OSNews

good article from someone who knows what Average Joe wants. Now the question is, who's gonna deliver it?

With Linux, I'm not holding my breath. There's just too much 'baggage', and I'm not even sure it will ever find itself on the desktops of the masses, or even if it needs to. In fact, I'd put my money on a BeOS-derived resurrection before anything of substance actually occurs in the Linux camps regarding a truly 'newbie' Windows desktop alternative.

You can read all "how?" stuff but unless you click "View Entire Article" you may not know why I think it is important.

So if you question why I wrote this in the first place, you might click that link to see if any of my "why?" points sways your opinion at all.

Correct me if I'm wrong here. Isn't the next Linux kernel (2.6) including ALSA support by default? There is a backward compatibility layer that makes OSS programs work with ALSA. Currently Linux sound can be pretty hard to configure (especially with some cheap on board sound). My hope and expectation is that ALSA support will improve once it is the standard.

I could no agree more with the author. My father is an oem, and would live to include linux as an option. But the mentioned short comings in the article are true (mostly). Lindows does a good job -- but needs more work.

John, I read the entire article. I understand your reasons, but there are alternatives to Linux that I reckon will get there before any real action happens on the Linux desktop front. What makes me think that? The snail's pace development of a truly usable Linux desktop for the masses.

They've been talking about it for so long (years), promising so much, saying that it's here, and yet...

I agree that for basic home/newbie users, a pretty interface is necessary but unlike your assertion, KDE, Gnome, whatever, don't all need to have a Start/Programs/Linux button, the window managers should be allowed flexibility. Ford, GM, Chrysler, etc don't all have the same symbols for functions, neither are the buttons in the same location but yet people still figure out how to put the car in gear, turn on the lights, change the radio volume, etc.

>>
What makes me think that? The snail's pace development of a truly usable Linux desktop for the masses.
>>

This is not true. In the last 2 or so years, a lot of improvements have been made. The pace of development has been amazingly fast, if anything. A whole lot of stuff still remains to be done, and I am sure that they will be addressed sooner than later.

Oh, the author forgot to mention compatibility with Windows Networks. Most businesses aren't likely or even able to replace their windows desktops all at once. Most would probably do a pilot project. Being able to integrate seemlessly into Windows networks is going to be important.

Who the hell are you and what are you doing on OSNews trolling about what Linux should look like?

Ok, that was a bit harsh. I'm planting my money in and around Zeta for the time being - a much nicer desktop OS shall grow from there than Linux could ever become.

Great article, it really shows why linux has not succeeded on the desktop, and it made me realize how it is a 100 miles from doing it aswell. Technical superiority is not enough, and when you see how much of what is needed to succeed, that has been acomplished in the last two year(almost nothing!) it makes me loose hope in linux.....

I'm a heavy user of multiple OS's. You name it, I either work with it or run it at work or home. Even still, I stick to things that are easy. Distros that are easy to install, customize, and most importantly 'meet my task needs' are what I go with. I couldn't agree more that Linux needs better direction if it is ever to have mainstream use.

I loaded up XP for my parents last year. They have successfully:
1) Played music and ripped MP3's.
2) Installed a printer.
3) Attached a digital camera and printed photos.
4) Got on the internet and successfully used multiple internet apps.
5) Installed and used multiple apps, and some games.

The point here isn't to praise my parents, it's to point out that I would never in my right mind have loaded ANY linux distro for them expecting those items above to have happened. I think it coins a new term ...
"Linux ... it's not your parents operating system."

The blessing of Linux is there are multiple ways of getting things done, from word processing to window managers. This is also a curse. When I spent two weeks using my Linux box while my Mac was in the shop and was I daunted by the bazillion choices I had and the general fustration of sound configuration (Note: I Love Linux).

I disagree with a Windows centric UI tho I understand the motivation behind it. Making things simpler mis alwaysa good idea. Let there be options for power users they can turn on.

I think Linux needs a UI that says "I'm Linux" rather than a Windows knockoff. If build simplicity in for a new user then the rest will follow.

It is all well and good if the clueless newbies want to stupify their systems. But all this talk of Grand Unified This and That scares me. The idea of having only a few distributions is just dumb, frankly. I happen to use a very obscure distribution, and that is fine. It is how I like it. I don't care if it isn't 'friendly', though others might, in which case they can pick another distribution. The choice of text editor is purely a matter of persional preference. Why limit users to whatever choice the distro cabal happens to prefer? By elemenating choices, you defete much of the point!

It seems that you want to keep the new user ever in the state of newness. This is a bad strategy. Let us face it: The computer is a complex device. The user should not be expected to use it without a little knowledge and intellegence. You don't expect anyone to be able to drive a car with no training, nor do you want to elimitate all but one or two kinds of cars so that people will not be confused by the choice. Why then do you do this with computers, which are much more complex than cars? Let the user learn. Make the user learn. He will be happier and more productive in the end. And whatever you do, don't try to standardize to the extent that you force whatever Joe wants on everybody else.

linux_baby, I disagree with your assessment. Though I think a lot has been done in the past few years (though not nearly enough), there are huge barriers, virtually all of which were addressed in the article. I don't see a third of those suggestions/recommendations being tackled in the next 5 years, to be honest with you.

David, I partly agree with you. If one takes the time to learn about his computer, he will be more productive. For people that use their computers a lot, this will be worth the trouble. For people that don't use their computer a lot or that just don't want to learn we need a good standard desktop.
As for me: please, let me have a choice of window managers, browsers etc.

David McCabe, I think you lost the point of the ease-of-use bit. John was saying that for newbies, choices should be limited (I agree). As they learn more, they can customize all they want. You are looking at things from your (geek) perspective. Not that there's anyting wrong with that, but given a choice of 50 programs that do the same thing, what does a newbie think? That is too much choice too soon. Those choices should be made when one is comfortable making them, or feels the need for them as their needs or taste dictates.

The defautls should be limited, simple, easy-to-use and standard. Where the user takes it from there is up to them and what they prefer in their own time, and as their needs dictate.

I'm talking from the point of view of the above average user, also a developer, but not a kernel hacker or something, and still one who wouldn't like complexities where they are not needed.
I think that all users, novice and advanced alike would agree on stuff like not needing that much simple text editors!


Re basic system functions shared between KDE and GNOME: www.freedesktop.org exists to define some standards for them, and RedHat already started patching KDE and GNOME a little in order to make them work together (i.e. shared mechanism for handling tray icons). RedHat also patched some programs (KDE, GNOME, OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc.) to work using the same printing system, and render fonts using the shared standard Xft2.


Re installation and RPM hell: some programs do have an installtion program ("# make install") which works pretty well, asks what's needed, checks the system and installs the appropriate stuff. This is how it is with Windows (InstallShield etc.), which doesn't make it right, but still... If only in Linux there were graphical installers and not command line "make install".


Re configuation files: some things do need such configuration files to maintain customizability (e.g. Apache), some need such files for extended tweaks but a GUI for regular configuration (XFree86), and of course some things should be easily configurable well via the GUI (e.g. printers)


Re shell is evil: I think shell is ok (I use it in Windows as well), and there are some good things you can do with it, but what should be eliminated is the requirement to use the shell, especially for basic tasks like the aforementioned installations. The point is not that it should be supressed, but rather that you could do all that you need without resorting to using the shell!


Re pretty does count, standartized theme: all fonts to be anti-aliased... like forcing all the programs to use Xft2, right?
RedHat's unification of KDE/Qt and GNOME/Gtk themes is great (stop bashing it people!). Not because my KDE and GNOME desktops look almost identical, but because I can run KPPP in GNOME or XMMS configuration in KDE and not care that they use different toolkits!!


Re jargon is our enemy: yayks!! Now that's scary! Couldn't understand almost anything...


Re games are important: I'm developing a cross-platform (Windows / Linux) game using SDL and OpenGL


Re hardware support: it's important to have binary comptability between distributions, so that I wouldn't have to compile stuff to make my digital camera work, and the manufacturer wouldn't have to expose some patents by giving the source code (now those who don't expose the source and do provide the drivers for linux have to compile it for every distribution and kernel version!!!)


RK.

Part of the problem is that users expectations for software installation are, well ... skewed and rather naive. Back in DOS days, yeah all you needed was a .COM file with everything shellacked in there and it'd run. Great.

But, computing has gotten more powerful and advanced since then. Programs aren't self-contained. Code reuse is rampant ("omg no!" you say, misguided), and shared libraries are actually shared. Programs are often just clever front-ends to libraries these days. They aren't the old .COM files you may remember, they are better - allowing your system to run leaner and to make things less complicated by having a consistent set of functionalities.

The users shouldn't be continually lied to about what's going on in their system. They should know that every application is a SET of components, not some huge monolithic black box. And while perhaps the current Linux solutions aren't the most user-friendly, they treat applications in the most "correct" way, as far as I'm concerned. They see them as components that are related, and not independent blocks. So, while perhaps in terms of presentation and interface to the user DOES need to be worked on, I don't think that the packaging systems are at fault for being honest about what an application really is.

>>The user should not be expected to use it without a little knowledge and intellegence.<<
>>Let the user learn. Make the user learn. He will be happier and more productive in the end.<<

Yes, BUT thanks to the widespread adoption of the web - the PC is increasing viewed as just another entertainment device - like a DVD player. It SHOULD be easy to use for those who NEED it to be. Most people do not want to learn about the inner workings of their computer, and truthfully they don't care.


>>You don't expect anyone to be able to drive a car with no training, nor do you want to elimitate all but one or two kinds of cars so that people will not be confused by the choice. Why then do you do this with computers, which are much more complex than cars?<<

Actually, yes we do, at least with very little training. The only thing we expect someone to do when driving a car is to drive it, fill it with gas, and maybe change the oil. Everything else is handled for them. Tell me, do you know how to manufacture gasoline or refine oil? No? How about replacing your transmission, or replacing pistons in your engine? Using some Linux programs, if you don't know exactly what you are doing, is like manufacturing gasoline or replacing a transmission. While this has gotten better in recent years - there is still a long way to go.

Just like most people use their cars:

Open the door, turn on the engine and off we go; if there is something unusual, the car will be taken care of by a mechanic, AAA or whatever.

Power users might see their computers like they see their car.

Average Joe sees his computer like he sees his microwave. He doesn't want to read the instructions, isn't interested in the thousand and one configuration options, all he wants is to put a bag in, close the door, hit a button and get popcorn out.

A master carpenter might be very picky about the size of his hammer, and the type of nails he's using, and the wood he's hammering into, and...and... The rest of us just see a hammer, nail, piece of wood and get to hammering.

A computer is just a tool, let the "experts" worry about fine tuning whatever "exacting" standards they have, but let the casual user pick up and go.

I loaded up Linux for myself last year. While relatives were here, they successfully:
1) Played music and ripped MP3's.
2) Used my printer.
3) Attached my digital camera and printed photos.
4) Got on the internet and successfully used multiple internet apps including sites like barney.com, ofoto, ebay, and hotmail.
5) Used multiple apps, and some games.

Everytime the come over, the first thing they do is head for my computer. They love the themes, and are always complementing it's speed.

The point here isn't to praise my parents, it's to point out that I would never in my right mind have traded ANY linux distro for XP and have expected those items above to have happened. I think it coins a new term ...

"Linux ... it's everyone's operating system."

I agree with most of the article however, I don't see why we should transform linux in a copy of windows, trying to do this is having already lost the battle. This has been said better than i will ever be able to say it, check these links :
when Interfaces go crufty - http://mpt.phrasewise.com/stories/storyReader$374
why the current interfaces aren't as good as you may think
Microsoft, Innovation, and linux - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,768274,00.asp
why it would be a bad idea to try and turn linux in nothing more than a pale imitation of windows

It's not just joe users that require simplicity, people that actually have use linux at work want simplicity as well, i can only speak for myself, but comparing the time that is required to configure a vpn under xp and on linux, installing a network printer, dns server etc, i mean, i don't want to spend all day messing through stupid little config files, this kind of configuration should be done automatically, wizards save a lot of time.

are useless, you configure something once and forget about it. No big deal in either OS.

I am reading quite some feedback here which I don't agree with.

a) First of all http://www.freedesktop.org standards are neither approved by ANSI or DIN. I would rather call the writings there 'suggestions'. Please don't come up and try turn the facts. These are NO standards. If you follow the discussion on certain GNOME mailinglists then most of the time only 2-3 people talk about some "STANDARDS" and after a while it shows up on there because they didn't come up with better alternatives. Sometimes it looks like better BAD solutions than no solutions. It is claimed that KDE shares most of it but that is partially true.

b) Many people here split the userbase up into novice, advantage and expert. This is right - but we talk about Linux all the time here. You can't turn Linux into an easy to go Desktop Operating System and make users belive how easy everything is. Needless to mention that a lot of people simply don't want it. Sure if you use a plain distribution like Redhat you may be satisfied with what is offered but there is still a lot of things that even a novice user HAS to know about linux to get things running correctly. There are a lot of situations where the novice user hits his head against a wall because he does not go any further.

c) People are talking about GNOME here as if it's the only Desktop that everyone uses. But this isn't the case. Compared to the overall Linux users the GNOME community is rather little and on the long run you don't get through with all your wishes and changes that you GNOME people like to see how linux should mature. A lot of normal people won't be happy with these ideas and make this public.

I am neither favoring KDE nor GNOME but I know both Desktops very well and I must admit that both Desktops have their pros and cons. My general point is that people tend to categorize users TO easy. It's easy saying 'hey we get the ultimative cool desktop on Linux for the Novice joe user and the poweruser' but you always make the same mistake. You ignore the fact that the base OS is COMPLEX, COMPLICATED and nothing for JOE USER. there is only one case where linux may become interesting for JOE USER. The time when JOE USER wants to become a POWER USER.

Look on what plattforms GNOME is available, SUN SOLARIS, FREEBSD, LINUX (and many more) needless to say that the first 3 named ones are more complex (even for experts) than the last named one. I think that this discussion about novice and professional users together with linux in one sentence is rather bullshit.

Anyways I wish everyone a happy new year.

I'm sorry but this is a huge outburst of skepticism which I believe will not happend and frankly i hope it does not. Why not use a word processor instead of a text editor?? Because text editors are not just used for writing a letter to auntie sue. The are mainly used for editing configuration files, code.. etc. For example, I prefer vi for writing python code, emacs for c/c++ and ee for config files.

Basic system administration tasks should not be made WIZARDISH. That is one of the main reasons why windows is such a sham for sysadmins. You make decisions but ultimately you don't know what changes have been made. The editing of text files is so much simpler. When editing most *nix config files, its usually just a matter of seeing where the gaps are, filling them or commenting/uncommenting lines that are well explained within the file.

I agree that the EU market needs the option of a Low. I.Q distro. What the change your suggesting is so radical that I believe would be missing the point of why *nix is superior to win32.

Ultimately though, I think that there should always be newbie and HARDCORE!!! distros available.

Please Aitvo, stop. You don't troll tactfully and its starting to grate on my nerves. Every time I read a post of yours, I can almost see you sitting at your computer chanting "Linux Can Do No Wrong!" over and over again.

