On Fri, 26 Apr 2002, Ricardo Campos wrote:
hmmm.... I disagree I think, at least at home. If you mean adjusting your desktop wallpaper and having themes for XMMS/KDE/Sawfish/etc. then I agree. If you mean fiddling with config files, for days and days and days (not to mention recompiling kernels etc) just to get one peripheral working, then I disagree.
I know plenty of musicians/artists who spend weeks trying to configure debian systems for DSP/Graphics, and even though they suck at it, they succeed (for the most part)
Any fool can program, and most do.
You're trolling, right? The only way I can make sense of this statement, is that you find programming easy, and that you only hang out with programmers. Outside of ALUG I only know 2 people who program, both of which are professional programmers. I know at least 100 people who use computers... (not to mention the 300 users I have on my network)
I think you're ignoring the -huge- amount of liberal arts undergraduates who do Lisp, Scheme, etc., plus a few hundred people on mailing lists I subscribe to who are artists and program in C, Python, Scheme, Tcl/Tk, and more. Even after that, programming has adepts even at a child's level (see Star Logo). My point was that, saying you're abnormal or a nerd because you program only sounds like you're an amateur programmer...which BTW, welcome to the club.
I was never disputing that. Most of this tweaking wouldn't be needed if you could buy a pooter with a GNU/Linux installation pre-installed and preconfigured for your hardware.
Indeed. Which is why more people are needed to join the GNU developer's community. But, point taken.
What I am disputing is the assumption that everyone will find GNU/Linux easy to use, install and maintain. I am only now confident after what, 7 months of using it. I install debian, and realise I'm gonna have to spend more free time learning *that*, cos everything is sufficiently different from my last distro. (If the weather gets better then that's just not going to happen!)
- No one is making that assumption. -Stay with Debian, and you 'learning' problems are over.
And anyway, being a'nerd' is "cool" these days. ;)
[running to wc] [fetching bucket] [hoarking]
david casal --0+ --- d.casal@uea.ac.uk --9+ --- www.ariada.uea.ac.uk/~dcasal --)+