringing *nix computing to the average user, the more money Microsoft makes by selling their crap to that same average user.
This thread is interesting its hit on the original post several comparisons to different installers like Windows and OSX…
On the original author’s scenario IMHO using Mandrake rather than RedHat solves this issue pretty well. The installer knows where to find most dependencies and does automatically collect them. If they install from Mandrake they are in perfect shape. If they use the Mandrake installer and all the dependencies are relative mainstream they are OK. Only in the situation where they hit a dependency that Mandrake doesn’t cover, are they likely to find themselves have to search the net. Though usually they will get a “needs XYZ” they go into google type XYZ and the library pops up; download it…. So I think functionally Mandrake pretty much delivers what you are asking for as long as they use the mandrake rpm install tool.
The second thing that’s not being account for is that fact that Windows installations while easily don’t actually work that well.
For one thing they don’t work well across versions:
Today I just installed Eudora 5.1. It couldn’t find Outlook files for the migration. Why? Well because I’m running Win2K and the importer doesn’t support NT user directory structures. Now mind you this is probably the 2nd most heavily used mail client in the Windows world earning more revenue then any Linux distribution much less any single Linux app. NT 4.0 came out what 8 years ago? Now that’s a simple issue, contrast that with rpm’s needing to support wildly different distributions that use tons of different features – that is they are far less standard. The fact that RPMs work across distributions as well as they do is rather impressive.
Second: They make a mess of system folders and the registry. My wife had a program that left registry traces behind from a 5 year old demo install which blocked an install. Now of course they were some copy protection type things involved so I’m sure the registry keys were something like {124293482}-42409824892-{902748278492} rather than say “Endnote configuration”->demo=yes; which I would have just flipped to “demo=no” and then installed the new version without problems.
Third: Because prior to Microsoft owning the development platform there were serious library conflicts. At this point there are few conflicts because you have a single set of libraries which are all numbered consistently because they come from the same vendor.
Fourth: Before every version of Windows you see commercial vendors put out info on the web plus new versions of their software so it can install.
My third point is that the rpm is a replacement for make not for install shield. Apt-get, Mandrake installer… are the replacements for install shield I do think they work just as well. I.E. install shield does a good job of installing and uninstalling applications that were built with it as an installer; apt-get and mandrake installer do a good job of installing applications in their repository. Weird installers cause problems in windows weird rpm’s cause problems in Mandrake.
We aren’t going to have point and click installs for software that comes from any locations for years if ever.
A few things need to happen first:
1 – A larger set of libraries in standard locations need to be standard. An app has to know you have QT or GTK on any end user system and that the version is reasonable consistent with the version they think you have.
2 – Software repositories need to be standardized
3 – Configurations need to be much more uniform.
The real question is do we really want that? While easier install is good do we want to recreate corporate desktops on our home systems just to get easy installs of 3rd party software that uses weird dependencies and doesn’t bundle those in as additional rpms at the website? IMHO no. Limiting ignorant users to the 10 gigs on a distribution’s website doesn’t strike me as all that terrible compared to having Linux become a regulated corporate OS.
Oh, come on Rayiner. Everyone here has brilliantly replied to your absurd comments on how things should be done. And why you are exactly like the devs that do not let Linux let go and create something better and easily worked.
Read again the other replies from people too. Everyone wants ease to use. You don’t. Well, it will be just you and your geek friends using Linux. The rest won’t simply bother.
That’s the deal.
With respect, Rayiner, we’re going to have to agree to disagree. You believe I don’t “get it.” I believe you don’t even know what “it” is. You believe people must learn to use a computer. I believe Linux developers should understand that people will not sit down to learn about computers, they want a computer (OS) to just know what they are trying to do.
Windows does this.
Linux doesn’t.
Remind me, who’s on 95% of desktops again?
This is one of the reasons why Linux will never get to the desktop. People like you, developers who control the fate of Linux and its surrounding apps, DO NOT GET IT.
Stay with your command line. I am surprised you even created X for Unix at the first place.
I didn’t make the original comment but… X wasn’t created with ease of use in mind. X was already getting mature before there was any consideration of making it easier than the command line. For most of its life it was a power user’s tool to do more stuff then you could at the command line.
The longer the OSS community stays inflexible about bringing *nix computing to the average user, the more money Microsoft makes by selling their crap to that same average user.
Inflexible my ass. You cant say that the linux community isnt trying. It has come a LONG LONG LONG way since when i started using linux, but people keep asking more and more from it. I think people here have to realize that the people who code the linux apps code it cause they WANT to. This doesnt make them non-liable for its ease of use. But you should give them credit for what they’ve done.
So many ppl bitch, instead of actually helping the cause.
After a little dependancy and privaledge checking the installer says, “you need this version library. You only have this version. Would you like to update this library?” Jane says, “yes”.
That’s the Windows 95 installer. Small problem Jane doesn’t know what apps depend on the library (how could she). What’s might break if she says yes? Upgrading libraries is trickier than that especially once you start having binary only software.
”
“10 minutes with a good HOWTO, and any user could be smart enough to install software via apt-get”
Try reading a dns-howto… in 10 minutes
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DNS-HOWTO.html
Read your response, read my comment. Smack self in head for being stupid.
”
My point was only that how-to’s are too technical for most users, they’re mainly for admin’s. I wasn’t trying to insult you, sorry if i did.
How is this easier than apt-get <app-name>?
——
Because someone has to maintain the mirror and build and test everything etc. Mandrake’s software installer is good to, but the idea of giving every Linux app in existence to the distributer to build/test/and make available simply will not scale as Linux grows in popularity.
The problem with apt-get app-name? It only works if app-name is actually on the server. There is a cool program called xygrsvyh, apt-get it and check it out.
Rayiner, your way is the way it’s currently done. It ain’t working.
>>>>>
No, its not. The way it is currently done is the RedHat way, which takes the bad parts of Windows (apps scattered over the internet) and the bad parts of Linux (complicated installation layout) and mixes them together. How many newbies use something like Debian or Gentoo? None. With good reason. These OSs are legitimately hard to use. They provide no help for configuration and whatnot.
The way I proposed isn’t necessarily perfect, but I’m trying to get creative to make *nix better. Your brother isn’t typical. My mother uses a PC every single day. She e-mails me. She uses IM through AOL. She writes Word documents. She’s a bright woman. ** She still doesn’t completely understand the desktop/folder metaphor. **
>>>>>>>>>>
Have you taken time to explain it to her? In English? To tell the truth, most techies aren’t very good at explaining things. Have you ever tried to go into details about the filesystem and what these folders actually represent? You’d be surprised at how many people understand the methaphors after you give nice clean descriptions of the underlying mechanism. Look, my mother is also a bright women. She has a masters in chemistry. The stuff she did with molecules is far beyond a simple (if long) explanation of what files are and what a filesystem is and what the folders represent.
I support 5000+ users at my job, I know what a “user” is. I don’t think you really partook in my experiment, because ./make and ./make install are pretty complex concepts, one our hypothetical user probably won’t even get to. My mother couldn’t EXECUTE a command from the command line, let alone compile it.
>>>
Why not? It is entirely natural to give someone commands by talking, why not give a computer commands by typing? Did you explain the details of how it works? Or what make really represents? Or did you do the usual nerd thing and gloss over it? I take the time to explain that programs are usually written in a language humans can understand, and that these commands convert the program into something computers can understand. That gives them some concrete grounding in this abstract process. And guess what, they usually get it? Sure, its a long process, and with 5000 users, you shouldn’t be expected to do it. But with a couple of hours of tutoring from a good teacher, anybody can get it.
The foundation of your beliefs are old school and obsolete. Let go of *nix the way you know it, and you’ll begin to see the problems it faces winning over the masses.
>>>>>>
The constitution is also old school, but it is hardly obsolete. The idea that people should be skilled manipulators of their tools, rather than mindless button clickers is timeless. People should be willing to try something different for the promise of increased productivity. While I do agree that many UNIX things (like the complexity in installing devices and configuring services) are overly complex (basically anything in /etc) installing software is one of the things that Linux (Debian/Gentoo, not RedHat) does RIGHT.
Just because we are talking about a new install standard, that doesn’t mean that you’d have to use it or that all applications would have to meet the new requirements.