You havn't offered anything useful to this thread aside from re-wording someone else's post into the opposite of what their experience was amd labeling it as your own. Furthermore you're over simplifying things with half baked notions that you configure something once and forget about it. You don't do that with everything.

Here are a few I know that are not like how you say:

FTP servers - the entire interface for vsftpd is CLI and config file driven... adding new/banning old users? ...playing with .conf files.

Webserver - adding a new server? one with a new .dso module? ... playing with more configs.

Icecast - adding new music? playing with config files.

So rather than adding nothing to the threat other than to show that pretty much view linux as nirvana. Why not give specific examples of why you think certain things are unecessary to change? Or even explain why you feel the current suggestion is not better. Geez, your going to give everyone the idea that Tampa (where I live too) is the epitome of Denial-ville.

Another 'task' to add to the list. I am pretty sure that the end-user isn't going to know how to make menuconfig and set up SCSI support just to bund a CD. Auto-detection of CD-RWs isn't too great at the moment, either.

Linux will transform into a real desktop OS. It doesn't matter what the childish anti-social geeks think or want. The only thing most of them have ever done for Linux is writing yet another IRC client. Every important part of the Linux OS is already in the hands of professionals who know what quality software is. For example easy and painless driver installations are not a sign of "stupidification" but of quality sofware. Spending a whole week to configure your system is not "power using" it's pervert geek S/M. "Power users" just like normal users use the computer to get work done (tm). They use it as a tool and not as a toy. They don't wet their pants while trying to get their soundcard working. Really just ignore these "I'm so elite and you're stupid" fools. They are stupid losers and they have nothing to say. GNOME, Evolution, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Nautilus, etc. all big commercial distros are controlled by cooperations who care about cooperate and end users. Let the loser geeks rot in the cellar. They have nothing to say.

Huh?

No no no no no. No eliminating choices. AGREEING ON DEFAULTS. Have the choices be reletively transparent to anyone who isn't interested in them. And to those who are interested, have it be as simple as them saying 'Hey, I want some options here' ala clicking on 'advanced options' or something like that.

Average Joe wants something that just works. Go for it... But let's not alienate the power users who can tweak their piece of hardware to do some incredible and astounding things, or simply to adjust it to their needs.

In a nutshell? Make it easy for those who just want it to work. Leave it powerful and customizable for those of us who are 'power users'.

How? Use defaults for everything. Make them work - Period.

Anyone who wants more than what they're served on a silver platter, can have it... Just a mouse click or two away (or keyboard shortcut to a console;))

"there is only one case where linux may become interesting for JOE USER. The time when JOE USER wants to become a POWER USER."

In times where important essential rights are threatened by things like TCPA, Palladium, etc. there is an other much stronger reason why Joe User becomes interessted in Linux. That is freedom.

The wish to have a system which is controlled by you and not the other way around is nothing which qualifies Joe as power user.

Yeah, I haven't touched a config file since October. You magically move to SERVER functions even though we are having a discussion about Linux desktops. Guess what, My Fuji Camera was supported out of the box, as was my pocket zip, Linksys wireless (The PCMCIA version), my USB mouse, and every single other piece of hardware in this notebook. I reworded the comment yes, and it is still true, I have done it with those very results. Sorry bubba, I'm not trolling those that claim it's not ready for the desktop are. It may not be ready for THEIR desktops, but it's definately ready.

A lot of the changes you are proposing involves large sets of modifications to third party applications (many which has little to nothing to do with Linux, except for the fact that they can run under it) such as XFree, Gnome, XMMS etc. What about those of us who are not using Linux, but are using those applications? And what about Linux users not using XFree, but rather Accelerated X or some other X server. Sure it would be nice with a neat graphical control panel with all settings, but since Linux, and Unix, systems provide a freedom for users to select, and use, multiple applications - many of which are providing the same basic functionality, but in different packages - it would be hard to impossible to create a single settings application. A much better approach, imho, would be to create a configuration applet standard, and a small application that could load all those configuration applets (one for each application requiring configuration, installed together with the actual app) and generate a nice control panel. (GUI or CLI)

Btw, look at the FreeBSD sysinstall application, it may not be a fancy GUI but it provides settings for the entire system, ranging from disks setup to package administration and XFree configuration.
Talking about FreeBSD (and this goes for Net and Open as well) the package manager is outstanding, either you download a package yourself or through the official package collection and when you try to install it all dependencies are automatically solved. (and unlike dpkg it does not try to reinstall something that has already been installed outisde of the package manager).

---
A very satisfied FreeBSD user who has a hard time understanding why osnews continuously reefers to most GNU and Unix applications as Linux apps. (Btw, Linux is just the kernel, the complete OS is GNU/Linux).

Low I.Q distro? *ROFL* Quite a lot of smart people use Windows/MacOS. In fact most of them do. The difference is that they have a life. That means they rather not spend their time sitting in the cellar trying to get their scanner working. Every stupid kid can learn to use Linux. It's just that most people (smart or not) don't want to waste their life reading man pages. We have girl/boyfriends and such stuff, you know.

Linux is complex yes. But MacOS X or Windows XP are just as complex under the hood. The trick is to abstract/hide the complexity behind a nice interface. Redhat, Ximian, Sun etc. will do this for Linux. You can't stop it.

FH: <em>> The PC is increasing viewed as just another entertainment device -- like a DVD player.</em>

Well, view it as you will, a PC is a general-purpose numerical computation machine. Appliences are available to those who want them. But let us not distort one thing because some people want it to be an entirely different thing. Each device for its purpose: A DVD player or `web applience' for brainless entertainment, a PC for what will you, but the core design of PC operation should not be mutilated for people who are wanting to use it without proper training or time.


FH: <em>> Actually, yes we do, at least with very little training. The only thing we expect someone to do when driving a car is to drive it, fill it with gas, and maybe change the oil. Everything else is handled for them. Tell me, do you know how to manufacture gasoline or refine oil? No?</em>

I'm not asking for kernel hacking here. But I do want them to know that red means stop, green means go, don't drive in a turn lane, use the correct gear for the terrian, etc. These things they learn in a class and prove they know with a test. I will not redesign the road system so that any idiot who's never touched a car before can hop in, press a button at random, and suddonly by swept away to wherever he wants to go. That's just silly.

"Basic system administration tasks should not be made WIZARDISH. That is one of the main reasons why windows is such a sham for sysadmins."

Yes I agree with you, I don't particularly like wizards, but there is a between ground, and not just wizards or text editing of config files.

"The editing of text files is so much simpler. When editing most *nix config files, its usually just a matter of seeing where the gaps are, filling them or commenting/uncommenting lines that are well explained within the file."

Yes I know this method quite well, and I like it a lot. Specifically because I know what has been changed. However, there is no reason to force people to sift thru 9pages of commented out lines looking for the one they really need to uncomment. Futher more the documention included in the file is a brief synopsis at best.

Again, why not implement a UI for configuration that is much easier. Right now it seems to be like this:

Scan thru *.config file, full of lines like this one:

##Uncommenting this will the set the uis to an int value.
#setuis=0

While simultaniously looking at other window of man pages so I can get at least a basic understanding of what setuis is.

What is wrong with have a specific UI tool for setting up a programs options. For instance, have a options menu for selecting/unselecting options that you want. There is no reason why this can't go an parse the .config and make the necessary changes for you. Futhermore you can integrate it with the help system so the you don't have to open multiple apps just to figure out what a specific flag does. Plently of programs in linux do this already - gftp, and lokkit are two off the top of my head.

Anybody putting out a Linux distro who is thinking about making it a desktop OS should be made to read this article. Brillant.

And the screen cap of technical jargon had me laughing so hard I cried. Technical writing is a component of my job which is why I find bad technical writing so funny ... when I'm not on the receiving end of it. (And, incidentally, bad technical writing played a part in why I found my 1 month trial of Corel Linux a few years back so incredibly frustrating. In several very important places TFM and reality had only a passing acquaintance.)

> Power users might see their computers like they see their car.
> Average Joe sees his computer like he sees his microwave.

Well sorry, Joe, but I don't care how you 'see' it. A car is a car wether you want it to be a microwave or not. And a computer is much more analogus to a car.

Kreechah, I agree with you, but the question is: Can they? Will they? He has suggested 'deprecating' the shell, which is a very bad idea. The user will be happier if he knows the shell, and does this deprecation make the shell less viable to use?

"You magically move to SERVER functions even though we are having a discussion about Linux desktops."

Does that mean that windows XP home and pro are server versions of their product? I believe those are advertiesed as for Home users and those have web and ftp servers included with them. Granted not the safest to use - but definitely easy to setup.

As for the average joe not using a server function on his desktop like FTP or Apache fine, my views may be off. However, in my experience, there are quite a lot of average joe college students doing exactly that with the random ftp shareware proggie they cracked so they could setup ftp shares for IRC channels.

> However, there is no reason to force people to sift thru 9pages of commented out lines looking for the one they
> really need to uncomment.
So instead they shift through 9 tabs of check boxes and text fields looking for the one they really need to check. And they can't even grep or i-search.


> While simultaniously looking at other window of man pages...
While simultaniously looking at the slower-than-tar and incomplete HTML help or tooltips.

Could someone explain to me how GUIs make this stuff easier?

"Does that mean that windows XP home and pro are server versions of their product? I believe those are advertiesed as for Home users and those have web and ftp servers included with them. Granted not the safest to use - but definitely easy to setup."

No, however we are talking about the average user. The average user doesn't even know that he or she can serve websites with XP. ;-)

"As for the average joe not using a server function on his desktop like FTP or Apache fine, my views may be off. However, in my experience, there are quite a lot of average joe college students doing exactly that with the random ftp shareware proggie they cracked so they could setup ftp shares for IRC channels."

I agree, however these folks will manage to configure their computers and expect to make changes when need be. Even FTP and WWW are configure once for the most part, unless they are in the development cycle.

It sounds like the author wants BeOS. I don't have the time to go into this articles' contradictions in detail, so I'll just pick one -device drivers:
HW Manufacturers should be able to write a single device driver for all Linuxes (paraphrased)
This implies that the ABI (because you don't mean the API, surely; users don't want to have to compile the thing!) has to stay still for everyone - 2.2, 2.4, and 2.6, not to mention 2.8, 3.0, ad infinitum, because HW manufacturers come and go, with no change or improvement.
They have to cope with developing drivers for (or losing support for) DOS, Win3.1, WinNT, Win9x, WinME, WinXP, from the Microsoft stable alone. If they want to sell to MacOS users, they need to develop a MacOS 9 and MacOS X driver, at the minimum. If they want those remaining OS/2 users to buy their hardware, they have to write an OS/2 driver.

This is a choice on the part of the hardware manufacturer.

If they also want Linux support, you seem to be proposing that I go to www.my-hw-vendor.com/linux, click "install" and get a driver which will run on my Linux distribution.

Do you care to explain how this could be done, so that I could use, say, a USB Scanner, on my Intel laptop and my SPARC desktop? How exactly would that binary be composed?
Maybe the Linux developers should redesign all the architectures Linux supports, so that they will all accept a single binary format?

We already have one major vendor taking this approach - nVidia. I was *so* thankful when my nVidia card died, and I had an excuse to use my i815's onboard SVGA. With the nVidia binary driver, the machine kept crashing unexpectedly (hmm, similar to Windows, where drivers are the most likely culprit for a crash. Strange you're advocating a move towards the Windows model). Of course, I couldn't ask LKML for any support - neither they nor I know what is in that module. Now I'm back to Linux's own i815 driver, it works perfectly, but if for some reason it did not, I would be able to get support for it.

Linux (and this article is a great example of why phrases like GNU/Linux should be more common - Linux is the kernel, RedHat, Debian, etc, are Linux+GNU+Other Stuff but the author only sees the Linux buzzword) does not need to kowtow to hardware manufacturers for support. Linux is not sales-driven, HW manufacturers are sales-driven. Therefore it is the HW vendors who need to embrace Linux (if they want Linux users to buy their hardware), rather than Linux crippling itself for the convenience of HW vendors.

As I said, I don't have much time, but this is a long enough response to a single point mentioned in the article ... If you want, say, Lindows, to take this approach, then write to them, and convince them of your ideas.

...

I like the shell, and I know how to use it. A lot people don't though, and don't really want to learn, and I respect that. Basically, I think the author of the article just meant that the shell shouldn't be at the forefront of the operating system, and shouldn't be an absolute necessity for average Joe.

In other words, have it where average Joe could go for years and not ever have to touch the console, but still have it there, to the side, out of the way, with all of it's functionality, for those who want to get under the hood and do something with it.

I guess it would depend on what market you went for. When I sold computers (I owned the business), I specialised in machines that were $NZ5000 plus. That is, systems running a *NIX/*BSD or Linux, with quality components like serverworks chipset motherboard, ECC memory, dual Xeon etc etc.

If your father sells to Joe Blow, I think the best he can hope for, is 15% of consumers wanting a machine with Linux. Until companies move to a non-Microsoft alternative, people won't move.

There is so much talking about making Linux better suit begining computer users' needs. And it would be nice if some of them (those, who care) could try Linux. In fact there are some distributions who are seeking that goal -- Lindows, Lycoris, Xandros and some others. But it is important to care about what experienced Linux users need, too. So, can someone write an article about what a real hardcore Linux geek needs and publish it on OSNews, that all the world could see that Linux isn't only for newbies? :-)

I have no trouble understanding that message, even though I've never heard of Pango or Defoma before. Just use your brain a little bit...

Pango must have something to do with fonts, and it keeps a file with a list of font-related configuraions. Defoma must be some kind of tool to help manage the said font configuraion. See, it's easy.

Newbies must be made to learn this sort of analetical thinking, rather than glaze over as soon as a new word pops up, than call me or just randomly click stuff unil the scary message goes away. In order to use a computer, the user must assert some reasioning skills. Therefore, we should not attempt to let people use it without them. The user doesn't have to know a lot, but the user must have an additude of figuring things out and learning.

This is a huge rock in the middle of Australia, hide under there.

BEOS IS DEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Get it. It is dead, gone, finished, un-recoverable. It is about time people stopped flogging a dead horse. If you turned around and said that QNX RTP has a future, then atleast I could see some positive/optimistic truths in the statements, as it has all the qualities for a winning OS.

No, I am not a BeOS basher. I bought 4.0 when it was first released, then bought 5.0 Professional when it was released. Unlike you, I have seen the result. All I can say is that I threw $400 in total to a company that was poorly managed, and a lack of any technological arguments to why the baby should be thrown out with the bath water.

