From: Graham Trott on Wednesday, August 06, 2003 3:29 PM
On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, Keith Watson wrote:
Going back to where this all started, I wonder if we aren't all talking out of our collective backsides. We all seem to be implicitly accepting that GNU/Linux is in some way inferior to Windows WRT the average non-technical user.
That's a bit harsh, but not without some justification. My experience of Linux so far has been almost all for server use, but I've just upgraded my laptop hard drive, demoted Windows to 10GB and in the process of putting SuSE 8.2 on the rest. Now it seems that some folks here think SuSE, Mandrake and Red Hat are little beter than Windows, but I just don't have the knowledge to answer the kind of questions Gentoo throws at me on installation.
But even with one of the latest GUI-based distros, things are not as easy as on Windows.
For whom and in what context?
1 Sharing files on Windows is a matter of right-clicking the drive letter and answering a few dumb questions. On Linux you have the choice of NFS or Samba (and probably dozens more) which don't come installed by default.
In our context of someone new to home computing this isn't relevant, if they've got to the point of wanting to share drives across machines then they've moved beyond the novice user stage. But 10 years ago when I was a sysadmin on a Sun network (Solaris), I was using NFS to share drives via a simple GUI utility.
2 If I plug my Canon Digital IXUS into Windows, up pops a box asking me to choose an installed application. On Linux, I enabled digital camera support (somewhere, can't remember where and can't find it again) but nothing happens when the camera is plugged in. Presumably I've done somethng wrong; maybe I'll find out why before I die of old age.
I think either you may be doing something wrong. I've just spoken to 2 colleagues who use GNU/Linux (Mandrake and Knoppix), they both have digital cameras that plug in via the USB port. They've told me that as soon as they do up pops a new drive icon containing the digital images.
3 On a recent working trip to China I found free broadband in the hotel room, so to save international mobile charges I signed up with IConnectHere, chosen because all the others had such god-awful sign-up forms that take about a week to complete. Unfortunately, it's Windows only.
Yes, but again for the group of average PC users this doesn't apply. It's not relevant for them
I'm not complaining;
Could've fooled me! :o)
Linux is still at that point where nobody agrees about style guidelines and there are relatively few conventions.
Yes, that's a very good point. Anyone know of any style guidelines for Gnome or KDE applications?
P.S. If that sounds heated, maybe it's 'cos this is the hottest day in living memory.
Well that depends on how old you are. :o) (but I do agree that it's f-hot!).
BTW have you seen http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/story/0,10801,83708,00.html?nas=AM-83708 or (OK maybe Lindows is borderline but, good grief, it's a start) http://www.lindows.com/lindows_michaelsminutes_archives.php?id=70
Regards,
Keith ____________ Those are my opinions, if you don't like them, I have others. Groucho Marx.