So, I think Rayiner needs to see that he could go on using the system he is most comfortable with. Nobody is suggesting that we take anything away from him.
-Drag&drop
Drag&drop is a marvellous GUI tool, but after quite a long time I’m still trying to teach my 60 years old uncle how to use it properly in MS-Windows98. And he is not retarded, he owns various fire fighting patents he has designed, he doesn’t use a CAD, and with his hand drawing expertise he does not really need one. He just doesn’t care much about computers, he is of the paper generation. He is, the computer should addapt to him, not the other way around.
Conclusion. Drag&drop is not the easiest way around computers, a Human Interface should avoid drag&drop if possible, maybe you are naturally used to it (as I am certainly), but it’s very much less intuitive than you think.
-Clicking and Guidance.
Clicking and being guided is more quick and easy to manage, even if for an experience user it could take more time/more clicks. I don’t get that obsession some people have with the number of clicks, it is obviously fair to reduce them, but to reduce them with caution, more clicks are better than no luck.
Click the file and see your options. I think the point here is giving installation options: a guided automated option, and an avanced one. Actually the ideal would be no options at all (unless set to have them), making an automated installation by default, without asking anything, JUST INSTALL AND WELCOME. Having in mind that you could set your OS preferences to have custom installations. The guideline should be to make questions WHEN ASOLUTELY NECESSARY ONLY, because many users panic at the sight of any question in little windows. A desktop OS user should be most guided by default, and also most tweackable/hackable as Linux fortunately is. Guidance always comes first, naturally.
No animated dogs, thank you. Can’t resist to link Bob here, http://toastytech.com/guis/boblogin.gif
-The BeOS Valet, the QNX installer, and similar automated software installations over the net.
I haven’t used click&run, which I think is a similar online installation method in Linux (Lindo_s). Though I use RedHat Linux, and I think I have used RedCarpet only twice, that kind of RedCarpet software repository is not exactly the same thing. The user should just click and download and use the app (always as the default automated setting, changeable).
-RPMs and File manager integration.
As Spark just pointed out, take a look at the beautiful rpm integration in Nautilus (the GNOME2.03beta ?):
http://www.daa.com.au/~james/images/nautilus-rpm/rpm-view-3.png
Though that installing scheme (resources provided/resources required) has great space for improvement as LinuxStandardBases makes some progress and dependancies dissapear in black holes (not yet). Given that integration I don’t think that the installing and uninstalling of packages shall be a big issue: System Preferences–>Install/Unistall–>click on. The real issue is the diversity of installing formats plus the complexity in using them, which is pretty straightfoward sometimes, moderately clear now and then, and chilli hell some other times (with kernel patches included).
-Fonts. Readable. Everywhere.
Enough said. We already had a thread mostly about the fonts issue.
-Consistency between QT and GTK.
Seems like it’s coming beyond themes. Theme unification (supposedly in RedHat8) already sounds very nice to me.
-And finally the mother of all unusabilities: Privileges. Don’t have them, don’t use them.
Are you really talking seriously about asking desktop users for root privileges??? I already pointed out how drag&drop is less intuitive than you may think, figure out privileges.
The user (we are talking about the desktop here) shouldn’t be bothered with privileges in most situations. In a network shared desktop perhaps, but uncle at home or office being asked for root privileges to run his own programs? NOPE. If he wanted a privileges orientated OS, he would have chosen that during installation, or at the computer store. And you bet which option would most probably take our dear user. Hell, he wants to run the damned OS with some effort if needed and no pain if possible. Privileges is like any tool, good when needed, where needed, but if not: get off.
Something simpler than ‘privileges’, and using them: a password. If you want that degree of security, all you have to ask this fellow when installing or running things ***IS THE PASSWORD***. This is not a network, this is my uncle sitting in HIS office with HIS desktop. So in case he wants to set that degree of security (only in that case), and if we are not talking about a shared computer, JUST ASK FOR A PASSWORD, don’t ask him to su root (which is about the same thing with far more options).
I mean, are we talking about a desktop orientated most usable and professionaly finished OS, or not? Because if this is about some Frankenstein open project that uses a freely available server OS, then we may just skip all Linux usability discussions and stick with the convicted predatory monopolist.
The RedHat betas we have seen are very promising in professionally taking the desktop challenge. This is indeed a very exciting time for Linux. Even I could just download it as I’ve done with all RedHat previous distros, I think this time I’m going to buy RedHat8 boxed. I’m looking at a RedHat7.0 manual, 8 is going to be a giant step (I’d codenamed it “Coltrane”).
I completely agree with you Rayiner, I also think people should write patches for anything that does not work, and all things should be open source
>>>>>>>>
Quite a jump from being an able user of software (ie knowing how to install stuff) to being a developer (patching their own software)? When did I ever say that they should write their own patches? Or were you trying to be cute?
, if they can’t handle that, they should just keep using MickeyShit or put the computer back in the box.
>>>>>
Or read the manual! Or go Google for help. Or ask the local computer guy. Hell, email me at [email protected]!
Closed Source software is for stupid evil people that love Bill Gates.
>>>>>>>
Exactly.
I also think people should just RTFM and work on their own cars, and rewire their houses rather than hire an electrician.
>>>>>>>>
People should read the manual to every non-trivial product they own. This includes their electric razor (otherwise they might miss the blurb that shaving and charging at the same time risks electrocution) and their computer. They should know how to fuel their car and change their oil, how to file insurance claims and fix flat tires. They should know how to fix minor around the house issues like leaky faucets and burned out light bulbs.
Whey to the have resteraunts when people can just cook stuff at home. Anyone that is too lazy to read a recipe and cook on their own is an example of all that is wrong with the world.
>>>>>>>>>>.
You really should know how to cook. Its an essential skill, and takes a few hours to learn.
I think where Rayiner (and many others) might be misguided is in the fact that he believes our ideas about trying to make Linux easier is that stupid people can use it. It’s not that at all.
>>>>>>>>
Did you even read my comment, or did you think I just wrote
#include <standard_pro_linux_drivel>?
I didn’t say that Linux should be easier so stupid people can use it, I said that it shouldn’t be inefficient in return for being easy. Normal people, armed with a little time in front of a manual, should be able to use it. Lazy people, who lost their manual on the way home from Best Buy, shouldn’t ruin everyone else’s productivity.
It’s about making it easier and better than Windows so people will want to switch. It’s because most people would rather be spending their time doing something else. I would venture to say that, like me, Rayiner and everyone else reading this has a passion for computers and craves learning everything about computers that we can get our hands on. MOST PEOPLE AREN’T EVEN CLOSE TO THAT! So, if you think Linux is great and you want other people to think so, too, then you have to put yourself in their shoes.
>>>>>>>>>>>
They don’t have to know everything about computers. But if you’re going to use a tool for hours a day (like the poeple on the corporate desktop which Limbo is aimed at) you should spend a few hours learning how to use it effectively. That goes for any tool. If you, as a carpenter, don’t read the manual to your power saw, god help you. Same thing for somebody using a computer without reading the manual. Do you have to know how to write an OS? Know, just like you don’t need to know how to build the saw. But you better know how to use it safely, change blades, etc.
I think it should be remembered that ease of use systems failed relative to windows / dos when there was OS compitition. Mac was always much easier to use then Windows, even while its popularity plunged. Microsoft has never been an ease of use vendor they have been a low cost vendor. Their applications undercut similar applications in terms of price and they ran on the cheapest hardware anyone could find. Windows 3.0 was not an easy to use OS extension neither was Windows 3.1. By the time Windows 95 came out Microsoft owned the desktop.
They didn’t get to 95% based on ease of use. They got there based on price.
Oh call down. I never said that the OSS movement, it’s software, and it’s developers where not putting forth the effort and that they were not appriciated. As a matter of fact, I said the opposite in a few previous posts in this thread. I’m just saying that the longer the entire OSS community debates the qualities of simplified versus traditional means of working with and in an OS or program then the more Microsoft will benefit. The more Ms benefits, the more they impose their “standards” on the internet, programs, and hardware and the less impact OSS will have in the future feeding right into Microsofts plans.
I’m sorry, but Rayiner is everything that is wrong with Linux. He reads an article about how some in the Linux community are hurting Linux’s growth by telling newbies to “RTFM”, and then he replies brilliantly that all that needs to be done is to “RTFM”. WOW. Talk about ignorant.