Had they started with a BSD/OS base (from Windriver), and then built a GUI ontop, then, IMHO, they would have had a more sucessful time converting people over.

http://linux.com/pollBooth.pl?section=index&qid=1486&aid=-1

Linux (of course) 18% 6567 / 18%

Windows only 27% 9550 / 27%

i appreciate your point on your folks being able to accomplish all those basic but nifty (for the masses) tasks.

but i don't think your parents represent the majority.

i've done so much consulting work for soho users that i'm inclined to stick with the belief that most users are dumber then sticks when it comes to computers.

sure i'll find a guy who installed his own printer, and setup his mp3 mobile device.

i also cleaned off 3 trojans, removed at least two spyware executables, deactived about FIFTY items running in the tray...removed a proxy that he had somehow been added to, removed bugbear, and disabled microsoft client/server services.

this is not a way for me to defend linux or anything.

i do in part agree that out of the box, xp might be easier for most.

so basically linux is still out of reach for those who can't setup stuff.

but i've setup my aunt and uncle with debian.

i did all the configuration for them.

they can:

1. surf the web and send email, spam & ad free. (showed them how to enable/disable popups)

2. access the games that are on the system, i.e. gltron, tuxracer, minesweeper, all the card games etc. installed a few extra for the kids.

3. rip CDs and make mp3s

4. type of txt documents, spread sheets

5. burn CDs

basically...after i was done with it...i put all their icons on the task bar, and ran them through all the stuff.

they are quite happy, and the machine was very stable and problem free.

no ads, no viruses, no trojans, their 2 gigahertz machine actually runs like a 2 gigahertz machine because they are not inundated with bullshit. no websites can take over their desktop.

Yes it did take some work on my part...but i've imaged their system partitions...so that if it gets jacked, i just restore the image.

is linux for diy and out of the box?

no.

but i see the potential...it's there. a couple more years will go buy and things will be better...not worse.

i'm not even sure if anyone should be in a hurry or rushed.

xp works for most...but there is a great alternative for some.

My parents run Windows XP, and the most they use is a scanner, which is supported by Linux. Here is a clear up:

I loaded up XP for my parents last year. They have successfully:
1) Played music and ripped MP3's.

People don't rip MP3s. Ask Joe and Jane, and they wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about. My mother puts in her Seekers (its an Australia "feel good" music group from the 1970's). She doesn't give a toss about Mp3, ogg, wma or what ever tla you can throw at her. She wants to listen to her music and type letters and check email.

The only people I know who are into Mp3's are teenagers, who have the knowledge to use what is available on Linux already. If you say to me that someone can't use GRIP, then god help them, because I don'y know a program easier than that, which rips and compresses whilst playing the CD.

2) Installed a printer.

what is so hard with loading up KDE Admin? or better yet, my brother, who I have setup with FreeBSD 4.7 simply clicks on a short cut, and it taken directly to http://localhost:631 so he can see the printing progress. As for setting up printers, he was able to do it himself using the wizard that comes with CUP's. He is happy that is computer now doesn't freeze when compiling papers for his University entrace assignments.

3) Attached a digital camera and printed photos.

Again, the majority of people you parents age don't use Digital Camera's, even so, wouldn't it be easier to hook up the camera to the printer and bypass all the download, open and print crap all together?

4) Got on the internet and successfully used multiple internet apps.

Can do that with Linux already. All the person has to do is make sure that Java is installed, which, since most people don't install the OS, they get the same person who installs the PCI card or what ever, they're the ones who setup and install the OS.

5) Installed and used multiple apps, and some games.

Can be easily done in FreeBSD. I've already taught my brother how to use /stand/sysinstall and the portage system. btw, my brother has no computing background, his main forte is Chemistry. Same situation for my sister who is at university who is majoring in Art History and English. She is able to do all what my brother can.

That is one thing I do like, the MacOS GUI, especially the first version of the MacOS Server that was released. It was very cool.

What I would like to see is a AmigaOS like interface for Linux, which doesn't carry all the bagage of Windows. The only aspect I don't like about MacOS X, like Windows XP, is the childish interface, even the classic Windows, it is stil childish.

When I want to use a computer, I want to have a boring interface that is straight forward, like IRIX's 4DWM or CDE, which both use Motif. I especially like 4DWM as it takes the good aspects of MacOS + AmigaOS and produces a snappy desktop.

I would PAY (a small amount) for a HIGH QUALITY Amiga like GUI for Linux. :-)

Agreed to a certain degree. Lets look on the other side. You spend $NZ3000 on a computer, wouldn't it be prudent to ensure that you get the most out of your computer by learning and utilising all its capabilities?

For me, why spend money on something when all you are going to use it for is as a glorified type writer and internet access box, you might as well buy a type writer and get a Internet Terminal running QNX or some other embedded OS.

People have been comparing computers with cars and microwave ovens - cars can (clearly) kill people very easily; microwaves can destroy themselves easily enough (just put something metal into it) - computers are, compared to these, far more benign.

CARS:Most people need to spend a few months learning to drive, from a certified instructor, before being allowed onto the road.<BR>
If "Nobody told me that "# rm -rf /" would kill the machine" is a reasonable complaint, does that mean that "Nobody told me that driving at 150mph would be likely to kill 5 people" is proof of the car's poor design?

Microwave Ovens:These come with a book, as do PCs, which most people do not read. They are rather simpler to use than a car or a PC, and the main things you need to know, are: Do not put metal in it; Do not put dehydrated items in it.
That's pretty straightforward, and it's a single-purpose device. PCs are multi-purpose devices.

--------------

On another slant, the "My Parents" theme:
My parents, my wife, my sisters, all got me to configure their PCs for them, whether Windows or Linux. My brother seems to have done his own quite happily, but that's 5/6 people (83%) of my immediate family prefer to have a geek configure their machine, than do it themselves, regardless of the OS.
My wife uses Linux because I refuse to pay for a Windows license, and refuse to steal one. If she was prepared to pay for Windows, she can have it; while she's happy with what Linux offers, she keeps that.
In both cases, so long as the machine is configured properly, allows access to the web and email, word processing and spreadsheets, from a single click, they don't care what the OS is.
If they had to configure the OS themselves, however, they'd be staring at a blank screen still, whether they'd chosen Windows or Linux.

This subject keeps coming up, because people say "I'll try Linux ... ooh, hard to install." They seem to have forgotten installing Windows. Install Windows, easy enough. Job done? No. Get the printer's CD-ROM, find out what version of Windows you have, find that part of the CD, click on a .INF file? Maybe the setup.exe file? Or let Windows find the "Best" driver for you? Maybe you should go to the vendor's website, though, for the latest version? Download that, get WinZip, unzip it, see what's in it, find a setup.exe or .inf file, pick one, guess what to do, finally get the printer configured. Repeat for your sound card, video card, scanner, camera, etc etc etc. Oh, but do get your Mobo driver first, because it might have some stuff which changes how the others work.

People seem to have higher expectations on Linux usability as compared to Windows, when it is touted as a technically superior OS, not an easier OS.
If we were discussing BeOS, or Windows from a Linux user's perspective, I could understand this attitude, but the only way this could be achieved would be if you bought a sealed black-box machine with Linux preinstalled and configured on a ROM. (I still like my BBC Micro, which did this, but we need something more flexible these days)

Steve

>>>i also cleaned off 3 trojans, removed at least two spyware executables, deactived about FIFTY items running in the tray...removed a proxy that he had somehow been added to, removed bugbear, and disabled microsoft client/server services.

my point here was that xp is very easy for the masses to accomplish basic tasks...because of the "out of the box" ease of use....but there is a price.

if anyone here claims to be ignorant of that price...you are doing so just for the sake of being a troll, or flamebait.

sure i use xp and i don't have any problems, but we are talking about how well the ignorant masses are served.

sure linux is not easy as pie...but it's not that far off either.

and xp? the masses do have a price to pay for their free lunch (i.e. not really having to invest time in learning how to TRULY operate their computer)

1. If they want an entertainment device, they should by several single purpose devices to cut down on complexity, hence the rise of Internet terminals.

2. You should know how Petrol is refined, in terms of of producing Diesel, Petrol, the gunge used on roads etc. IIRC, that was covered in Forth Form Science under hydrocarbons, which covered how petrol is defined and process. IIRC, around the age of 13/14 years.

You give the example of a carpenter, now, I am no woodwork guru, however, I take an interest in ensuring I buy a quality hammer, and, IMHO, the best equipment I have picked up so far is Stanley. Sure, you can buy the cheap stuff, but don't expect it to last the distance.

Webmin can do all that stuff. If you did a bit of research, you would know that the default interface for configuration of stuff in SCO Linux 4.0 is Webmin, you would also know that the majority of things can be done quite nicely via a webbrowser or a wizard.

I don't know how oil is refined, but I know to put unleaded in my car, not diesel. It was a decision I made when buying the car, aware of the car-cost/petrol-cost/environmental tradeoff in the purchase. So I had to know something about how these things are (if not how they work).

And I had to remember it, and remember it each time I fill up. It's not difficult.

(Americans stop reading here....)
We've all seen the American police shows, where some idiot gets into a car with a bottle of whisky and a shotgun, and an IQ of 3. Do we really want these people in a car? Do we really want him thinking the PC is the DVD player?

You should atleast know the additive which increases the octane level of unleaded petrol.

Basic chemistry that most people should have learnt. It isn't complicated. I'm not asking you describe the chemical make up of cyclohexane for goodness sake.

Please, understand that this is not a troll. But it seems to me like submissions to this website are written by untechnical folks that seem to think GUIs are the be all and end all. Furthermore, they don't understand the techincal end (which is one of, if not the, most important aspects of the topic).

This is an excellent article - well, it's a really bad article, but could provoke some excellent discussion, like the discussion (can't find the link) on newsforge.com which ended up becoming http://www.theopencd.org/

This discussion could come up with useful things, too, but the format of "reply to the whole thing" means that interesting threads cannot be built up independantly.

If OSNews.com had threading, it could become a crucial site - as is, it's an interesting place to see *nix vs. Windows idiocy.

I don't "know the additive which increases the octane level of unleaded petrol." So shoot me.

I do know what a red light and a green light mean, and the difference between first and fifth gear. I know what a clutch does (and have had that critical experience of learning how to use it effectively, by stalling enough times when I learned to drive).

I don't ask that PC users know the details of how RAM and hard disks work, but that they know the difference between them. I've lost count of the number of people who've bought extra RAM because they didn't have enough disk space to install another program. Of course, it doesn't solve the problem. I'm sure a mechanic could (frequently does, for all I know) make fun of me for not knowing the details of the fuel I use, but at least I know how to use my PC, and how to drive.

I used to drive a VW Polo, and tinker with it a lot. Now I drive a Vectra, which has a "computer-controlled" Engine Management System. This benefits me how? It turns on a EMS light on the dash, so I take it to the dealer, who plugs in his (closed) gizmo, and says "It's revving too high, that's £80 to fix", or (honestly) "It's reporting a fault in the AirCon system, so it's running in a less economical mode" - the car does not have aircon. If I had access to the system (or car) I have paid hard cash for, I could fix such a bug, but because the car I own is controlled by buggy software I do not own, I have to pay someone to fix a "problem" which did not exist in the first place.

That's a difference between cars and PCs - I would never be forced to pay a vendor to fix his own bugs, but with this car (made by Vauxhall, aka General Motors, a big enough company) I have to pay the vendor to fix their own bugs, or live with unreliability and an economically unfeasable system. That reminds me too much of Microsoft, but (to give them credit) they tend to fix their bugs for free, if 3 months too late.

Listen a lot of the things could be a hell of a lot easier.

There are easy solutions to half the issues listed if the distros had the balls to really seriously try. Then again there are problems that are not going to be resolved quickly because this is open source.

Lets take the four most frequent bitches about linux.

1. Software Installation

If RH8 had apt capabilities built into their package installation program, you could for example download any old rpm and if there was some sort of dependency missing it would tell you and then start the downloading the required packages. Correct me if I am wrong but Mandrake already even has something like this.

Right now I have so many bloody libs on my box 90%+ of anything I download in rpm format and I doubleclick on will install with no issues but you cannot expect an average user to deal with this for sure.

2. Hardware support.

Ok, you could say this is a lost cause, after all, you are pretty much at the mercy of the hardware folks. I remember the dark days of Apple when some hardware folks did not even bothering support Macs until the iMac came around. However, if the United Linux, Mandrake, IBM and RedHat COMPANIES came together as a group and asserted their corporate influence I think the situation would improve over night. There would still be some proprietary drivers but that is going to be the case anyway.

3. Admin tools.

SuSE is better than most for server as well as user related Tools. Redhat in my opinion the easiest to use tools and the best set of user centric desktop-focused tools. Every distro should have:

NIS client/server setup tool
LDAP client/server setup tool
Network shares tool that let you export and import samba and nfs shares with an option for advanced options for those admins running a server. The hell with the NFS server tools available for most distros and swat is nice but if you are going to do the tool do it right. I got this idea from the Ximian Setup Tools.
Http server tool.
DNS setup tool.
Time server setup.
Mysql or preferably a postgres db server setup tool and yes I mean it.

Some distros have some of these but any major service you can put on the box should have a good graphical configuration tool or you should stop bothering and wasting your bloody time and just include the best configuration tool for *nixes around, webmin.

4. Slow gui.

This one is odd. I find linux faster than Mac OS X. A bit slower in terms of application startup and responsiveness in the apps than XP. However, in terms of responsiveness under load better than XP. I have said before that the Xfree86 guys, the gnome and kde folks, the guys in charge of gtk, qt , OpenOffice and the mozilla folks should all be locked in a building and not allowed to leave until they figured out how to make the gui experience better for the user. Yes, have better kernel frambuffer support would help but it ain't all the fault of X. The widget tool set, window manager folks and the desktop folks all have a little bit of the blame to hold. BTW, it ain't as fast BeOS, faster than Mac OSX and a bit slower than XP unless you run more than 4 Microsoft products at once and then Linux is more responsive. Yes, Outlook is still a frickin' resource hog and IE too.

In general, linux is still an alternative OS based on opensource work and projects. Linux is based off of thousands of little projects mostly hosted and worked on by volunteers. RH, SuSE and Mandrake all just package those projects up add a couple of cool setup tools and maybe a theme and then tell you to go to it. Don't be fooled.

I like Unix. I like the command line. The cygwin tools and every other unix toolset on NT solution feels like a hollow hack. I like having a dozen choices and like being able to make my desktop look different every other day of the week for months without hitting the same window manager. I am a tinkerer. I do not mind looking through a Hardware Compatibility List before buying a peripheral. I live with the annoyance. I don't randomly install programs off the net. If I want an app, I look to see if it is in the apt list of apps in synaptic (a gui app) click on it and then click install. I know that is soo hard and difficult and unreasonable but I do not mind. There are limitations and things that you live with when it comes to XP. I am not going into it because I will not on the OS-bashing trek.

It all depends on what you like whether or not you will like Linux. I use it at home and work and enjoy it. Then again I am Unix sysadmin with 7 years of IT experience. My wife likes it too because linux has more desktop games (Tetris, Mahjong and others right out of the box than XP).

Just remember that the distros are still trying to put the polish on something that is the collective effort of thousands of different projects created by almost millions of different programmers all over the world and make it feel like one unified OS. Good luck. I got into linux because it was different than Windows and I liked Unix.

Linux will never be enough like Windows to please half the people posting here and they should stick with XP.

Well...as usual, this seems to have degenerated into a Win/*nix battle. With of course, some people espousing BeOS in the middle...

But, here goes. I've used Windows in the past and I use Linux currently. I am very happy with what Linux offers - BUT - I know that there are lots of things that Windows does better.

1) Linux is the underdog. This means that in order to grab market share it has to be *significantly* better and cheaper than Windows. This is one of the things that will accelerate change. Right now, although some components of Desktop Linux (DL) are good, others are woefully inadequate.

2) Linux is crufty. This is both a good and bad thing. One major good point is that older unix based applications can be moved to Linux with relative ease. This is part of the reason why Linux has had such great success in the server space. Its much easier to move to Linux that say...move to Windows. The bad thing is that you have much much less flexibility with which to rework the system and incorporate new ideas.

3) X11. Well...what can I say. I use X, but I'm none too fond of it. 'Cruftiness' definitely applies to X. It needs serious rework. It's slow... It suffers from a lack of focus sometimes... I would be _extremely_ pleased to see an alternate windowing system such as Fresco replace it, but I am pragmatic. Video card drivers, toolkits etc, all center around X and for all this talk [me included], we seem to be doing very little work to help X alternatives.

4) Lack of standardization. Very big deal. There is no standard sound daemon. Check out mediaapplicationserver.net for something that looks like a credible replacement for both ESD and aRTS. In the 2.6 kernel ALSA and OSS will be included. Its a good guess that OSS will be used for a long long time. There is no standard printing system. There is no standard packaging system. Even though the filesystem is 'supposedly' standardized - the reality is far different. Each distro has their own ideas as to how to deal with packages.

Many Linux proponents will state that this is not a problem. Although I like Linux, I think this is a *major* problem. A software developer has to work overtime to support/write code for all the various Linux systems out there. You should not have to worry about which printing system will exist on a specific person's computer or what sound server they're running. You should know that there are defaults that are being followed by the community. Most packagers will get around this by writing software for specific distributions (works on RedHat 7.x, SuSe 7.x etc). Other's will lose out...

5) Software installation. I use apt-get. Yeah its easy. But I'm not in luck if I don't have a Debian package. From that point on, things disentegrate. Usually to get what I want, I build it from source. _No_ user who wants to get _work_ done will do that. I understand that approach. No, I do not think the Windows approach will work. Why not? Because Windows programs are self contained and a lot of Linux software is dependent on libs provided elsewhere. I think Linux software will require an alternate installation method. Whatever it is - it'll have to be of the form where people can simply go a website, download, double click and it'll work. ALWAYS.

Also apt-get works only because of the committed (and large) Debian community...

It's nice to think of a way in which a lot of this is swept clean and we can start anew. There's a lot to be said for that approach. But the truth is that Linux does have a lot of momentum and its probably better to work with what we've got.

Oh yeah...as Jonathan mentioned above - drivers.

Binary drivers are a fact of life. I prefer free [open] drivers a lot, but I am pragmatic. (I am not however fond of companies that just throw the specs to the wind and say - go ahead - implement. ALthough it is a start).

It would be ideal for people to be able to download a driver and install it. Without worrying if it was copmiled with gcc 2.95 or gcc 3.x or so on. They don't want to have to deal with that...

I want to thank the author for an excellent article written from the non-Linux guru's point of view. I get sick of the constant rantings and ravings of Linux-elitists on how making a distro easier to admin is "the devil". I think a copy of this article should be sent to every developer of every major distro that is attempting to create a viable Linux desktop/Windows replacment.

I just can't comprehend why people are resist in making Linux a little bit easier to use and more accesbile for the the masses. If you are a true power user, then you can modify any default settings, install/remove the packages, and do whatever else you want....so what are you bitching about? If you want the shell, it should be there. If you want a wizard, it should be there. If that doesn't work for you, there will ALWAYS be true power user distros such as Gentoo, Slackware and Debian for you to use.

Can somebody tell me (taking about the the big picture here) what harm it cause if Linux is made easier to admin/use for non-techie types?

The way I see it, the easier it is to admin/use, the more people will get a chance to use a free, flexible and excellent OS. The more people that use it, the more MS loses it's monopolistic grip on the desktop, more ISVs will start porting their apps to Linux, and there will be more hardware support.

John, very good points. You've got me rethinking about my computer expectations on a lot of areas.

I hope some strong leadership or 'glorious' trend takes off with this article in their library.

"Are we trying to make our own system or everyone's?"
(Congratulations if you got this far in the comment list....)

I got one of these from BT; they insisted that they come and confiugre the line itslef. They would not touch the PC (Windows 9x supported, nothing else) regardless of the OS. This modem works under Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux.

Of these I know Linux the best, and configured the modem (thanks to http://speedtouch.sf.net/). I became aware that others had problems going through the documentation, so I created http://speedtouchconf.sf.net/ which is basically the existing code plus a script to configure it all. It doesn't have a pretty GUI; maybe someone else will feel like creating one, if so, good for them. But what I have written, allows a user to run ./speedtouchconf.sh from a Terminal Window (shock! horror!) and get their modem configured under Linux.

I have made life easier for some Linux users. If someone feels that a GUI would be better, feel free to write one - use anything/everything in my script, it's all GPL.

I've offered something, more than I needed (my modem works, thank you). Alcatel (Thomson, now) are less than forthcoming with details about their modem, but a lot of people have made a massive contribution to *nix users. I have added an extra level of simplification. If you fancy going the extra step and making a GUI, feel free. Don't complain to me that there is no GUI, though. I have given you enough for free, and you can take my code, make it a GUI, and call it your own.

As I have no GUI skills, but understand what is needed to configure this modem, I have offered what I have. If you have GUI skills, feel free to take this script and make a GUI out of it, if that is what tickles your belly-button.

Just taking one concrete example from the wilderness -there are lots of utils like this, which use CLI / textfiles / etc to configure. All of these are (IMHO) superior to the Windows Registry. Any documentation on that? Please? For anyone - developer or user?

I have no trouble understanding that message, even though I've never heard of Pango or Defoma before. Just use your brain a little bit...

Pango must have something to do with fonts, and it keeps a file with a list of font-related configuraions. Defoma must be some kind of tool to help manage the said font configuraion. See, it's easy.>>>

Okay, that bit wasn't so hard to figure out. But that still doesn't help me.

"Something to do with fonts?" What kind of something? Will this change other settings on my computer? what will it do for my fonts? Figuring out that it has "something to do with fonts" still leaves 98% of what I'd like to know unsaid.

"Some kind of tool?" What does this tool do? Why do I need it? Can I get by without it? Will it play nicely with the other tools in the box. Is it a screwdriver but I really need a wrench?

It's like saying "Milton's line 'Silence ye troubled waves, and thou deep, peace!' illustrates spondee."

You can deduce that "spondee" has something to do with the line in question, but unless you consult a search engine, a dictionary of literary terms, or are an english major that sentence, though grammatically correct, has very little meaning.

Does spondee describe the emotional effect produced by the line? Verb tense? The syllables in the line? Time period in which Milton wrote? Something to do with the number of times the letter S occurs? Was it a very spontaneous line?


And keep in mind that while in the midst of an OS or program install one generally does not have the luxury of reaching for a dictionary of Linuxary terms or the option to do a google search.

There are three types of people that ever bother using linux:

1. They have used Unix at school or work and they want *nix-like OS at home. Linux is easier to install and maintain than BSD or Solaris x86 at this time in terms of GUI tools and such and makes an excellent choice. After all, linux started off as a unix style desktop OS for x86 machines.

2. There are people who simply do not like the Windows way of doing things interface wise. They might like linux or they may not it all depends. They will either like linux, use BeOS or something else like Mac OSX. Like I said it all depends on their individual experience with linux or the other alternative OSes available.

3. There are people who hate Microsoft. This is the category I feel that the author is in. Most of these individuals want linux to behave just like Microsoft products without the MS tax. For the most part, these people end up hating linux. They will hate linux now and they will hate it three years from now no matter how easy it becomes. Why? Linux will never be Windows and should not be. There is already one Windows out there and in little ways both KDE and gnome are trying to look beyond the Windows way of doing things while copying the best qualities of XP and other OSes.

Does this mean that linux shouldn't become easier to use and have better software installation and gui tools?

No. I have stated my opinions on this in a previous post.

Does this mean that I am just a MS hating troll? No. If XP does the job for you or if you are a serious PC gamer or if you just like XP for goodness sakes use it and forget the politics.

If you want to learn a different way of doing things and you understand you are dealing with an alternative OS then try linux out.

BTW, on another topic, boyo said that he should be able to download a driver and not worry which gcc it was compiled with and he is right. I could make excuses by saying that this is just the early stages of implementation of distros using this version of gcc. I will not. I will say that RedHat should have re-compiled the Nvidia stuff themselves as best they could and donated back to Nvidia a rpm with the proper scripts to force its loading on startup so people would not have to muck with the nonsense of recompiling the source rpm themselves. Bad RedHat in this regard. Distros are not huge powerful companies and they should not assume the universe will blindly follow their lead. They need to help the HW manufacturers out in this regard.

However, the one excuse I will make is that many manufacturers did not have proper working non-glitchy drivers ready for the XP launch either. I have heard the horror stories of having to search like mad or deal with drivers that would just not work.

BTW, that was not MS's fault but the HW folks not catching up in time.

RedHat should have re-compiled the Nvidia stuff themselves as best they could

RedHat are not able to do this while nVidia refuse to release their source.

I installed RedHat 8.0 on my machine with a nVidia card, it seemed to install the XFree driver, which didn't work too well (because NV won't say how it works) so "upgraded" to NV's own driver, which killed the machine, regularly but unpredictably.

what is important is that a Perl application can add itself to the menu whether it is running under either KDE or Gnome and have its application run.

As I said earlier, I wrote a shell script (http://speedtouchconf.sf.net/) - it should *not* be part of GNOME, KDE, or any other desktop. I cannot even conceive how it could be. It's a run-once, then forget it script. Even a common script, if everything you download threw itself into your menu, you'd be overloaded.

Personally (though I use IceWM, so I'm not "typical"), really good stuff gets into my toolbar because I've used it enough that I can be bothered to edit the config file to give it an icon - this idea of icons on the "desktop" makes no sense to me whatsoever: That MS hack of a desktop button to minimise all windows so you can see the desktop in order to see other icons? C'mon! I've got less that 12 icons in my taskbar for my key apps, including MGT, from which I can launch anything else (for ee I'd want to select a directory, then choose files with a `find . -type x -size x` command, anyway.

I agree with John's article in the main and it's obvious that not everyone had read it completely. On the issue of defaults and making things easier for the first time user, for example, John never said to *eliminate* VI, JED, emacs and the zillions of other text editors. He said to simply choose one as the easiest-to-use DEFAULT.

In other words, pick one text editor (please!) and let the newbie see that one, and that one only, when he/she clicks the programs menu. As the newbie gains experience, he/she can learn about the other choices and use them if they prefer.

On the issue of making the OS easier to use: I, too, am a long-time PC user. I started with DOS 1.0 on a Zenith Z100 and progressed on up to Windows 98, at which point I switched to Linux.

This is Deja Vu all over again for me in some ways. When Windows was first introduced, it was deprecated by the long-time DOS users. "Too simple." "People should LEARN how to use a computer, not just click icons."

The SAME arguments. EXACTLY the same that are being used for Linux now.

What John is saying is spot on. The botton line is, if you want Linux to remain a niche operating system (perhaps gaining dominance in servers someday, though even that's not guaranteed), then keep it hard for the newbie.

If you want it to succeed, make it to where the average user can *USE* his/her system without jumping through hoops.

It's just that simple. John's article is dead on the money.

Sorry Steve wrong answer.

Parts of the source is not free and I think someone will correct me on this I am sure that part of the source rpms comes in binary format.

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1890&page=2

In this story on OSnews the author goes through the pain of recompiling the rpms for the Nvidia drivers for RH8 no less.

The ltmodems also had to be recompiled and forced no less to work initially with RH8 because part of the source rpm was in binary format.

..over the last decade there's been a huge push to get the message across that using a computer is (or can be) a simple and rewarding experience. Microsoft, Apple, IBM and others have advertised for years along the lines of "..just click here and you're away", which has helped to make computing rapidly and readily accessible to non-technophiles. Just look at the web and the way it's evolved over the last 7 or so years...not to mention how easy it now is to navigate and search for information with sites like Google and Yahoo.

My point is...you can't expect people to go backwards when it comes to ease of use...nor can you hide behind some of the irrelevant elitism of some of the posters on this and many other linux-centric sites with lines like "well you don't just jump in a car without taking lessons first". Like it or not, the pc WILL become just another consumer device, so it needs to start acting and working like one. MS and Apple know this and are doing everything they can to get it there.

I agree with the tagline "Linux is for everyone"...but some of the comments that appear before this line really seem to insinuate "Linux is for everyone that bothers to spend as much time as I do learning the ins and outs of their system".

Also, a comment was posted earlier about a driver install under Windows being just as difficult and time consuming as anything else. Sorry, but that's just rubbish. The majority of hardware installs are a case of plug it in, turn it on, then follow a simple wizard. More often than not Windows will figure out what it is, how it should be setup and what driver to use. I've been using RH8 for a while now and let me tell you, trying to get some of my devices to work the way they should has been a frustrating experience.

I'm willing to persevere with it because I enjoy the challenge of it all. I'd really like GNU/Linux to succeed because I believe in the idea behind the free exchange of information and knowlege for the benefit of all, so I'm making sure that my skills are up to date when it does, but it definately ain't ready for the average user yet.

In a nutshell I guess what I'm saying is that improving ease of use is a no brainer if GNU/Linux even hopes to reach the masses. As they say, the mountain ain't gonna come to Mohammed.

Most hardcore linux users have the knee jerk reaction I want my OS to remain niche and elite and I do not want it to get easy.

Why?

Read what many people refer to as easy. Half the stuff is just please make it more like Windows as opposed to suggesting graphical easy ways of accomplishing linux tasks in a new way or a linux way. Most old-time linux users did not leave windows simply because they hated Microsoft.

They hated Windows and do not want linux to simply be a Windows clone so some silly I hate big bad corporate M$ bugger can proclaim proudly that they do not contribute to the monopoly. Honestly, I have no clue why they don't just buy Apple and be done with it.

This may shock some of the XP fans out there because it is a fine OS in many ways but they left linux because they hated Windows. They hated the crashes, the blue-screens, the files locked with no apps running, in general the Visual Basic widget hacked fugly windows 95/98, NT 4.0 way of doing things. They hated Windows, not Bill Gates (they love to make fun of him though) and not Microsoft. They know linux will not ever be windows-like enough to satisify the hordes of BeOS refugees, and the M$ hating zealots who grew up on the tit of the monopoly.

Old school linux users learned to like Unix and the command line that the above BeOS, M$ refugees despise. They are skeptical of most tools save the few that have grown outside the distro halls like Webmin which I have used and found to be most complete for server use.

Sure, it is elitist. Sure most the fears are unfounded.

However, I wish that the BeOS/Mac OSX folks would stop all the negative linux sucks use OpenBe-Mac-whatever long enough to add some constructive advice. It would be cool to hear some other views of ways to do things.