>>>>>>>>>>>
Because the original user didn’t read the f-ing manual when he was told to. He bitched that he shouldn’t have to read the manual. If the user has read the manual, and still can’t figure out apt-get, he is free to email me at the above address for further help.
You have to ask yourself, why do you want the masses to use linux? Is it to be more productive, to have a better user experience, or is it simply to take down the monopoly? Think hard, cause i dont think most of you know which you want. If you just want to take down the monopoly, you really arent better than Bill now are you?
“people shouldnt need to think” No, people SHOULD be thinking, they should ALWAYS be thinking. The world is breeding morons, who instead of attempting to be logical expect others to be logical for them.
Making linux exactly like windows doesnt really achieve much. There’s already an os out there thats exactly like windows, and is decently stable, IT IS Windows.
I’ve seen many computer-idiots who switched with no problems (including a 62y/o woman knew less about computers than lint), and loved the experience, felt they were working better, and were proud.
Read the APT HOWTO. Skip down to “Installing Packages”
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-basico.en.html
There’s maybe four or five lines you need to read.
I also think making Linux like AOL would be a bad move, as many of the people on Linux in hte fist place are probably there for a reason. I also think a producting interface that requires a couple minutes to learn is MUCH better than an obvious one that sucks.
But, I don’t see what is wrong with having a powerful/fast GUI installer.
It’s very hard for me to believe that Redhat is suddenly focusing more and more on the desktop. THis sia fterall coming from the company who’s CEO said that Linux has no future on the desktop.
While I think Redhat has improved a lot with it’s latest BEta. I still like my SuSE 8 better than any Linux distribution I’ve tried so far. Believe me I’ve tried most of the top dogs.
About the menu issue of amking a Windows user feel right at home, I must agree with the author. However I disagree with some aspects of it. I believe that that the way Redhat has organized and named apps in their menu should be how most desktop distributuions do, including my SUSIE. I also think that in KDE on MEnu Settings, there should also be the normal style of naming with the application names that were assigned by their proper authors. When this option is enabled all the applicationsa that aim to do the same thing should pop into the menu, not jsut the ones that the distribution you use considers to eb teh ebst. For example, I think that the latest version of Ximian Evolution is far superior to Kmail, but many disagree with me. HTis si waht Linux is about, choice. Unfortunately a poor windows user won’t know more than Mozilla and StarOffice. We should use Redhat’s way of naming so not to overwhelm them with 10 choices of applications to play music. Making availeable only the applications considerd the best in their category and giving them self-explanatory names. Once they get acustomed to Linux and learn about it’s broad set of applications, they can enable the what we consider “normal” way of organizing and naming applications.
I hope not only Redaht takes my input, but all other distributions too. I also can’t wait for SuSE 8.1, from waht I heard it will be AWESOME!
people will not sit down to learn about computers, they want a computer (OS) to just know what they are trying to do.
>>>>>
This is great. What kind of apologist notion is this? Here is this complex tool, that the user spends hours a day in front of, and he won’t sit down to learn about it? He expects it to read his mind? You realize you ridiculous you sound? In the mean time, all this crap gets added to operating systems which makes them less productive, more complicated, all so people don’t have to learn about the tools they use?
Windows does this.
Linux doesn’t.
>>>>>
Windows sucks. Linux doesn’t. And I’m talking from a usability standpoint. This is not an IA or TV interface where the target is casual users. The target is corporate users, and computers are important tools. These people cannot afford to be casual users.
I mainly use FreeBSD and Win98, now. I’ve never had FreeBSD break library dependencies during an upgrade (or Windows for that matter). You’re just being a naysayer.
And, in case you didn’t notice, my topic was “we’re in the ballpark”. Not, “hey, I have all of the answers”. I do wish I knew how to code, though. I’d start hacking something on this.
Oh, come on Rayiner. Everyone here has brilliantly replied to your absurd comments on how things should be done.
>>>>
I have yet to see a brilliant reply. Mostly what I’ve seen is a bunch of people who saw me criticizing one logically faulty “ease of use” feature proposed by the author of the article, and then assumed I was a UNIX grognard who wanted to go back to the days of the command line.
And why you are exactly like the devs that do not let Linux let go and create something better and easily worked.
>>>>
Something “better” is a tool that is more cluttered, more complex, and less efficient, but doesn’t require a manual? Maybe its better for a certain class of users, but for the desktop? Are you kidding me? Do you realize how ridiculous you sound?
Read again the other replies from people too. Everyone wants ease to use. You don’t.
>>>>
Where did you get this? I like ease of use as much as the next guy. I thought it was really spiffy when I plugged in my Webcam and PocketPC and everything just automatically worked, including a little video preview in my computer. I also think that apt-get is a hell of a lot easier than scouring the net for installers, finding the executable, clicking next a zillion times, and generally wasting my time. Normally your ideas on usability are pretty good. Its a pity you subscribe to the “If its CLI it must be hard” newsletter. What’s easy to use is not necessarily the thing that requires the least initial time investment. If something requires zero initial time investment, but beats the user over the head with inefficiency every time it is accessed, I’d hardly call it easy to use.
Look, here are my points, nice and clear.
1) Computers represent a large, recurring time sink for the corporate workers to which Limbo is aimed.
2) Making complex wizard type interfaces to simple tasks is a waste of the users time.
3) The only advantage that these interfaces have is that the user can use them without ever consulting a manual.
4) It would be far better if we left out these bad handholding mechanisms and instead put out streamlined software with good documentation.
5) A corporate user, reading the manual cover to cover (maybe a one-night thing, consider it business reading) could find the interface both easy AND efficient! For him, the gained productivity would be a very worthwhile benifet.
Well, it will be just you and your geek friends using Linux. The rest won’t simply bother.
>>>>>>>>.
You go ahead and don’t bother. I’ll keep teaching people how to use their computers properly and get more out of their expensive little box. You can go ahead and keep users clueless about the sophisticated tools on their desk, and keep wasting their time every day just because you thought they wouldn’t want to make the one-time investment of reading a manual or attending a lecture.
After reading several of your posts, I see that you are referring to people at work (“corporate users” I believe you called them). I’ve been talking about home use(ers).
First of all, you obviously don’t work in a corporate environment. Because if you did, you’d know they have no business installing anything. Yes. They do spend hours a day in front of their computers. But, none of it is spent installing programs. They use MS Office and proprietary software that most people have never heard of. They learn to use those programs and that’s it.
Secondly, corporate end users are the most computer illiterate people I’ve seen. They have absolutely no desire to read or even learn beyond what it takes to get their job done. So, if you expect them to be using Debian and reading man pages, then you are more misguided than I thought.
Now, I will agree with you on one thing. I’ve never seen someone tell someone else to RTFM unless it was in the situation you described. Then, I’d agree. They should be told that. That’s not ignorance. That’s laziness.
Again, I mostly agree that a productive UI that takes a few minutes to learn is better than dumbing it down just so the AOL masses will feel at home. Nobody is going to out-AOL, AOL. And I certainly don’t want them to try it with a platform I use.
scouring the net for installers, finding the executable, clicking next a zillion times
This part I do not agree on, next > next > next > finish. To me, this seems logical, simple, and efficient. I also know where to find it if I need it. Could you imagine if _every_ windows app was instead downloaded from the windows update site and MS had to build and package all of them? Imagine if you are a developer and programs and updates were available only whenever a volunteer at Microsoft got around to building them and placing them on the server.