Gnome has implemented fontillus which is a drag and drop way of installing fonts that is vew Mac'ish in my opinion. It would be nice to get more such ideas and have people express this to their favorite distros or the bugzilla or their favorite gui project.

Instead there are all the Windows folks just screaming for an add/remove programs clone and whining over binary drivers that are not going to come unless the hardware manufacturing gods deem it necessary to open the specs or shit the binaries down on us from above.

This scares the hell out of the old-timers because it is clear that a lot of people calling for linux to become easier are just fussing that it is not like the OS they just left.

There are other people that have made some very nice suggestions that go beyond simply calling for a clone. Still, people seemed to have a problem understanding why linux folks are so wary of the calls for change.

I have stated the reasons.

No all of them are warranted or real or right but people keep wondering out loud why linux folks hate all this desktop simplification talk and I have told you why I think it is so.

Why do people constantly complain about X being slow without a shred of evidence! Even if X is slow, at least its not vaporware, like the countless Amiga/BeOS/OS2 "revival" projects out there.

It's not supposed to be, X biggest quality is network transparency, it's based on a client/server model, wich (basically) allows you to remotely run graphical operations on you pc, however, all of this means just overhead for deskop use, since you don't need a server if you're only running one client (desktop). There's also the sockets issue and other stuff:
http://www.std.org/msm/common/WhyX.pdf

Anyway, so that X can behave more "desktop like" they add all these extentions to X and all sort of crap that just made it the bloated frankenstein that it is today.

Just my 32Mb of ram(ts)

I use both Windows XP pro and Redhat 8.0 at home. I would switch to Linux fulltime only if I had these two things -
1. A good CD burner program which is as intuitive as Nero.
2. A reliabe firewall, much like ZoneAlarm pro.

Other than these two things, I am absolutely no gripes against using linux. It has everything I need and it can be configured with only a little bit of tinkering. Frankly, you can't ask more for the price of free!

That's what Google is for. Furthermore, if you are installing Pango, you probably know what it is.

Also note how the message is slanted towards using whatsisname, so you have a general feeling this would be the 'normal' thing.

I suppose if you wanted to make it really easy, you could make hyperlinks to definitions. But really, how hard is it to fire up the Google Glosery and read a ditty about it?

For CD burning, try K3B. Easy to use and simple interface. Works great under RH8 as well and you don't have to setup mock SCSI drivers for most CDR/CDRW drives.

> Most hardcore linux users ... want my OS
> to remain ... elite ...

Sure. But that's silly. With Mandrake, for example, I can blow out everything related to X and just bang around at a bash prompt. Mandrake doesn't *stop* me from doing things at a command prompt, but they give me the *option* of doing things in a GUI.

> Read what many people refer to as easy.
> Half the stuff is just please make it
> more like Windows ...

Sure again; there's a lot of truth to that. But not in all cases, and it's certainly not true in my case. I want something *better* (and I do believe that Linux *is* inherently better -- even in the user interface: I like KDE's multiple desktops, for example).

But there is no logical reason why I should be *required* to edit the fstab file in a text editor. Anything that can be done to a plain-text config file can be done via a GUI interface. Again, Mandrake does this, which is why I prefer their distribution.

I tried RedHat 8.0 a couple of weeks ago and was really surprised at how much more difficult it was to tweak. I figured if Mandrake had that nice interface, surely RedHat would, too! I was wrong. When I searched the help and how-to docs on getting it to mount my old Windows partition, for example, it said -- sure enough! -- that I needed to edit fstab. Why?

You see, if there was a logical reason *why*, after several years, it was still necessary to edit these config files manually, I might understand it. But there isn't. The fact that Mandrake lets me config my system from the get-go in a GUI is proof to me that it doesn't have to be that way.

> They hated the crashes, the blue-screens,
> the files locked with no apps running ...

... the hangs on shutdown, the need to reboot everytime I
installed just about any program package ... I've got a list of my own.

> all the Windows folks just screaming for
> an add/remove ...

Now, that's a little unfair, IMNHO. Speaking as a former Windows user, there's nothing wrong with liking the fact that I can usually insert a CD and have an installed program with the click of a few buttons.

I'm not a newbie by any stretch, but the first time I hit a dependency problem under Linux, I very nearly lost what little hair I have left.[g] And again, I hate to sound like a Mandrake commercial, but their software installer (and uninstaller) is top-notch. And again, if they can do it, why can't everyone else?

The only reason I can figure is what you allude to: some distributions are AFRAID to do this for fear that they'll run off the hard-core elitists.

See what I'm saying? Not that Mandrake doesn't have
problems; it certainly does. There are bugs in its
distribution that still need to be worked out. But the
framework for everything that John asked for in his
original article is there.

It CAN be done, if -- as you say -- the oldtimers and elitists will finally realize that there is joy in clicking widgets to set up a line in fstab, as opposed to editing the file in vi.

I think this article is *almost* dead on. However there are certain things here that will NEVER happen. One of the things I have to disagree with is the branding issue. Not that it is a terrible idea. It would be nice. But it isn't the way this community works. It will never be the way the community works. Why?

Redhat has no reason to brand their distribution with anything other than Redhat. Let's say for instance my brother borrows my computer and it has Redhat 8.0 installed on it. He plays around a bit, likes it, and decides to keep using. The first thing he will do is ask me for a copy of my redhat cds, assuming I'm not around, he would go download them. Maybe eventually he'd try other distros, but a recognizable brand just earned Redhat a user, which is good for redhat and the linux community. Gnome and KDE will continue to have the names Gnome and KDE in their line because guess what! Gnome and KDE are not linux exclusive. They are made to work with a variety of unixes from GNU Hurd, to Solaris, to the BSDs. They can't go slapping linux on all of their graphics, and why would they want to?

Everything else was pretty good I thought (although some of it is asking a bit much). One of the finest points of the article was the applications suggestions. He is dead on. Why are there so many text editors? All there really needs to be on a distro is a Notepad like editor, an emacs style editor, and a choice between a vi or pico style editor. Nothing else is really needed (most users won't use anything other than the notepad one). Another good suggestion was clip-art stuff. I may get around to making and/or packaging some of that myself. It is about time I contributed to a community that has handed me this wonderful OS completely free of charge.

As I said before, I apprecciate the article. However, I don't believe the writer has enough knowledge of typical Linux operatings systems to truly deal with certain subjects. Some things he request already exist, such as DVD support (I prefer ogle). He also asks for among other things email and word processors. Ximian Evolution is an excellent email client that many converts will find strangely familiar. OpenOffice has slowly and quietly become a powerful office suite. Is OpenOffice as good as MS Office? I don't think so. But MS office sure isn't $200 better than OpenOffice.

Why does linux have any hope at all at becoming a mass market Desktop OS. An true desktop alternative has already come and gone, or did everyone forget Beos so soon? Why should Linux be able to do well where Beos failed? The thing that killed Beos was 1)MS telling OEM's that they couldn't ship another OS and 2) OEM's actually weren't interested in shipping another OS. Why would OEM's embrace linux all of a sudden? What's changed?

The bottom line is unless it comes bundled with every PC, linux has a snowball's chance in hell of every gaining any noticable market share on the desktop. The only way you win hearts and minds is to force users to have no choice, and I don't how you can do that while at the same time upholding the principals of freedom of choice.

BTW the average windows user, doesn't know what windows explorer is, doesn't know what a driver is or how to install one, and hasn't changed any of their browser settings. Your telling me these people are going to be able to use linux? In what lifetime? Shit look at how much better Mozilla is compare to IE. You'd think the fact it doesn't involve reloading and entirely different OS would make people flock to it in droves, yet it has only 1-3% market share. Explain if people are so eager to leave the MS Internet experience why things like Mozilla and Opera aren't more popular? People like MS software plain and simple no matter how much you tell them they're evil or that the software is insecure. Its going to take BillG kicking them in the balls before they conside looking for alternatives, and I heard Bill doesn't like to touch others so take that FWIW.

^^^^^^^^^^^^
BTW, I say this as someone who left windows when Redhat 5.0 came out. I love linux, but I'm not delusional enough to still think linux has a chance of becoming a popular desktop OS. That's just not gonna happen.

I have read many insults on this and various other message boards about how hardcore linux users don't want an add/remove program clone. All I have to say is... why? Having a central control panel with which to add and remove programs IS GOOD. I am not saying people should have to use it. But un-install/install logic is helpful. I can see why it is less necessary in a linux environment as most libraries exist on your system already and are shared by the programs that use them. But some programs I install just choose to throw config files all over the place. They stick stuff all my system and it can be a pain to figure out what goes with what program. It is like a shitbomb exploded in my pc. Usually it isn't worth my time to uninstall something after I add. If I don't want it I leave it there. I have plenty of space and experiment with different distros enough that it's never too long before another format anyways. However, removing programs shouldn't be such a pain.

I agree with most points made in the article. As mentioned in the conclusion, one obstacle to "getting there" is because the linux community is so dispersed, fractionated, divided (whatever the term). And to get a simple task done redefines the old joke about "how many [linux developers] it takes to screw in a light bulb." What linux really needs is a few talented people working on each task mentioned in the article individually. But to have these developers working, they need money. What it boils down to then, is money. Linux needs a benefactor, someone with a lot of money--i.e. someone with money and ready to croak--who could then hire these talents to work and publish their masterpieces to the community, open sourced/public domain. Something like http://johnvu.net/blog/archives/000002.html">what . My bias is to have graphic artists hired to spruce up the desktop--make it rival OS X and enviable by all.

> ... Linux will transform into a real desktop OS ...

No problem with this.

> ... Every important part of the Linux OS is already in
> the hands of professionals who know what quality
> software is ...

Which ones ? Look at GNOME (This is not Linux but I wanted to make an example here) and the stupid changes that you get in 2.2

GNOME-PANEL:
- You could choose the Iconsize shown in the panel.
It used to have 16 pixel, 24 pixel, 32pixel ... and now they renamed it to 'S, M, L, XL, XXL' ... How Professional is this ? Now I don't even know if XL is 64 pixel or XXL I as user need to play triva now.

CONTROL-CENTER:
- Once you could go into the control center and choose things like Themes for Metacity or any other Window manager. You went there looked for Themes and you changed them. Today you need to deal with phrases like 'Window Border Decoration' (For all that look confused now it's meant to be the 'Metacity Themes' .. How professional is this ?

GCONF:
- If you don't care for your system then you don't care for GCONF anyways but everytime I look at my GCONF dir I need to puke. Even GCONF-Editor reminds me horrible of Window-Registry ... How professional is this ?

These were only a bunch of examples this list can easily be extended but you people may be aware of this situation on your own. Please wait until 2.2 of GNOME comes out. I am all for a Desktop that is easy, productive and good to handle but there is no need to Idiotify the people. Make a good Desktop, make a working Desktop but don't start to act as if JOE user (specially those that switched to an U*nix like system) is a stupid person. What I wanted to show you is that the so called 'Professionals that know what JOE USER wants is not so professional in first place'.

I want to add one more point to my last posting.

Deal with following assumption:

Let's say we give JOE USER the new glossary like S, M, L, XL, XXL for the icons. Now half year later this Guy has to do some work for his school or uni and everything he heard was that icons can only be of size S, M, L, XL, XXL now he talks with 5 different people whose 4 of them know the right terminology as it was used for the past 30 years of computer business. The guy says 'I want some icons of the size XL' I bet the 4 people will look confused in the first minutes and one of them may ask him 'Hey wha do you mean by XL ? XL is no valid measurement of Iconsizes. How many pixels do you want ?' The other guy will look totally confused now because he don't know what pixels is (maybe he knows) then he replies 'Sorry I don't know how many pixels XL Icons are'. What you do with GNOME right now is you split the userbase up by totally re-inventing a complete new glossary. A glossary that doesn't match the known values of the past 30 years.

There are NO XL, XXL, S, M icons. these measurement values are for clothes only. If you ask me how big an XL icon is then I'd replied double the size of my 17" monitor.

This is not professionalism this is pure nonsense.

Look at below link. Search for the comment of 'herzi' and read it. There are a bunch of even people that contribute to GNOME for many years who point out what they don't like so please don't call it a single user problem. http://tinyurl.com/3yce I just post this here in case you want some contexts.

If you look closer you'll see that it labels XL 80 pixels right there in the properties pane. It's a NON issue. (I can post a screenshot if you'd like.)

Low I.Q distro? *ROFL* Quite a lot of smart people use Windows/MacOS. In fact most of them do. The difference is that they have a life. That means they rather not spend their time sitting in the cellar trying to get their scanner working. Every stupid kid can learn to use Linux. It's just that most people (smart or not) don't want to waste their life reading man pages. We have girl/boyfriends and such stuff, you know.

I have a life, that's why I don't spend a lot of time fighting with MS Word for something that will look arse, when I can just type text in emacs/vi and run it through LaTeX and I get professional typographic quality in less time than people spend with Word. It is also why i'm using FreeBSD as my desktop so I don't have to spend my time reinstalling stuff in Win2k when it breaks all by itself (yes, even with Microsoft signed drivers).

If you don't want to "waste your life" learning or reading anything new then you will always be clueless. The more effort you put into doing new things the more you will get back. You don't have to learn the same thing over and over you know...


Linux is complex yes. But MacOS X or Windows XP are just as complex under the hood. The trick is to abstract/hide the complexity behind a nice interface. Redhat, Ximian, Sun etc. will do this for Linux. You can't stop it.

XP is just dumbing things down, and I will never use an OS that treats it's users as criminals (the product activation crap).

Can I run all my programs and games on it?

no. but there are some programs and games which are similar to the ones you want.

What is an operating system?

the short and only slightly innacurate answer is that if programs are trains, then the operating system is the points, rails and stations. the real explanation is complicated.

How is Linux any different from Windows?

linux and windows are built with very different assumptions. windows is made by microsoft for people who want the latest programs and games and dont what to know anything deeper about their computer. linux is made by developers all over the world for themselves and is very difficult to use unless you know your computer in detail. linux users don't switch their computers off every night...

Isn't Windows (or Microsoft) the best?

'the best' is a very subjective term. windows is 'the best' at running most software. some may argue that MacOS or BeOS is 'the best' at being easy to use. linux (and systems like it) are 'the best' at being customised to run complicated tasks for long periods without breaking down or letting anyone break in.

Can I try it out?

sure. go to http://www.knoppix.org and download their CD. its linux without a lot of the hassle.

If it's free, it can't be any good, can it?

well, i wonder how many free things you use without realising it... this site is free and its good, winzip is free and good. linux may be made by volunteers, but most of them are very higly trained volunteers.

Who is going to help me when I have problems?

yourself. linux has the advantage of being very well documented. if, on the console, you type "man <something>" where something is the command you want to know about, then an online manual page will appear for it. if you prefer offline help then there are many books already to help you. if you still have problems, but have read and understood all the relevant documentation, then ask on one of several newsgroups and mailing lists for this topic. make sure to choose the "newbie" list, as often the main "linux" list is for discussions about linux, not giving help. read the FAQ for the list/channel as this will tell you if there is an etiquette for the list/channel.