Sorry the slashes got taken out here let me do this …
/Applications
/Multimedia
/Internet
/Tools
/Users
/System
/Preferences
/Applications/Office
/Multimedia/Video/Divx
/Multimedia/Games/Quake
/Internet/Mozilla
/Users/username/Settings
/Users/username/Documents
/Users/username/Music
/Users/username/Pictures
/System/Drivers/Video
/System/Drivers/Sound
/System/Kernel
/System/Backgrounds
/System/Screensaver
/System/Servers
/System/Servers/HTTP
/System/Servers/Pop
/System/X-Windows
/System/X-Windows/Window Maker
/System/X-Windows/KDE2
/System/Multimedia/Codecs/MPEG
See how it works? Thats the way Linux should be easy to know where things are, easy to delete stuff… Just delete Mozilla folder out of your settings folder that user never ran Mozilla before. Delete Mozilla out of your Internet folder then Mozilla is not even installed anymore. Easy simple… Anyone want to restructor a Linux from source to be setup like this… I’ll be glad to start one… with any OS AtheOS, Linux, BSD whatever. Thats the biggest problem. Not only that but they should be a default of one of everything, one internet browser, one email client thats it. If you want to install others fine get them. This default install of 5 browsers is non-senes. Sure you can change it with a custom install, but the defaults shouldn’t be ‘bulky’ more like it just does what it needs to if you need something better get it. Default install of Windows NT about 200 meg, Windows 2000 maybe 400 meg, RedHat about 1.2 Gig.
“… yet to see a brilliant reply…”
That’s exactly the point we are trying to make. You are obviously intelligent and intensely interested.
Users are not brilliant. They don’t want to learn how to use the OS, they want to USE it. They expect it to be intuitive. They demand it to be intuitive. They do not care which OS. They are not arrogant, they do not care.
I agree with your point on an /applications directory but I think all that is mostly overkill. To create another distro just to have a different file structure would be mostly a duplicated effort. You could write an installer for another distro and make packages available that default install to /applications
I also would like to say that I do not have anything against apt-get, I just think it’s a temporary solution to the problem. There IS an RPM apt-get available for Red Hat users, If you didn’t know that, go here http://freshrpms.net/apt/
<quote>
Oh, come on Rayiner. Everyone here has brilliantly replied to your absurd comments on how things should be done. And why you are exactly like the devs that do not let Linux let go and create something better and easily worked.
Read again the other replies from people too. Everyone wants ease to use. You don’t. Well, it will be just you and your geek friends using Linux. The rest won’t simply bother.
That’s the deal.
</quote>
Hmm. I don’t know about that. I don’t think anyone replied brilliantly. I think everyone just belittled him.
Let me start by saying that I agree with some of both Rayiner and Adam’s points. I’m not going to discount either one wholesale.
First, re: computers. I agree, computers should be simple to use – but – you must keep in mind that they are inherently complicated devices. They are not like ATMS or toasters. You must be expected to read some manuals (I’m not talking man pages, howtos etc) to learn how to use it properly. Just asking someone to read a manual isn’t the end of the world. I was expected to read my textbooks if I wanted to know how something was done – I didn’t expect it to be blindlingly obvious.
Of course, basic tasks should be fairly obvious to perform and now we hit the crux of this entire problem – the installer for Linux.
Adam: Your comments have merit and I’d like to thank you for spurring some debate. But.. (there’s always a but) …things are always more complicated than they seem.
– Linux distros are very very different. The way they organize their files, their default libraries, the menu systems – all of these vary. Unless you get every single major distro to conform to exactly the same filesystem structure, the .lif is going to be horribly complicated to implement.
– Different libraries. You mention everything from a user’s perspective. They click, the lif file starts up everything works smoothly. What I want to know is this – if the .lif file is linked against specific libraries that are not on the users system – how will it deal with that eventuality? Perhaps it packages a copy of the lib w/ it and will install that into the system. Or maybe into a local directory that it references to if the system libs are not present. You’ve glossed over this (probably because this was a quick summary – not a detailed explanation)
I heard a comment where someone suggested that any missing .lifs be downloaded from a mirror nearby. I’m not sure how workable that will be without major maintainership behind it.
The problem is that we’re all back seat coders. We (usually) have no idea of the scale of the problem involved. We can suggest solutions, but often forget all the grunge work that has to go into making it work. It took 10 years for Microsoft to get this problem (libraries/dependencies) almost solved.
So, it turns out the things Linux needs is:
– A standard FHS (one that is rigidly adhered to). This means that config files, libraries everything are in the right place.
– A standard installation package (.lif was Adam’s recommendation)
– Some way to deal with library issues (missing libraries, lower versions, higher versions) I think this is the hardest problem
– A standard menu system for desktops (that all DE adhere to). An app should be able to place an icon there
Sounds like a simple list. Nope. All of this will take a major amount of time to work out. If we give it time, things should shake out.
<rant>
Of course, once it does work – we move on to something else to criticize. Of course, the more harshly you criticize, the less people are likely to listen to you. It gives you a feeling of satisfaction, but in the end does nothing. There’s a difference between constructive criticism and antagonism. No offence, but even you Eugina, in a lot of your reviews come off as antagonistic. You’ve made no bones about this and in fact seem rather proud of it. Its very satisfying for you, but I’m not sure how productive it is.
</rant>
Cheerio.
Ok, after looking at all these posts,I have decided the issue is horribly confused.
Everyone *thinks* they are talking about the future, then proceed to talk about the past.
Current users represent the past, not the future. when you talk about current users, you are talking about people who are already set in a lazy pattern. Future users, which will determine the direction of computing, are not set in the MS ways. Face it people, a lot of what MS does is wrong from a technical and user standpoint. Just because they do it, does not mean we have to. That is a logical fallacy. Just because the dominant group does something, does not make it *right*.
The upcoming users are children. They are learning, and they want to learn. I’ve worked with many children. I’ve been personally involved in hundreds of users going to Linux as a *first* OS. THAT is where the future is. It amazes me that it has to be said.
Do teh OS the *right* way, the best for for productivity, security, and teach the new users *why* things work. Then, they will be informed enough for their own choices.
As far as corproate users not instlling stuff, HAhAhAHA!! I worked for a Forutne 50 company, and was responsible for thousands of users. Guess what, they *do* install stuff! Know why? Time. Corporations can only employ a limited number of people to go around installing stuff. Developers,m for example, do not have the time to wait a week or two, or theree, or four, for some snot-nosed kid to come install some software for him/her. So, they often *do* install things on their own.
I’ve had *many* times on Windows where I have had to track down a missing DLL, somehting that was not included, or got deleted by a different program. So you can not convince me of how easy it truly is in windows. I’ve tested windows environments for a Fortune50 company, it simply is not as easy as is claimed here.
All system will suffer from this problem so long as there are independent coders. we are moving toward the decentralized part of the cycle, so we will see more and mor eindependent developers. This problem will continue to exist, and no installer can account for it. However, IMO it is better that an app NOT install when it can’t find the correct libraries, then to install and be broken.
It takes more than pontificating on how “easy” is should be for joe random user to install stuff. I would propose that those that are saying it is something that should be done, and/or is easy to do .. DO IT! Put your code where your mouth is. If you can not do that, put your money there instead. Pay someone to develop it, and let it compete.
As head of a Linux User Group, and being personally involved in many “introductions”, I can nto agree that people do NOT wnat to know more. The very nature of our society is moving in the directionof wantign to know more. People in general are tired of being told everything. That is the future. if you want to talk about being a player in the desktop, you are talking about the future. Focusing your efforts ont eh past will not get you there.
And no, to the poster that said MS won due to price, sorry, they won due to agreements made with manufacturers, and due to Apple’s insistence on controlling the whole shebang, from hardware to UI, and from only running on their proprietary hardware. If Apple’s OS ran on commodity hardware from the start, they may have stopped MS from being a monopoly.
Anyway, that’s enough for now. Remember, if you talk about the future, do not dwell on the past. Learn from it, don’t repeat it.
Now this puzzles me. Eugenia stated that a desktop user should _never_ have to read a guide or manual. I hope this was a joke. I recently got a Hifi and couldn’t program the radio channels without reading the manual. It wasn’t actually intuitive but after reading two pages of the manual it was easy. Most people can’t program their video recorder without reading a manual either.
Oh and last time I checked it’s difficult to drive a car without getting it carefully teached.
I’m all for making GUI’s as straightforward, efficient and even simple to use as possible but don’t forget that most people know how to use Windows because they read a book (not very likely anymore) or because they had someone who explained it to them (much more likely today). If you use something for which you don’t know anyone to explain it to you, you will have to read a manual or at least some simple guides that are shipped with the product. I’m not saying that Linux is there yet, but it’s going well.
I don’t quite understand your problems, Limbo will most certainly support RPM installing by just doubleclicking them (and asking for your password). What else do you want know? Is this supposed to be a constructive discussion or just a flamefest to convince yourself that you are right?