1. do we really need to appeal to end users?

2. do we really need people like you writing these articles?

i mean, i can think of good reasons to bring more end users in (and they are all ethical) but everytime i read articles like yours telling OTHERS what they have to do i get frustrated...
I started using Linux in 1998 (it was a RedHat) because i wanted the freedom to do what i wanted the way i wanted, that's why i can say that all this standardization is not a good thing, i don't want to do my stuff the way RedHat decides or the way SuSE wants, but i want the choice.
Of course an end user wants just things to be done, that's why RedHat or SuSE (or Mandrake) exists, you'd better talk of improving those distros or create one by yourself with the things you like instead of talking about "improving linux", i think you understand this means nothing. Try to go to BMW and tell them to "improve the engine" while you meant "improve your car", i don't think they'll understand. Just remember LINUX IS JUST THE KERNEL!!! if you want an easy to use OS talk about distributions, you want an easier RH or something else? don't tell us, tell them.
What drives OpenSource development is need and fun, maybe nobody needs an easier Kmail, but maybe SuSE needs it, so tell them to improve the application, not the community.
To say it short, the comunity only developes what needs (that's why Linux is useful) not what the market needs, you'd better talk to someone who must survive in the market (like some commercial distro)

The article raises some useful points, IMHO. Good thing someone has had the trouble to organize ideas. If more people did this on every topic Linux needs improvement our problems would be 50% solved by now.

OTOH, arguing wether Linux is fit or not for the desktop is moot. Three different store chains hit the news recently as they were going to sell Linux desktops. I´ve been to two of them and they are really for sale. KDE-based desktops, possibly with Gnome installed, too.

Linux is ready to be sold. Is it ready to be used? I think so. If someone wants to use other systems, at least with me, no problem. I even don´t want Microsoft to "die" (by I´d like to see 3 or 4 other desktop alternatives doing well, which would lower MS´ market share to 33% at most).

BTW, when can you say the dawn ended and the day really started? Linux _is_ ready. Windows users are afraid of it because it means change. My advice: get used to Linux while you still can get an edge. Sooner than you think you´ll see that learning Linux won´t mean much -- as some 140 countries will be actively using it.

It´s something more or less like using the imperial units system (which Americans wrongly call English system of units): you can choose to use something weird and inefficient, but don´t ask others to use it, too.

just another point...

the Add/Remove stuff is already in KDE, look at the KDE package manager, or if you a re a Gentoo user like me, look a t Portage, you even have KPortage on the GUI side, nothing easier to sinstall an app, fire up kportage, search the app you need (or it's description) and click "merge" then you have your app installed. (ok it has to compile, but remember, portage can even install binary packages...)

> If you look closer you'll see that it labels XL 80
> pixels right there in the properties pane. It's a NON
> issue. (I can post a screenshot if you'd like.)

The question is, why was XL, M,... added there in first place ? And why did they changed it to a pixel value again ? I call this bad concepts and planning. Another proof for professionality ? Someone wrote here that these people are professionals. If this was the case then why do they:

a) remove all the stuff or change all the stuff
b) figure out that it sucks because people complan
c) and put that shit back there ?

They are changing around in the Desktop without basic clue without even knowing what they are doing and why they are doing it. It would be good for them instead of wasting hours of nonsens on IRC or on some stupid parties if they would concentrate on a real plan.

A piece of paper, write down what you want to fo for GNOME 2.2 and 2.4 and do exactly this. Concentrate on exactly these things and done.

Their dotplan for example is worth nothing. You get all couple of weeks a summary telling you 'You are here <date>' (we are planning stringfreeze).

Good stringfreeze but what stuff does actually go inside it and what targets should get approaced for that release. They only pointed out some 3-4 tools that got in, some gstreamer hallfassed support for gnome-media and that was about it. I mean as more I watch whats going on on GNOME and as more I go deeper into the materies of GNOME as more I figure out that there are no concepts behind it.

First, let me bash the "brand" section. Creating a brand is only useful if there is a huge advertising budget to make Linux a household name. This was the strategy behind "Intel Inside", and may work for Linux. Except for one tiny weeny problem - LINUX HAS NO ADVERTISING BUDGET!

Sure, you can make a brand without advertising, like Google, but that too would be hard. Each Linux company always focuses on its uniqueness, and thus creating a multi-company brand is next to impossible.

Now, though matter how much you try, I don't think Linux would get the consumer desktop before the corporate desktop. There is a number of reasons

1) Cost - most consumers get Windows with their machines. Rarely do they upgrade (if they do, it cost $100). I have friends that still use Windows 3.1! So unless they justify a upgrade, they wouldn't upgrade. And if they could justify a upgrade, they wouldn't be interested in Linux, period.

2) Then as for security, most consumers are ignorant and don't know how good Linux's security really is compared to Windows. Most of them couldn't care less. The biggest security risks they are afraid of is viruses, but switch them all over to Linux, viola, Linux would get viruses too.

Besides, even if Windows manage to get out security fixes fast, most consumers don't update their system often. They do it rarely. With newer versions, they have a dialog nagging them to update, but I notice many just ignore it.

3) As for Microsoft being a monopoly, most consumers wouldn't go out and buy a unfamilar system just because Microsoft is a monopoly. Heck, many still bought Standard Oil's fuel even with the bad monopoly press, and only stop when it was no longer dirt cheap.

4) As for commercial developers, the best way is not to attract consumers with promises of free goodies an gaining marketshare. These companies want to make money, and most likely, Linux isn't going to provide that. If Adobe makes a version of Photoshop available on Linux, even with a huge consumer market share, do you think it would be profitable?

Linux is so close to becoming #2 is the desktop market, yet hardly any commercial developers. Meanwhile, Apple is getting loads of them. Why? They all know the Mac market is profitable, while Linux isn't.

5) Technically, Windows and Linux is very different. On the consumer front, it is very different too. For example, lets bring up the issue of browsers. All major distributions, with the exception of Mandrake, use either Mozilla or something based on it. Windows uses IE, which works very differently on the UI stand than Mozilla.

6) Low-income people, if can't afford a computer with Windows, I don't think they can afford a computer without Windows. The average price for a computer is between $800-900, I don't think they can't afford Windows.

Most people couldn't care less if they have Windows 98 or Windows XP, as long as Windows 98 works. Unless you haven't notice, consumers aren't heavy users. They rarely use their computers, and when they do, it isn't memory intensive and isn't on for a long time. In that case, I don't see what's so wrong with Windows 98, especially since Linux probably have less features than it.

The way I see it, windows just has a different target audience than linux/bsd. Linux is trying to broaden its audience, but doing so, care should be taken not to leave the old audience.
Me personally, I _hate_ GUI's, wizards, ... and I just _love_ human-readable config files. Frankly, I don't care if john doe uses windows or linux or even bsd, as long as nobody touches my favorite kind of OS But then again, they always ask me to solve their problems, and after about an hour on a windows box, I just can't take it anymore and run back to my trusty openbsd box
Converting windows users isn't easy. They all expect that they can do everything they could do before in less than a week. Hereby they just plain forget how many years it took them to learn those things in windows.
Unices are, imho, all about giving the sysadmin total control over the system. Windows is all about giving the user as _little_ control over the system as possible. These are opposite goals, designed for opposite groups of users. So if linux is going to target the mainstream, it is going to lose some (a lot) of its qualities.
However, there are other ways. Apple managed to create a hyper userfriendly and dummyproof OS, which is built on a solid BSD foundation, and, by just opening a console, gives us geeks all the power we want. Now if I could only afford a mac... (though... I'd still just install OpenBSD on it anyway :p)

Having read the article and the 100 posts so far, it seems that a lot of the usability advocates don't really want Linux in particular. They want a free and more stable Windows, or a free and faster OS X. Of course, neither will happen because they're both proprietary, so let's shoehorn Linux into what we want.

Power users will be fine as long as they can still get to the command line and do things their way. Yes, he major desktops are becoming more user-friendly with each release, but at the same time, I don't think the Linux developer community will allow any really harmful or misguided changes, for example, getting rid of text config files, or redoing the filesystem. We really don't have to worry about seeing a "My Programs" folder under the root where all programs are installed by default, although it's rightfully scary when a user suggests that sort of thing.

>If you don't want to "waste your life" learning or reading anything new then you will always be clueless.

You don't get it, right? Not everyone is interested as much in computer technology as you are and that's good! There are people with other interests. They rather spend their time by painting a picture, studying history or whatever instead of memorizing the vi keys. And that's the difference between a geek toy and a desktop OS. You can use desktop OSs even if you don't want to spend a lot of time learning how to use them. They are a tool not something to make love with.

There is so much knowledge available that you have to focus your interests. It's amazing that you haven't realized this basic fact of modern human life by now.

The only people who are stupid and clueless around here are the geeks that seem to lack any understanding of the world outside of Emacs (yes, there is something out there).

This has gotten a lot of talk since I went to bed, went asleep and came back to work.

I used the add/remove programs as an example of something that windows users always ask for. The problem with the add/remove programs tool in Windows is one due to the way that linux has been developed and is one that cannot easily be translated because of dependencies. Almost every distro has a package tool and I like aspects of every single one of them. However, the problem is that any linux add programs remove progams tool will have to work in a drastically different way than the windows tool. Why?

Linux like Unix itself has grown organically. It did not sprout full-grown from the development of any one company. In fact it is supported by a host of companies and each project is comprimised for the most part by people who at the core of the project are doing projects because they think they are fun and are moved but not concerned by the fact that people like the distro makers are trying to make a stable product out of it.

How does this relate to package installation?

Gnumeric needs libgsf for example and libgnomeprint and other things. All these packages that gnumeric need are maintained and coded by different people that may or may not even work on gnumeric. As maintainer of distros, the natural inclination is to keep these packages seperate which leads to dependency issues. You try to install gnumeric and you need either a newer version or need to install one of these dependencies. You could try to roll the libs up into bigger packages and that might help or if you are trying to maintain those packages might actually be more of a headache. Until some of these lib packages are consolidated , the solution is to tie a user-friendly package program with an apt solution. I stated this another post.

Mandrake does something like this I understand with urpmi.

This would lead to the following example.

User downloads neato rpm off of a site.

He doubleclicks on the rpm and it warns him of dependencies.

The package program downloads those dependencies for the user and installs or updates the system with the dependencies.

As for the remove part, most package managers make removing an app as easy as unchecking a box or highlighting the app and clicking remove.

The issue for program add/remove is this:

1) Old-timers never tell newbies to go to the package management tool and click remove. To add rpms, they are not told to simply doubleclick the package and watch out for dependency warnings for RH8 to use as an example. In every mailing list, newbies are instructed to go to the command line and type rpm -e to remove or rpm -Uvh to add a program.
It seems from some of the posts that people have no idea that many of the package management tools exist or you can add a program will a doubleclick and giving the root password. It is like people do not even know the gui tools are there.

2) Package managers no matter how well built have to deal with the dependency issues and the linux community as a hold needs to work on how to consolidate the lib groups in a logical manner that will not drive the maintainers insane.

3) Because of the issues surrounding the way linux is different from windows a program add/remove tool is going to work differently and look a bit different that its Windows counterpart. For Macs, the process is radically different with installation involving simply dragging the program to a folder. They don't have a program add/remove tool like Windows. It is different. For Linux it will be different too.

I am NOT saying that package management is adequate for linux. I am NOT sayng that it should be command line.

I am saying that by its nature that package management will be different for linux and that asking for it to be just like Windows is not quite the best solution for the problem at hand.

"They are changing around in the Desktop without basic clue without even knowing what they are doing and why they are doing it. It would be good for them instead of wasting hours of nonsens on IRC or on some stupid parties if they would concentrate on a real plan. "

No, no focus at all.

GNOME Accessibility honored in 2002 Helen Keller Award - http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/news.html

The GNOME Usability Project - http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/

Seems you are the one lacking a clue.

@Aitvo

Dude simply don't try it. What you showed me now are no features. There is NO roadmap in GNOME what you showed me is far off topic of my concern or what I wanted to point out. Your links are taken out of nowhere. The Accessibility stuff is not what matters here. Accessibility is indeed an important thing no doubt but this doesn't explain the new features of GNOME what is worked on etc. Accessibility was already part of GTK2.0.

What I want is a list of things showed up detailed that explains what happens with the individual modules within the GNOME CVS tree. I give you an example:

Plan for GNOME 2.2
- Gnome-Media should get GStreamer support
- Gnome CD player should get native theme
- Rhythmbox becomes part of Gnome-Module
- Gedit will become Tab support
- Working on a native Webclient for Gnome
- this and that.

These are just examples cut out of the air. Some of them are valid things some not.

Look at KDE for example they have a clear roadmap for KDE 3.1 and KDE 3.2 right now. You can go to their page read about what should happen with the code for 3.1 and 3.2, you get a insight of what they plan, what is decided and what should get hacked on.

All these things are missing in GNOME.

Nice try of yours but next time try to find better examples that at least matches what I was trying to tell you.

@Anonymous (IP: ---.qc.sympatico.ca)

I don't know what you are talking about. It is not required to COPY Windows. Needless to mention that you just wrote out of nowhere.

Windows is a full Operating System. This includes the core layer, Network, Filesystem, Desktop, Sound, Hardware support etc.

Gnome on the otherhand is just a bunch of libraries ONTOP of Linux.

Even if you really want you could never mature Linux into Windows. The point here is that the users want a working Desktop environment. One that simply works. KDE somehow made a good Desktop. Yes my KDE Desktop that I use looks exactly like Windows 200 plain. Same blue color etc. No I am not a KDE zealot because I used to be a GNOME follower for 2.5-3.0 years now usually contributed a lot of Patches, Bugfixes, Wishes, Comments etc. To say it GNOME was my Desktop of choice but in the past months with the 2.0 Version of it many things totally changed more or less to BAD (you can also read the statement of herzi 'Sven Herzberg' who still contributes to GNOME by doing language translations for GERMAN .po files. He also maintains GNOME.de domain) He, myself and others are really unhappy with GNOME today. If you don't belive my own written words then you may look at that link above and get yourself some feedback what other people think.

Ok if you don't like Windows (for whatever stupid purpose since there is no real reason to dislike Windows) then I want to ask you why GNOME recently adopted a Windows Registry like system that exactly gives us the feeling of what we hated most on Windows. The REGISTRY. I mean these things are quite stupid. Basically Gnome right now is an unfinished mixture of Windows AND MacOS-X. GNOME has inherited 2 of the worst features from both Operating Systems (to call them that way).

You said:

"The question is, why was XL, M,... added there in first place ? And why did they changed it to a pixel value again ? I call this bad concepts and planning. Another proof for professionality ? Someone wrote here that these people are professionals. If this was the case then why do they:"

I provided you with links to documentation explaining how they have focused interface development. If that's not enough then too bad. As for KDE, yeah it's great and all but how many commercial QT applications are there? 1 maybe 2? LOL I'd love to use KDE, but I'd rather use the desktop that everyone supports. (AIM, Yahoo, and most other commercial Linux applications use GTK.)