It also is a little bit sad to see people bitching that GNU/X/GNOME or GNU/X/KDE aren’t the holy grail yet. In five years we got from this:
http://gnomedesktop.com/scr/oldgnome/2.jpg
to this:
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/scre…
and things are looking very good for the next five years.
And that isn’t fast enough for you? Please get real. Windows wasn’t enginered in two years either and that isn’t even free software.
>I hope this was a joke.
No it was not. Apart from a starting point on how to use a computer in general, the rest of the UI details of each OS or desktop environment should be a no-brainer.
>And that isn’t fast enough for you? Please get real.
I do not understand why you state this. Who said anything about Gnome or KDE, and who gives a monkey what KDE or Gnome is? The user does not care and should not care about this.
The point is that X11 exists since 1985 or so. Why there was not created ONE good desktop environment since then, and then build on top of that (as Windows and Mac did) and make it better as the years go by (as Windows and Mac did)?
Instead, we have all this half-made/half-ass-looking projects and you are here to tell *us* to get real.
Excuse me, but you are not talking with business in mind. You are talking as person who is part of a development project. The reality is: Windows has a better desktop, Mac too.
If the Linux folks demand a share on the desktop market, they should get their act together (they had 8 years to get ready for it since X11 was made available for Linux) and create something better. Something that competes with windows and MacOSX. Because today, you still got nothing. KDE, Gnome and the lack of ease of use on a Unix, are jokes.
KDE, Gnome and the lack of ease of use on a Unix, are jokes.
lol, that should detonate some fuses
screenshots
http://images.mandrakesoft.com/img/screenshots/82scr06.jpg
http://images.mandrakesoft.com/img/screenshots/82scr02.jpg
But you DO have to give credit for pretty, I also like the choice of having more than one DE to select from. 1 size fits all is good for napkins, not an operating system.
>But you DO have to give credit for pretty
Pretty does not make a DE usable or praisable. BeOS was not pretty at all, but its ability to control your files, drivers, prefs, the OS and its usability performed 100 times more than Gnome and KDE does 3 years later, today.
It is good to see so many coming out of the woodwork and posting.
For our era, it has already been decided. The desktop metaphor is “it”. Relentless progress in ease of use is “it”. When cars first began appearing on the scene, an owner had to learn quite a bit about how it worked. Of course, cars were much simpler then too. But, it was complex enough so that car geeks could make a living by fixing other people’s cars. And even more so today.So, when the Apple people were allowed to see what Xerox was doing and took that and made the Lisa and took that and made the Mac, that was “it” for our era. The desktop – and making everything fold into that metaphor is what we have until something very radically different comes along. So, it isn’t a matter of being just like Windows or Mac – it simply is the standard that everyone uses in the corproation and at home. There’s no getting past it.
The reason there’s no getting past it is that the vast majority of people think visually, not abstractly. Computer programmers and developers and other with a passion for computing have been given the gift of being able to think in an abstract fashion. What Apple saw at Xerox made it possible for everyone else. And so, the desktop metaphor, the GUI, icons, input devices like the mouse and many other developments made it possible for the vast majority of visually thinking people to be able to use and benefit from the use of computers.
The visually thinking masses depend entirely on the abstract thinking programmers and developers. I have to admit, I miss getting nice manuals with applications – I loved reading them in bed like others would read mysteries. But, the bar has been raised and, perhaps best exemplified by the original iMac, the buyer gets a foldout sheet showing where to plug what into and a slim volume to start them up. It is almost all visual. And that’s where the bar is for regular corporate and home users.
As a result, no OS has a prayer of making a dent in the desktop unless the user can simply double click to install – that is the standard – anything more complicated will fail. Crappy looking desktops will fail (Eugenia’s mock-ups of UI changes are always great because they show how critically important all UI aspects are). The friendliness of Apple users and Be users is based on the fact that these mostly visually oriented people did learn how to use these OS’s and want to share it with others. Those who are able to think abstractly usually don’t understand the visual people. The people at Apple did and then the people at Microsoft did. It took MS along, long time, but XP Pro is a fabulous OS. Mac OS X is a fabulous OS. Linux is a fabulous OS, but the programmers and developers, by and large, simply do not think of the best way something can be done by an average user. Sure, people could learn a few command line commands, but they already don’t have to do that Why should they now? If Linux programmers and developers cannot see that all this was decided, for out time at least, almost twenty years ago, what can they be thinking then? The average person of average income with a family gets a Chevy Cavalier to drive and an iMac or lower cost Dell/Gatway/HP-Compaq PC to use email, surf the web, do wordprocessing, instant messaging with their friends, maybe dabble in making digital home movies and photos, make greeting cards, etc. Linux will never, ever be on anyone’s home desktop until it at least catches up to the ease of use of the Mac OS and Windows. And the same is almost true of the corporate desktop, although there is a better chance there.
People can rail at Lindows but, by God, when you download an application from Click ‘n Run, it goes right into the menu category (Internet, Multimedia, etc.) where it belongs. And that’s exactly what should happen. And Lycoris is coming along very nicely – they are doing more for desktop Linux than anyone and they have five employees!!
It’s up to you programmers and developers – it all depends on you.
Richard, you ask “why do you want the masses to use linux?”, let me ask too “the masses?” How about just people?, where do you belong?
“If you just want to take down the monopoly, you really arent better than Bill now are you?”
Well among other issues, I DO WANT the CONVICTED PREDATORY MONOPOLIST down enough, and in that sense I AM better than Bill, yes I am, I’ve never been convicted, and I’ll never have the power (thanks God) to hurt consumers as Bill has, I do hope Linux or other OS will stop him. Do not equal things that are not equal. What Bill has done is hardly comparable with anyone around here. You need to read this again, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/microsoft/do… , from start to end.
People SHOULD be thinking, and preferably about choice. CHOICE, freedom to choose things, is that so hard to understand? You say that “The world is breeding all kind of morons”, well it always has and it always will, never forget that as the song says “there is a sucker born every minute and the biggest one, excluding none, is me.” How troubling would be to find out that you are the logical moron, you the aristological one.
You haven’t seen enough ‘computer idiots’ (nice term to couple with “the masses”), ’cause they are more than 90% of the desktop share, so keep on counting your “computer idiots” Linux switchers when ever you get the chance, just for fun of course.
First reason for switching: CHOICE. A sustainable one. Once you are a “computer idiot” with choice, let come the rest.
A computer is a tool. An OS is a the means by which the tool is utilized. I read earlier a mention of a power saw, and something along the lines of “RTFM or [an ominous-sounding] else”.
The real question is, what type of power saw is it? Is it a nice, safe one with protective guards everywhere, a big red “EMERGENCY STOP” switch in a logical, accessible place, and all the other little invisible safety measures in place to make it almost impossible to accidentally whack off a few fingers? Or is it a bare metal monstrosity with more than a few dark, scary-looking stains around its exposed teeth? It’s a delicate balance, making the safety nets work. On the one hand you MUST do everything you reasonably can to make things safe and easy, while on the other hand you can’t go overboard and engineer something that’s been “optimized” into generic uselessness. Which is Linux, which is WindowsXP? Linux tends toward the former, I think, while XP errs on the latter end of the scale. Linux expects you to keep your fingers out of the way but gives you the flexibility to work in true freeform. XP has been engineered to the demands of the lowest common denominator, with a big fat, brightly colored start button and folders with pretty pictures on them that make more or less reasonable assumptions about what they contain and how those contents should be presented to the user. XP is designed to be idiot-proof, and that’s NOT an easy job to take on.
Imagine, the kinds of things the XP user interface designers had to foresee! People talk about how limited and constricting XP is, as if it was designed by a bunch of stodgy old men in an old-school gentleman’s club somewhere. Please. The coders who work at Microsoft are no less code-happy geeks than the coders who hack on GNOME or Mozilla or KDE. The only difference is, the Microsoft coders are paid to make the product UNIVERSALLY usable, and in many cases that means making the power user actually work harder to accomplish something beyond what the designers, out of necessity, have coded the software to do. XP is designed to be forgiving, as much as possible. XP will attempt to take the novice by the hand and guide her to safety. In most cases, Linux will gleefully eat her alive. Windows was born as a consumer OS. Linux was born as a programmer’s OS. It’s not that the Microsoft geeks don’t WANT to make a truly powerful and flexible OS, it’s simply that if they did it would take someone like my sister about 10 minutes with it to render it useless and support lines all over the world would collapse under the strain. Users have a tendency to learn by exploring and experimenting and XP does a great job of taking this into account at the expense of making it damned difficult for the power user to really get into the guts of it. Linux will happily let you do anything you want, sure, but it’ll also sit there, broken and useless, while you attempt to piece it back together afterwards.