> You don't get it, right? Not everyone is interested as
> much in computer technology as you are and that's
> good! There are people with other interests. They
> rather spend their time by painting a picture,
> studying history or whatever instead of memorizing
> the vi keys.

You don't get it either. These people don't want to deal with the complexity of Linux if first case so they use Windows. As simple as that. So why should we care for such people ?

> I provided you with links to documentation
> explaining how they have focused interface
> development. If that's not enough then too bad.

It is obvious for me that you simply missed the point here. You are searching for excuses only to proove me wrong but you generally fail all the time.

Again Gnome 2.0 example:

- 2.0 has pixel values written there
- 2.1 (CVS) had that changed to L, M, S and wahetever
- 2.1 (CVS some later) you told me that they put the pixel stuff back there (which I cant confirm right now)

My point was, that this kind of action is only showing that they have no real plans or clue of what they are doing. They put the pixel description in there, removed it and then they found out that it sucked and put them back in. That only shows that there are no real concepts of what they are doing. They test things because of assumptions and revert it later on. Usually if you seriously work on a project (and GNOME wants to become a so called Corporate Desktop) then I expect that these people before doing such stupid changes (and later on revert them) that they at least TALK and PLAN these things correctly before doing these changes.

And there are NO XL, XXL, XXXL icons. icons usually are made of pixels in the horizontal and vertical angle you say that this Icon has 24x128 pixels of a depth of 32bit.

Or did you ever heard of 'My Monitor resolution is XXL now" no you say 'My Monitor resolution is 1200x1024x24" and everyone realizes that within one second. Saying XL or M or S don't give precise values you can operate with.

Measurements such as M, S, L, XL were made for the industry to match some region of people. Not everyone is like the other so they need to categorize these things correcly.
e.g.

size 48-52 S
size 52-56 M
size 56-60 L
size 60-66 XL

These values are only taken as example and don't necessarily match the reality. You never come up and tell your people hey 'My Monitor is XL' which may reflect something like

'My Monitor is XL and shows around 800x600 - 1600x1200 pixels. I dont know what it shows exactly because I dont know the correct value.

Not to mention that even if the Accessibility team decided these things, no one prooves that they are right. They may be wrong too. As a last sentence. GNOME used to be a REAL FREE desktop (pay attention to REAL FREE) made by volunteers people like you and me. As soon as these companies got their hands into it as soon it started to stink.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think KDE is crap or anything like that. I really LIKE KDE, I hope that it really gets off the ground and commercial applications are released for it. Ultimately though I'd like to see a standard toolkit interface to if you want a KDE application you tell configure to use KDE, if you want GNOME tell it to use GNOME.

> Don't get me wrong,

Dont get me wrong either, I am no KDE zealot in first case. I only use KDE right now because I think there is nothing better. As for the license of QT, I really dont care much since I get the source and compile it. As for the commercial aspect you may be right. QT requires a license to be bought so you can commercially sell your product. But if your product is good then I think that the price for the license is quite cheap 2500 USD is nothing compared the fact that you may make 10 times the money with it.

Uhh I suppose you aren't reading my comment correctly. It's great from a user interface perspective, look at the screenshot. Not only does it tell you in pixels, it also explains that 24 pixels is Extra Small so non geeks can understand it.

http://www.geocities.com/andrew7005/panel.jpg

> it also explains that 24 pixels

Ah ok then, they might have it put back then maybe because a lot of people complained. Anyways thats just one example of many.

Let's see, someone with a *.dip.t-dialin.net turning a thread in an out of context Gnome flamewar, complaining about Gnome developers, about companies like Ximian (funded by Gnome developers in the first place) collaborating with (dominating, according to you...) the project, lacking knowledge about latest Gnome releases, saying non geek users should stay away from linux...

...

Ali? )))

You don't get it, right? Not everyone is interested as much in computer technology as you are and that's good! There are people with other interests. They rather spend their time by painting a picture, studying history or whatever instead of memorizing the vi keys. And that's the difference between a geek toy and a desktop OS. You can use desktop OSs even if you don't want to spend a lot of time learning how to use them. They are a tool not something to make love with.

There is so much knowledge available that you have to focus your interests. It's amazing that you haven't realized this basic fact of modern human life by now.

The only people who are stupid and clueless around here are the geeks that seem to lack any understanding of the world outside of Emacs (yes, there is something out there).

And you think that people didn't need to learn Windows, MS Office, etc? If they had never used a computer before and just got a Windows CD and an Office CD and they installed them and in an hour they would be writing documents and making databases? Not really. Windows is hardly the best or the easiest, it's just what most people are used to. Many beginners take extensive courses in Windows and Office...

Normal users don't install their OS either, so it's not harder to choose Emacs or Open Office in whatever UNIX GUI compared to choosing "Word" in Windows. No man-page reading required! Beginners are actually more lost in Windows since things that worked one time may not work the second time, things stop working for no reason, etc...

I'm not saying Unix has the best user interface, but to improve it don't copy Windows but rather something *better* like BeOS or AmigaOS.

This is why I've been saying we should force new users to learn these things. And long live LaTeX!

My own experience is interesting, because there are a lot of juxtapositions and ironies:

I would like a good music notation/scoring/sequencing program on Linux, but I can't get the best-known candidate (Brahms) to work on my Mandrake 8 distribution (it's not perfect software, either, from what I understand.

On the other hand, the one I like on Windows (QuickScore Elite Level II) appears to be *orphaned.*

I like the keyboard support in Windows, though it's improving in Linux. Still, I'm just a bit shaky with keyboard support (both in Gnome and KDE.) I don't see yet any equivalent to "mousekeys", nor (as far as I can tell) any way to make the mouse cursor(s) bigger. It'd be nice if I could "home" the mouse cursor, too.

On the other hand, software I have to work with every day on Windows (e.g. ArcServe, Enterprise Security Reporter, other "3rd-party" software,) has really *bad* keyboard support. Keyboard support is *vital* to me because of my eyesight. Yet I find myself searching for mouse pointers all the time on Windows. And I can't enlarge the mouse pointer on everyone's computer that I have to work with anyway.

I like Internet explorer, but I like Linux browsers, too. On the other hand, I've seen people eaten alive by IE security problems, and sometimes the Linux browsers haven't rendered so well. On the other hand, I've recently discovered that there are some rendering controls in Linux browsers that I didn't know about (or have been added.)

I like Outlook, and Mozilla Mail has sometimes been a problem. On the other hand, my Outlook seems to lock up all the time lately, and I've gotten used to Mozilla Mail now. But there are some attachments I can't use too well in Linux....

My conclusion?

Microsoft has the desktop market because they're good at American-style Dog-Eat-Dog business. Setting that aside, ain't no reason why I should use Windows at home, except to run one orphaned piece of software. I can live witout "mousekeys" type technology and big mouse pointers at home, and I'll welcome them if, and when, they come to Linux. If Brahms is ever finished, I won't have any reason to run Windows anymore.

But that doesn't mean Linux is better or Windows is worse, or vice versa.

And if I take this from a programmer's perspective, remember that, given time and ambition, I could *fix* some of the problems I see in Linux. When will I be able to do that with Windows?

" I like the keyboard support in Windows, though it's improving in Linux. Still, I'm just a bit shaky with keyboard support (both in Gnome and KDE.) I don't see yet any equivalent to "mousekeys", nor (as far as I can tell) any way to make the mouse cursor(s) bigger. It'd be nice if I could "home" the mouse cursor, too. "

The functionallity you seek is there using RedHat 8 (or Gnome 2.x)

http://www.geocities.com/andrew7005/mouse.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/andrew7005/accessability.jpg

"And I can't enlarge the mouse pointer on everyone's computer that I have to work with anyway. "

I like to enable the locate mouse feature in gnome 2, when you press the control key it will animate a square around your mouse.

" I like Outlook, and Mozilla Mail has sometimes been a problem. On the other hand, my Outlook seems to lock up all the time lately, and I've gotten used to Mozilla Mail now. But there are some attachments I can't use too well in Linux.... "

Try Evolution, it is a GREAT replacement for Outlook.

:-)

Don't want to start another Gnome vs. KDE thread.

Under Desktop Preferences in Gnome 2.0 go to the cursor tab. There are larger cursors.

Under Desktop Preferences in Gnome 2.0 Accessibility you can enable mouse keys. Do not how well or badly it works.

At least you get the larger cursors but like I said I have no idea how the enable mouse keys work.

The keyboard shortcuts applet is pretty good and very clean.

1. do we really need to appeal to end users?>>

<sarcasm>Oh, not at all.</sarcasm>

In the 1950's Ford Motors tried to dictate to consumers the kind of car they should want. They did research. They did a big flashy ad-campaign. They ignored the nay-sayers within their own ranks. Ford Motors knew best what the consumer needed.

The car in question was the Edsel.

The end user is the customer.

The customer is always right. The code exists for the END USER. Period.

It seems to me that the only people bitching about Linux not being what they wanted ( aka A free version of Windows ) are people who are usually not newbies or power users but novices to Linux. A novice only has just begun to taste what he/she can do but does not really know how to completely master whatever OS they are using for lack of experince, knowledge or desire to learn beyond what they already know.
Now IMHO for example a complete and utter newbie who only uses a computer for internet access, email, writing and printing letters, listening to music on a cd, etc.. with a properly pre-configured Linux box ( running any distro you can name ) would find out that it would be more then enough for their needs because they are not looking for that extra functionality that a novice desires.



Hell they would not even know how to fix/replace a corrupted driver .dll file in XP or not to mention how to hack the reg in XP to get those annoying MSN pop-up messages to leave them alone ! You people forget to realize that a complete and utter newbies will never ever know how to solve any of the problems they would face in windows, Linux, or OS-X if the shit hits the fan. Just like they would never know how to gain access to the root account via a terminal to edit the menus or how to hack the reg in windows or even how to properly un-install a program or add hardware in the correct fashion in any OS that they are using.


I really doubt that they would even care enough to even attempt to learn any of those tasks and would rather pay someone else to accomplish any administrative maintenance work for them. In my opinion Linux can and will be a hit for newbies who don't really use the computer to it's fullest extent. Instead as others have mentioned they only use it as a glorified typewriter/Web-TV/calculator because once properly configured and set-up by either a OEM or a relative/friend it is very hard for them to break a Linux based desktop since is was designed with the Unix principle of being a multi-user desktop with security in mind to prevent both the user and outside forces from screwing up the machine if it is configured in the correct manner. With the right set of edited menus KDE or Gnome would be and can be setup so even your grandma could use. Hell you wouldn't even have to worry about her calling you about the spyware or trojan she just installed via IE/OE by accident because those problems in Linux do not exist because of the vary nature of it's design.

@Dekkard (IP: ---.cm256.alanpa.supercable.es)

Well you are really mature. The Topic is about Linux and Desktops and I'm only pointing out my concerns about GNOME which is Linux and Desktop related. Now stop acting like a dumbass. If you don't like my comments simply don't read them by the way if you start grepping my name in the Changelogs of GNOME then you will realize that I not just complain. Needless to mention that I probably contributed more to GNOME than you ever will be able to.

<quote>The end user is the customer.

The customer is always right. The code exists for the END USER. Period. </quote>

HA!

You do not understand linux or open source at all do you?

These projects may have some contributors working for companies but the projects themselves are started and run by coders for the coders and about the coders. They code what they want and according to the vision of how they want it.

It does not matter how many people scream for a search button facility tied to the gnome-search-tool for Nautilus.

Why?

The guys who code Nautilus (not just donate patches or fixes ) are two guys that do the work in their spare time. They don't want a search button. They want a search facility based on another program that is not ready for prime-time yet.

What people here do not understand is that many of the programs around which linux is based are like this. They are people's pet projects and they run these pet projects the way they want to. It is their code. It is their project and if you do not like it then you can create another project based on their project with all the bells and whistles you want.

The people who code these projects, apps and such do it because they think it is fun and they do what they want. If a distro does not like then they can code their own file manager (just an example) and some distros like the old Corel did.

@Johnathan Bailes (IP: 141.156.28.---)

I wish you were right. Unfortunately things drastically changed. Another example GNOME Look how many of the new Maintainers are working for companies who are involved into GNOME now.

Yes Maintainers because no one of them own the code they only continue where their previous Developers stopped (See Nautilus used to be a product of Eazel, the main Coders somehow are no more).

Now what do you think happen lets see:

<sarcasm>
- Developer/Maintainer hired by company to work for them.
- They work for these companies 8 hrs per day to develop on GNOME.
- The companies must have a big heart to allow them to work on GNOME and getting paid for.
- The companies for sure have NO interests in GNOME because the DEVELOPERS only say where it goes.
</sarcasm>

Wake up before it's to late. Although these are my own opinions only. If you work for free on your own GNOME related little project then it is fine. But I am talking about the core (the stuff that is named GNOME). Look GTK nowadays got owned by Redhat because all developers work for redhat.

ATK owned by SUN even if its GPL

A lot of GNOME libs owned by XIMIAN or REDHAT even if its GPL.

All these companies that are involved in the GNOME project follow their own interests with it and be sure. I mean be really sure that they put all their interest into it. Same situation with Evolution. I often requested some features and I was told many times that they can't simply change the things as they like because of Company order.

The problem with what you say is this mantis.

Most of the developers working on projects that actually make gnome livable like a File Manager and gtk based web browser and the gnome based crontab editor and so many projects are not getting paid to work full-time on these projects.

Many of the major contributors to Nautilus and other projects have Ximian and Redhat behind their emails but they do NOT get paid to work on so many of the projects. They are instead working on core libs or redhat-config tools or making evolution look just a little more like outlook in some totally silly way.

I understand your frustration with the direction that is gnome has taken. I still use and love gnome but I understand how many of the actions as of late could turn you screaming over to xfce or KDE for that matter.

The funny thing is that from most of the discussions I have seen in the mailing lists most of the major decisions have been driven by a few large egos as opposed to a major conspiracy by Redhat, Sun and Ximian. For example, if Ximian had such tight control, the metatheme project would have been the default theme management tool a long time ago. After all it is completely usable. Why not?

A few egos in the Gnome Foundation and desktop-devel lists thought the project was a big over-complicated mess and threw it out the window. This judgement is not completely untrue. Sun if anything has been criticized heavily in the mailing lists of more than a few projects for only giving criticism and no real input in terms of code or ui direction. Redhat has had a lot of influence on the core of the projects. This is true.

However, the tendency to want to blame a corporation as opposed to looking objectively at the big ego-filled head of Havoc and some of his bone-headed lapdogs as the core of the Gnome 2.x issues are natural but I think misplaced.

For some reason, the Gnome groups are drawn around strong-willed leader types like Havoc or in the past Miquel.

Yet, the big bad Redhat that controls the essence of the Gnome project still cannot contribute a couple of full-time programmers to help clean up Nautilus before Gnome 2.2. I swear it is like they are more worried about developing cute unified themes than bringing any real progress to the Gnome project.