Linux has come a LONG way. Its friendliness almost seems to be increasing exponentially (compare it now to, say, 5 years ago). Let’s not forget that less than a decade ago Windows 3.1 was still Microsoft’s flagship product! Linux is evolving, and the day when it truly will be fit for Joe User and his kid brother is getting closer and closer. Those who use and support it now see this and get impatient and frustrated that it isn’t there yet. There is nothing more frustrating than unrealized potential. Linux is a piecemeal affair. One program (or even subset of a program) might be brilliantly engineered and beautifully intuitive, while the next bit, in an almost surreal juxtaposition, is utterly brain dead. Yet, this is a GOOD thing. You see, Windows was built from the outset for the LOWEST common denominator, while Linux simply had no interest in or patience with that type of user. So it would be a massive undertaking to make XP into a powerhouse of flexibility and configurability like Linux (not to mention almost impossible thanks to Microsoft’s singular ability to obfuscate the workings of its code), just as it is a massive undertaking to whip Linux into something the lowest common denominator can be comfortable with. Yet, in the end, when Linux DOES get there (and it will, it has too much momentum now not to) then its core, built for the power user, will still be there for those who want it, hiding behind intelligent design and pretty GUIs, to be sure, but there nonetheless. THAT will be a truly universal OS. XP is a family car with all the amenities. Of course, it handles like a tank, but it gets you there in the end. Linux is a concept car with a finicky clutch and a six-speed tied to a Formula One engine, easy to choke down and damned hard to drive, but unstoppable once mastered. In the end, Linux has the potential to be both, all at once, and to whatever exacting degree the user is comfortable with. XP (or Longhorn) can simply never be such a hybrid, not and remain true to Microsoft’s business plan. We just have to be patient, we have to do more than use free software and bitch about what it lacks, we have to use free software and help contribute what it NEEDS.
Linux isn’t ready yet. Almost, but not quite. In some ways it is, or at least seems on the surface to be, but in many ways, it’s simply not. The command line is Linux’ heart and soul, and no matter how many GUIs you slap on it, it will always be so or it simply won’t be Linux anymore. The command line in XP is often called a joke, and coming from a bash prompt to a cmd prompt IS a jolt. It’s like leaving an Olympic-sized pool and diving headfirst into an inflatable kiddie pool — you hit bottom hard and fast. Yet the fact is, that is all XP needs. XP is a graphical OS with a minimal, generally unnecessary legacy text interface tacked on. Linux is a text-based OS with a graphical interface tacked on. XP without Luna is less than useless. Linux without X (not to mention KDE, GNOME, et al) can happily serve up the world’s e-mail and webpages.
It’s all about picking the right tool for the right job. Expecting a corporation to use XP as a powerful database server instead of Linux, Unix, or a *BSD is silly. Expecting your Aunt Mary to type her recipes and chat with her scattered relatives in Linux instead of XP (or OS X) is equally silly.
I use Gentoo. I tweak, I break, I compile; tweak it, break it, compile it again. I have two terminals open right now compiling the new KDE beta. I like it like that. I don’t need a glitzy package manager. Yet I’d be a complete fool to think my grandma could compile “Hello World”, let alone her entire operating system. I’d be a fool if I thought I could talk her through a broken library over the phone. The first time the word “symlink” came out of my mouth her eyes would glaze over. She IS the average computer user. She wants to turn on the TV and watch Friends. She wants to turn on the PC and read e-mail, surf the web, maybe have a go at some solitaire. She doesn’t want to understand the fundamental nature of her toaster, she just wants her bagels hot and crispy. To her, her PC is no different. Is that concept alien to me? Yes. Just as, I’m sure, my fascination with the inner workings of my machine is alien to her.
Fixing package management is all well and good. But it’s a beginning — or, to be more optimistic, perhaps a few more essential steps along the right path — not a magical, “and they all lived happily ever after” end.
Just because X has been around since 1985 doesnt mean its been in the general public’s hands for that long.
Bitching, and whinning, and bringing up the issue 4times a week is NOT what will get things done. Yes eugenia we enjoy looking at your little “enhancements”, butyou know what? That doesnt do much to actually HELP. I’m getting tired of people trying to boss OSS developers around. I’m sure that everyone in the KDE and GNOME camps are well aware of what you seem to think is a revelation that you just found out. Like the other guy said, ya, maybe it makes you feel good, but it doesnt accomplish anything. You either code, or give donations, or do something along those lines, THAT is what helps.
Sorry but there are too many GNU/Linux pro comments that are embarrassing. Fortunately, they don’t speak for me. Adam, I like your ideas.
And for the others that are too busy embarrassing themselves…
What would happen to a person if they were in a room filled with 99 other people and this one individual shouted that everyone else in the room was an idiot?
Would they survive?
Then why is it that GNU/Linux stays at 1% of the marketshare and pro GNU/Linux RTFM folks have the *nerve* to shout that everyone else using their machines are idiots?
Who is the *real* idiot?
IMHO, the RTFM blind – who can’t figure out how to make things easy – are the idiots.
If Albert Einstein figured out that E-mc2 — a very elegant answer to a complex universe. Why then can’t Linux be made to be easy? You just have to be smart enough – and most linux developers are not as smart as Albert Einstein. They can’t do it – so they just complain that everyone else is stupid. Look in the mirror. 😛
I love GNU/Linux because it is fun ~ and not because it is superior. I enjoy watching it develop. But I really *hate* the arrogant and stupid attitudes that people shouldn’t use a computer if they don’t want to read a poorly written manual or howto that is scattered across thousands of sites. That bad attitude reinforces the bad reputation that Linux users have earned – RTFM by RTFM by RTFM.
A dose of reality
Just because you can’t figure out how to help people in a manner that scales easily – you just take the easy way out – and call everyone else stupid.
Take some advice pro GNU/Linux users – telling someone to RTFM is *not* a good way to make friends and influence people. You are only 1 person in a room filled with 99 others who do not appreciate being called idiots.
The solution is obvious.
Strip the RTFM attitude, start listening to the users (or potential users) and start using the data to make GNU/Linux better.Spend some time thinking about the suggestions in this article and maybe a solution will come to you. You’d be a hero.
> I mainly use FreeBSD and Win98, now. I’ve never had FreeBSD break library dependencies during an upgrade (or
> Windows for that matter). You’re just being a naysayer.
You’ve never seen Windows 98 break dependencies? Install an old version of Visual C++ and answer yes to overwriting .dlls. I’d bet half your apps won’t load.
As for BSD you’ll notice I said “binary software”. Source distributions won’t have this kind of problem.
> And, in case you didn’t notice, my topic was “we’re in the ballpark”. Not, “hey, I have all of the answers”. I do
> wish I knew how to code, though. I’d start hacking something on this.
I outlined how to do it in my earlier post:
1 – Large set of standard libraries
2 – Static linking for anything not in the standard library.
Done.
And no, to the poster that said MS won due to price, sorry, they won due to agreements made with manufacturers,
Those agreements being to sell the OS very cheaply in exchange for being bundled with every system sold. Also the low price didn’t hurt. There were excellent systems that existed all during the last 20 years Microsoft consistently made it cheaper to choose them over the compitition.
and due to Apple’s insistence on controlling the whole shebang, from hardware to UI, and from only running on their proprietary hardware.
If Apple’s OS ran on commodity hardware from the start, they may have stopped MS from being a monopoly.
The only reason commodity hardware is better is price. I don’t see how you are disagreeing here other than perhaps defining price more narrowly.
Very very VERY well stated.
I think something two things are getting confused by talking about “joe average user”
1 – Home / small business desktop market
2 – Corporate desktop market
Right now those two markets use a simiar OS (Win 98 / XP) and (NT/2000/XP pro) respectively so there may be a tendency to confuse them. Their needs are not in any way similar. Consider the situation 20 years ago: the home market was dominated by Apple II, Vic 20/ com 64, Atari 400/800; while the corporate market desktop was owned by dumb terminals connected mainly to VMS and MVS. Not even close to one another. Its Bill Gates more then any other person who saw that it might be possible to unite the two groups of users, and because his vision won there is a tendency to think this uniting was natural.
For example ease of installation. The corporate market doesn’t need ease of installation at all. They install S390, OS/400, VMS and a wide variety of Unixes all the time. They can easily install a product that’s really hard providing they can clone it to the hundreds / thousands of users. NT is difficult to install and configure properly they did it easily. MVS makes Linux look like a joke. What they want is ease of administration (which Linux hands down beats XP on) and a wide range of desktop tools (which is where Linux is still lacking).
Ease of use is not terribly important as long as ease of training for simple tasks is there. Think Lotus Notes for example: a very hard to use most features, much harder to configure email setup; OTOH very easy to do basic things in, and offers some really powerful features. I’ve never seen a home / small business user set up Lotus Notes. That is per seat are low even though installation and configuration costs are very high.
If the Linux replacements for Word and Excel are easy to use they could care less how hard the one system admin has to work to configure the right init scripts.
____________________
For the home market ease of installation is key. Ease of use is key. They have fewer needs but absolutely nowhere to turn for advanced help. Frankly Linux is still so far away on this market in terms of offering a “better” product that there best shot is to win on price. The end user desktop loaded with free software bundled with a $500 PC will work well against XP / office SB edition.
That is:
Linux has enough ease of installation and use for the corporate market, where they are lacking is in app quality.
Linux has enough app quality for the home / small business where they are lacking is ease of use / installation.
On both markets however Linux has very low cost per seat (including app costs).
I just don’t see how ease of installing random software (that is software outside the 10 gigs provided on the big distribution websites) really matters to either group. I’d focus much more on bring up the quality of the office suite in terms of functionality and ease of use.
Stability=excellent
Installer=excellent
H/W Support=excellent
UI ( KDE 2.2 )=very good
Documentation/Helpfiles=adequate
RPM Installers=works 50% of time
Lib update=works 25% of time
Lib update breaks other applications=yes
I’m waiting for RH8 or Mdk9 b4 I go back to it.
Ease of installation is a SERVICE which has to be created and
should be PAID for. If you are not able to repair or upgrade your car, you pay some technician in a shop. If you don’t like the car/shop, just change it. If you cannot afford it, live with it, shit happens. Ahh, did i mention you have to obtain a drivers license for driving a car in most places of
the world? Spoken in terms of OpenSource, don’t blame the many developers for being arrogant, blame the distributors for not being able to create a single standard. Or simply stay with Windows and see how far that gets you. Of course you could always buy an Apple Macintosh.
Honestly, I don’t see how making it easier to get started using a program dumbs the program down. I also don’t see why programmers can’t do it.
For example… Games on CDs. (I know, we’re talking about internet stuff here, but bare with me) On my consoles, I insert the game CD, it works. On my computer, I insert the game CD, start the installation, pray the installation actually works, pray the game actually works, if I uninstall the game, I pray that the game doesn’t delete half my OS in the process.
Now, I don’t understand why this needs to be. I understand why there are bugs. But when I insert the CD, why doesn’t the game figure some of this stuff out for itself? I mean, really why does say… The new version of PacMan need to copy files to my harddrive, it’s not that big! And even if it does… Why can’t I somewhere in the settings for the OS set up a cache for files from the CD? And then the OS can automatically handle some of this stuff for me? Why this… Why that… So on and so forth…
The same applies to a word processor on CD… Why do I have to install it? Seems silly to me to be forced to.
Now we get to programs off the internet. Why should that be much of a concern either?
To me… When I go to use MOST (not all) programs, it should be a piece of cake to set it up. Do I need it? No. But it would be nice.
BTW… I’m a graduate student in computer science and I’ve been programming since I was a little kid and I teach too. So I’m not illerate, I just don’t understand why some people feel things need to be this way and why they think it’s going to hinder productivity.
Oh… And I’m not saying that people shouldn’t have to learn how to use their tools, I’m saying that the tools should be made properly in the first place.
I agree 100% with you Adam, along that is not my case as I’m pretty a use with ./configure and make install, being a programmer myself.
Anyway I cannot install Linux on my dad’s computer precisely for this reason. Hey, many times I’ve give up installations at the third lib required!
So told, why we cannot hope for something better than win installer? They have quite a lot of problems, the main being the compulsory all screen blue panel and the restart at end query.
A dream installation tool yet exists in Linux: gentoo emerge. It lacks only a pretty gui IMHO.
I click on an RPM, KDE opens kpackage. In Mandrake it’s even better, as the Software Manager comes up, which is a front-end to URPMI. That side of things isn’t a problem in a properly configured distribution.
The problem is dependency hell, even URPMI doesn’t solve that if it doesn’t know where to find the required packages. One simple solution is for the application writers to ensure that they list the dependencies on their web-sites, with download links for any packages the distribution the RPM is built for doesn’t come with by default. Instead, the Linux arrogance he talks about rules with developers assuming users know where to find them.
Karl: I use KDE as my desktop. I find that you can easily uninstall (and install) rpms with kpackage.
It doesn’t resolve the dependancies for you (e.g. you have to find the proper packages yourself). It’s UI also would scare new users (I know it did scared me in 7.x of Mandrake)..
Zenja: – why the heck do we need to install small apps. Why cant I simply unzip a small app into a certain directory and *presto*, its finished. This way I can move the app directory anywhere I want to, and remove it when I want to.
I think you should be able to remove it when you want to, but place it where you want it to be? Naahhhh. Just like a HiFi, you have a microphone port, and a headphone port. Could I put the microphone into the headphone port and expect it to work as a microphone?
Zenja: The whole KDE libraries should be 1 single library, not 22 with dependancies intertwined.
KDE Libraries on many platforms are placed in one package – kdelib, which should be the second thing, after QT, you need to install.
Rayiner Hashem: Just type in apt-get <pkg_name> and be done with it. The problem with your hypothetical user is this: She is arrogant. She does not for one moment want to learn anything about the environment she is using.
That’s true. She doesn’t want to do the same on Windows nor Mac OS X, and thankfully, she doesn’t. On Windows, she downloaded a file, she double clicks, and a nice wizard comes up. And the hardest part is reading the EULA :-p. On mac OS X, is it even more easier, unzip the file, drag to the Applications folder or double click on it.
And I’m quite sure you want new users to come to Linux, I’m sure any OSS advocate would love an OSS OS to win.
Rayiner Hashem: The other day, I was talking my 12 year old brother through an SSH session (via a windows program called putty)…..
Physcologically, teenagers and children have a faster capacity to learn new things. Most users who are using and configuring computers are adults.
Besides, notice you had explained to him what an IP address is.
Slackware: OTOH, even some Windows users are confused when they use any Windows from version 3.1 up to XP. Partly to blame is the fact that users still have access to the “system” which to them looks confusing and not just the word processor and Internet.
Since Windows Me, it had block the main system from the users automatically, and expert users are able dissable this for themselves. In Windows Me is was obstructive, but in Windows XP, it was flawless (almost).
Rayiner Hashem: I’m trying to resist the urge to curse. A computer is not a simple single-task device like an ATM or a toaster. The computer is a highly sophisticated tool that is often a primary component of someone’s work environmen.
Windows and Mac OS manage to bring down the complexity to new users. Most users want to go on the Net, use Office/Works/whatever, maybe listen to music and watch a DVD or two. They don’t want to type in commands to do something so simple on Windows and Mac OS – installing apps.
Heck, even in Mandrake, the manuals are cryptic and hard – just put a new cover, it would sound like a horror novel. How do you expect new users to read it? (I have 8.1’s manual, maybe 8.2 had fixed it).
Now, tell me which toaster you would like to use. A toaster where you put in the bread, press down a button, and perhaps turn the knob to specify how much carbon you like. Or do you want something that requires you to read a manual.
Rayiner Hashem: Surely they can spend a few weeks learning how to use a computer.
A lot of people *don’t* have weeks. A lot of people use their machines to *make* money, to keep their jobs, etc. Loosing a few weeks of work to many means loosing your job or loosing money etc.
10 minutes with a good HOWTO, and any user could be smart enough to install software via apt-get
Read this http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/index.en.html and honestly tell me if an average 60 year old mom, or a 24 year old ex-college kid working in the community center could learn it and figure stuff out in 10 minutes.
Smack your head for being so stupid.
How is this easier than apt-get <app-name>?
It’s graphical, most users are paranoid about command line. Plus, using apt-get, is it easy to move around your software into places you want (like Mozilla automatically installs in Applications/Mozilla, but you want to arrange it up and Applications/Internet/Mozilla). You can in OS X.
jbolden1517: Fourth: Before every version of Windows you see commercial vendors put out info on the web plus new versions of their software so it can install.
Not true. I use a lot of Windows 9x applications in Windows XP because I don’t have money to upgrade, and also many of these applications don’t have new versions. For Windows XP though many came out with NT support versions, also a version that allows the app to follow the new look of XP.
Richard Fillion: Inflexible my ass. You cant say that the linux community isnt trying. It has come a LONG LONG LONG way since when i started using linux, but people keep asking more and more from it.
We want more because it is good. It isn’t as easy to use as it should be. Linux had come a long long way since I started using Linux, in terms of usablity, and I just wish it would go a long long long way more. The problem is with people like Hashem, they don’t want that.
Rayiner Hashem: Or read the manual! Or go Google for help. Or ask the local computer guy. Hell, email me at [email protected]!
Writing your email address in full in a public website isn’t the most smartest thing you did. Spam bots are everywhere.
Besides, Google may not be the smartest way to do stuff. When I was configuring my PPPOE DSL connection, finding help in Google gave me impossible to understand howtos and tutorials. Mandrake’s manuals isn’t that helpful either. The problem is that I don’t understand how DSL works. Finally, I phone my ISP, and thank god they help me do it, though it was full of commands and script configuring etc. Totally not as easy as XP, which was a 3 step wizard. (I didn’t get to use DSL on Linux though, I accidently broke the network card later).
Alex Rad: It’s very hard for me to believe that Redhat is suddenly focusing more and more on the desktop. THis sia fterall coming from the company who’s CEO said that Linux has no future on the desktop.
Red Hat was wrong. There is a future on the desktop. And they realize it. In third/second world countries, they only want to do basic stuff (after all, they are new to computers in general), and they need something cheap ($40 isn’t cheap for them). But I don’t think there is a future for profitablity.
Rayiner Hashem: Windows sucks. Linux doesn’t. And I’m talking from a usability standpoint.
For my mother (who find computers less than boring), I found it much easier teaching her XP than Linux. Yes, I tried explaining things to her, but she is what majority of the people are – not interested. Why do they need to take weeks to learn how to do something when they could do it now on other platforms?
Something “better” is a tool that is more cluttered, more complex, and less efficient, but doesn’t require a manual?
I don’t see how something that is cluttered and complex wouldn’t require a manual….
2) Making complex wizard type interfaces to simple tasks is a waste of the users time.
I don’t see anyone disagreing with you on that.
After reading all this, I am left thinking “Thank God for AmigaOS.”
Almost every program comes with an Install script. You just click on
the Install icon (there may be an icon for each language), and away it
goes, with obvious choices like Which directory do you want it in.
You don’t normally need to reboot before using the program. You can
usually try out the program by running it from the RAM disk, before
actually installing it to a hard drive.
Simple programs can often be installed just by dragging the program
directory to the directory that you want it to live in.
Library problems are extremely rare. I can’t remember a case of a
library _update_ ever causing any problems, but sometimes a program
will not run with an old version of a library.
The CLI (Shell) is always available. Some people use it a lot, others
hardly ever. Of course some small utilities (especially ones ported
from Unix or Linux) have no GUI and must be used from the Shell.
Of course all of this contradicts the theory that greater ease of use
will increase market share. The Amiga’s market share is
currently almost zero. Maybe it will start to go up when the new Amiga
systems and the new version of Amithlon finally appear.
Read again the other replies from people too. Everyone wants ease to use. You don’t. Well, it will be just you and your geek friends using Linux. The rest won’t simply bother.
Their loss.
Do you use a car ? How do you do that ? You turn the ignition key, motor turns on, and then you just drive, right ?
You learnt what signs on the road mean, and that a car needs gas to run. You also know that it needs some maintenance from time to time. It took me 23hours before I could pass the licence exam in France, and I got it on 1st try. I had no accident since (God forbid that!).
But do you know specifically how your car works ? Can you repair your car alone ? Can you detect what’s wrong listening to a noise from the motor ? Have you tried to replace the electronic brake system once ?
Noone but specialists and passionate people should know how to do complex operations, and how the car works. For all the other people, all we need to know is what the signs mean (think: the icons on the desktop and the widgets). I shouldnt be aware of “dependency hell”.
People do NOT car how it works. They want to USE it.
Oh, by the way, you talk about arrogance ???
Who’s arrogant, the on who says: “sheesh, she’s got to learn, what a sissy” or you ? A computer is not more complicated than a car in my point of view. They’re mere tools. They’re means to do something else. I use mine to entertain (movies, mp3s), to create (websites, writings, drawing), and it has many other uses…. and since I’m a geek, I also customize it, just the way a “tuner” would tune his car. Now imagine if the car lovers pushed on you their love for cars: “what ? you cant do maintenance on your car ? How stupid arrogant you are! You should learn to love these beasts!”. Now tell me, who’s being arrogant ??
Oh, by the way, I just installed Gentoo on my desktop. My laptop, which is my “main” computer, remains on win2k. But I learn a few things with Gentoo. The most valuable asset of Gentoo today is not Portage. It is not the “compile from source” approach. No, it is the community. I posted on Gentoo’s forums a few questions, help popuped up immedialty. Usefull answers. No “RTFM” or “you arrogant M$ luser”. I asked trivial questions, and led the proper way I have been able to find answers. No I dont ask anymore, I look for answers for 10mn, then if I cant find, irc.openprojects.net #gentoo. If people were like you, I dont think Gentoo would be the fastest growing distro…
.. by the way did you know there are 10.00341 zillion angels on a pinhead….
This has not been mentioned yet in this discussion, but this discussion sounds like the place to raise it.
I remember controversies like this about 20 odd years ago when car geeks were decrying auto transmissions, and earlier synchromesh gearboxes – “after all, any fool can learn to double-declutch and maipulate the throttle at the same time”
More recently I remember DOS geeks whining about window systems in the same way; the argument that 8.3 naming convention was perfectly adequate for naming files, and other such bollocks.
Cut the crap folks, simple is best and will win in the end.
I’d estimate that about 50-66% of the people at my company have a hard enough time using Windows or MacOS without any direction from myself or someone more experienced.
Yet so many people here think that OSS developers should create a system that requires no thought to use… What’s wrong with this picture?
Of course new users to linux are going to have to RTFM or get help from someone else. That’s exactly how it is for new users to Windows or MacOS.
Adam
IMHO The guy makes a point. If I download a RPM from RPMnet. I always look if it is for my distro. In my case suse 8.0 . Then there is a list of dependencies there. I download these as well. Then in KDE you simply click on the RPM and tell you wich depencies it needs. Sometimes just to find out that youre depencies needs also something else. Hate it when it happens. Then I go to google and do a search. You can spend a whole evening trying to install a program.
You can try to compile the stuff youreself, but I haven’t got the experience with it yet. Well at least the RPM’s uninstall quite easy. I still love Linux because you can do a lot more with it as in windows. For example, talking to my linux-server is very easy. I can even remote use the software on my Linux server and run it locally via ssh, even x-window programs. The windows terminal service doesn’t even come close.
The first time I used Linux was in 1995. Well I used it for 2 months and then switched back to windows. When I had my Cable-internet last year, I treid linux again and I must say, it’s got a lot better.
The only thing I am missing in linux is games. There are some good games out there. So I only use windows for games. Everything else I do with Linux. Watch a DVD. Listen to mp3. Watching divx. I can even play quake3. Browsing the internet and doing my email. I feel pretty save.
So I will stick with linux, eventhough it is very hard sometimes. Don’t want to bitch on microsoft, but an operating system that I have to activate before I can use it, is not welcome. What happens if they stop supporting it.