"Yet, the big bad Redhat that controls the essence of the Gnome project still cannot contribute a couple of full-time programmers to help clean up Nautilus before Gnome 2.2. I swear it is like they are more worried about developing cute unified themes than bringing any real progress to the Gnome project."

Huh?

"Christian: Tell me a little about yourself and how you come to start hacking on Nautilus?

Alexander: I'm 28 years old, currently working for Red Hat from my home in Stockholm, Sweden. I work in the OS-development group which means I work on the Red Hat distribution. I do a fair amount of desktop work, but I also maintain other system packages. "

-- http://www.linuxorbit.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file...

Re: The person who had great success with his parents on Windows XP. My parents still use Windows 98. Actually, my mother won't touch the computer and my father has this recurring discussion with me regarding e-mail attachments: "What do you mean save it?" "What's a file?" "I don't know where my other files are; I just save them." "What's a directory?" I won't let him near Linux.

I have spent the last couple of months learning what has proved to be a very exasperating operating system. I have kept at it, though. I have had the luxury of spending enough time with Linux to set up a reasonably working system. Perhaps, one day, I will actually do something useful with it.

Still, Linux saved me on one occasion. I have recently moved the four computers in the house to Windows 2000. I also have a digital camera that I wanted to use at my daughter's party. I plugged the camera into my laptop. Windows didn't allow a power user to mount devices. Logged in as administrator, Windows couldn't find the software for the device it wanted to mount.

In desperation I rebooted, slapping in a Knoppix CD. When it was finished, I saw two hard drives on my desktop: hda1 and sda1. The latter contained the familiar looking file structure of the digital camera. Seconds later, thumbnails replaced icons in Konqueror. Clicking the thumbnails gave me a full sized view. Right clicking the thumbnails let me edit them in the GIMP. I quickly entered my workgroup name in the KDE control panel and moved the files to an upstairs Windows machine.

That is the direction Linux should be heading.

Read the quote Aitvo:

He works on the Red Hat distribution related to the desktop and other system packages at work and he goes home and works on Nautilus.

How do I know?

Luis Villa told me so from Ximian.

He could be wrong though.

even if a lot of code for GNOME is made by some X distribution or some X company (i don't know because i use KDE since the 1.x series) it doesn't mean the community has to follow them. Nobody stop you from starting a new desktop project from scartch if you don't like the GNOME view of things, and i believe a lot of other coders thinks the same.

That's what i meant in my original post, you don't have to ask the community do do stuff we don't care about. If some distro cares about popping out a window upon a cd insertion then ask them, not the community.

"We were stabilizing and productizing the desktop for Red Hat 7.2, which was the first Red Hat version to ship with gnome 1.4. We mainly worked on Nautilus performance and stability, and after shipping I spent a fair amount of time merging our patches upstream."

This implies that he is paid to work on Nautilus.

-- http://www.linuxorbit.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file...

Now that you admitted who you are, Mantis/Joey/Ali/whatever, perhaps it's time to show how mature you are and start signing with a single nick. Oh, and I see that you helped Gnome developers a lot... This is quite a treasure for the harmony between developers :

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=80874

And if you start searching bugs like that in bugzilla with your name, you get lots of funny flamewars! ))

P.S.: To the OSNews moderators: I'll quite understand and agree if you mod down this message. But you must admit this guy really asks for these things

@Johnathan Bailes (IP: 141.156.28.---)

Thank you, I have nothing to add there. Everything you wrote is absolutely true. I sometimes wished that the development wouldn't lag so much. The GNOME 2.2 we get is nearly as unfinished as 2.0 was. There is so much to do. Not necessarily new features but the cleanup and the integration etc. There is so much remaining stuff. Anyways I doub that GNOME will keep up as leading Desktop because it is to much behind everything. It's a hackers tweakers toy claimed to be the corporate desktop (which is isn't) If you look at the tools for example Rhythmbox. Instead finishing the Programs as IS e.g. Stabilizing it etc. the Maintainer got the idea to change a lot of code and UI once again. What I want to say is there is no Finished GNOME as in 'you can use it now'.

@Aitvo (IP: 166.68.134.---)

Only for your information. Please don't come up with fragments of OffTopic Links with ancient Reports. It is true that Alex Larrson and Dave Camp both work on Nautilus and that Alex Larsson works for Redhat but the commits in the Nautilus CVS are not much. Maybe 10 source commits per month and 50 po file commits per month. Nothing else. The only noticable changes you may see between Nautilus for GNOME 2.0 and Nautilus for GNOME 2.2 is a new Treeview for Files and Tabbed Preferences and some less important bugfixes. All these things I don't count s 'big changes' as in something you may say 'wow that rocks, finally we see real progress'. Please some of us including me know the GNOME CVS perfectly since I work every day with it even after I switched to KDE. Please next time you reply come up with some serious things and not fragments of offtopic comments.

@Dekkard (IP: ---.cm128.alnpa.supercable.es)

Yes indeed that was written by me. And you obviously don't know the situation I was in when I wrote this. I must admit this was really a pissed day where a couple of circumstances came together. I must admit that it was wrong. But look, that bug wasn't touched for many months and then I spent half a day sitting at home creating a fix for it. I announced it in the #gnome channel on irc.gimp.org and asked someone to commit this patch. To say over 2 days I asked a couple of people if it is ok to go in (you know, last word has the Maintainer). Then exactly 2 days after that bug arrived on b.g.o Anders Carlsson came up with his own patch (which also missed the half of what I did) and commited them on his own to the module. From my feeling he wanted to put me one over. Dunno about that but I exactly had that feeling this day. There is no real reason to glue this one mistake on my head all the time over and over again. My positive contribution hopefully weights more than this one mistake I made. But I stand behind what I did, I need to live with it and fine.

While you post this b.g.o entry here publically with the obvious reason try to dumb my name into shit (which you do over and over again).

I think that people are well aware of my tries to explain some serious things within GNOME and your tries to attack me as single person. Quite obvious who of us look like a moron at the end.

Fine mantis, you do not like Gnome.

I think we get it.

BTW, I like rhythmbox a lot. It is more stable and very quick now and at the same time he did some serious changes and included a nice system notification section applet. I think it is very slick but you do not like it.

I think that nautilus is much faster now in Gnome 2.0.3 or so and almost as fast konqueror. I get more done using nautilus with script from g-scripts site than I do in Konqueror but that is just me.

I hate menu editing through the file manager. But I like the way anjuta2 and especially the source code view for nautilus is shaping up. I think that installing fonts with fontillus is easier than the KDE font installation app.

Most of the apps I use and love in linux are gnome or gtk based. I do NOT like the way the gconf and the gconf-editor have been implemented I agree with you on that.

I really never got into the whole color selector thing coming down the pike but both the cd-burner and network neighborhood ideas coming are good. I will still use LinNeighborhood just like the KDE one office still does. Never seen any file manager give that kind of control and functionality.

I like galeon2, evolution, gnumeric, gimp, gftp, pan, xchat and yes I know that you can use them with KDE but where people say that the desktop does not give them enough options I like the fact that it does not get in my way.

This is all very personal. You don't like Gnome or its simplified new direction. Cool. We get that.

@Johnathan Bailes (IP: 141.156.28.---)

Well seriously you need to decide what you write. One time you write that way and the next second another way. But obviously I don't need to ask you or anyone else for permission to write whatever I think is right or not. Once again I don't like the direction that GNOME leads nowadays but this doesn't mean that I don't like GNOME in general. I investigated a lot of time and engery into it and my own little projects only to contribute to this community. I also never said that I don't like Rhythmbox. Please don't try to turn my words. All I was trying is to make people realize of the big mistakes that recently happened with GNOME. I personally feel abused that the philosophy that GNOME was meant one day is kicked with the feet nowadays. What is wrong with that ?

Anyways happy new year (once again)

"Please next time you reply come up with some serious things and not fragments of offtopic comments."

Uhh I was as off topic as you have been, get over it.

First of all, a disclaimer: I use BOTH windows and linux (debian to be precise). I'd just like to comment that windows is not a bad operating system. Microsoft makes lots of good products and they have some of the best engineers in the world working for them. I do not condone their business practices, however, but this does not detract from the operating system itself. One of the comments made is that windows is not secure. I make the argument that neither is linux. Linux just hasn't been tested to the extent that windows has. As more people begin using linux, more people will find security problems as more bad things will target linux.

My next comment is on what I think linux needs to make it.

First the kernel is just fine. It is progressing nicely and provides drivers and power for a lot of hardware and its development is going just fine.

Layout and GUI are what need to change.

Layout

In terms of layout, the system needs a few things: Software needs to be divided into folders. It used to be (this can be seen in the presence of X /usr/X11R6...) There should be a common shared libraries folder such as /usr/lib and EVERY shared library should go there. Permissions need to be modified in this multiuser system to allow users to install software on their own accounts so /usr needs to be writable, but only owners can modify so any user can install their own software without worrying about other users deleting or breaking it. This would make for easy uninstalation because they could just remove folders of the programs (like OS X).

GUI needs to be completely redone. X needs to go. It's an old system with lots of overhead and a complicated API that nobody wants to write for. A framebuffer based system needs to be put in place that allows for easy changing of resolution and refresh rates as well as fast 2D graphics with a potential for 3D graphics. The APIs need to be rewritten. GTK is a C-based API. Fewer and fewer users are understanding C-based systems. Most CS grads these days only understand highly object oriented systems. The new API needs to be C++ based, or some sort of object oriented system that provides neat and simple interfaces to all GUI/OS features. It should be optimized for media (much like BeOS). The 3D API should be based on OpenGL so that only a new framework is needed for 3D developers to get started. KDE doesn't pass for an acceptable API because it uses language extensions and must be pre-parsed. The API must therefore be standard C++ compliant. Back to X. X isn't needed because the remote desktop features of X are completely unnecessary for 99% of all users. The others can use VNC like Windows and Mac users do currently.

After all is said and done, Linux needs to improve responsiveness, prettyness, and organization before it can really succeed as a universal desktop OS.

Everything you're asking here is to make linux more windows like. Everything you wanted in this article is in wondows. Security and stability isn't really a great concern for the home user (unless ur a geek), because they don't know about security and stability. If you put a secured system at a home user, they will probably be annoyed at not being able to do certain things than they are worried about security. In short, make linux like windows.

> In short, make linux like windows.

Simply use Windows then and leave us Linux people alone.

Essentially this article is saying that Linux (and BSD) should be more like Windows, and less like Unix. Unlike most of the folks who support this view I am not a Windows refugee, I used Unix (a shell account of Microport SysV on a 286, buggy, but it ran on a 286!) before there was a Linux, adopted Linux when the kernel version was 0.95, and currently use NetBSD partially because it doesn't try to be Windows as much as many Linux distros currently do.

Why do I prefer *nix? Because it allows a power user to be more productive. The title of Kernighan and Pike's introduction to the Bourne Shell and Unix system calls, etc. is called "The Unix Programming Environment". Unix is a *programming* and technically-oriented user environment, the home of C, powerful shells, and (later) Perl. Not your Aunt Tillie's for-dummies environment. Unless of course your Aunt Tillie ran Unix, which considering the age of this long-lived (i.e. successful) operating system environment, is a possibility... :-)

I have no problem with GUIs, if these GUIs don't get in the way of what this article calls the "should be deprecated" command shell. The day the powerful Unix command shell is removed or made irrelevent in Linux or other *nix, is the day that it will no longer be *nix, and might as well run as root by default and do it's best to be a Windows emulator like Lin-dows rather than Lin-ux.

Ok then, we will make a distro that works just like Windows. It will be hard to include all the MS security glitches though, but we will succeed! We will even copy the TellyTubbyesque icons and interface. We will make it so that even the most illiterate moron on the face of the earth can spread his email viruses. We will code it i a topheavy way, making it as much of a house of coded cards as Windows. We will bash, diss, and insult the rest of the Linux community with our stupidities concerning our tastes in AOL-ish software. And when we finish, we shall call it Munschdows.

>Ok then, we will make a distro that works just like
>Windows.
>It will be hard to include all the MS security glitches
>though, but we will succeed! We will even copy the
>TellyTubbyesque icons and interface. We will make it so
>that
>even the most illiterate moron on the face of the earth can
>spread his email viruses. We will code it i a topheavy way,
>making it as much of a house of coded cards as Windows. We
>will bash, diss, and insult the rest of the Linux community
>with our stupidities concerning our tastes in AOL-ish
>software. And when we finish, we shall call it Munschdows.

I can probably take out one of the two examples I had of bigoted idiots in the paper and substitute this instead. It wasn't sufficient for you to post this once and have it get moderated down (interestingly enough, the only one of the 146 postings that was), you came back to post the same thing again.

OK. I'll reply anyway, and for those of you who actually bothered to read the article, I'll be doing some replies to your comments tommorrow. Some of them were very interesting and thoughtful.

But first let's take these "points" one by one:

>Ok then, we will make a distro that works just like
Windows.

A: Had you bothered to actually read the article then you would have noticed that I'm not actually suggesting making Linux anything like Windows, other than successful and actually in the hands of more than a small fraction of the population... Like it isn't now.

What I am suggesting is that we layer more _on top_ of Linux in order to make it easier for new users to pick up. Some will be migrating from Windows for sure, but I don't think that means that Linux has to actually behave like Windows in any way, I think it simply has to be accessible and friendly, not difficult and off-putting (much like your manners).

Putting additional layers on top of Linux doesn't prevent them from being: a) not installed or b) removed by power users like yourself. If you want to run a simple text only console today, the fact that Red Hat or Mandrake has piled a lot of stuff on top of it doesn't interfere with your ability to do so. You just don't run everything that came with it. Ditto the friendlier distros that I'm imagining.

>It will be hard to include all the MS security glitches
though, but we will succeed!

Lookup "specious argument". Also consult "straw man". Neither of these things have anything to do with what was written.

>We will make it so that even the most illiterate moron
on the face of the earth can spread his email viruses. We
will code it i a topheavy way, making it as much of a house
of coded cards as Windows.

Um, I'm hoping that the most illiterate moron on earth can use a computer. Believe it or not, they aren't exclusively toys. People actually _need_ them for modern life. It's no longer time for Linux to be an exclusive club and it's going to change eventually whether you like it or not. If that forces you to go off and find some new obscure OS to champion, great, it's doubtful you'll be missed.

As for coding in a top-heavy fashion? Hmm. That's certainly a possiblity. Some of the applications that people may craft when trying to make things easier may be badly written. Oh well, they'll get replaced with something better.

>We will bash, diss, and insult the rest of the Linux
community with our stupidities concerning our tastes in AOL-ish software.

I have a feeling that any tastes other than your own are often "stupidities" as far as you are concerned. But my points have nothing to do with bashing, dissing or insulting Linux. I like Linux a lot, it's an excellent operating system, unfortunately as it stands today it's has a poor end user GUI. This is widely acknowledged in the community you refer to. Lots of articles have been written about it, including many here on OSNews. I'm trying to suggest improvements and point out short comings. My hope is that this is taken as constructive rather than destructive criticism.

> And when we finish, we shall call it Munschdows.

I'm assuming that the "we" you refer to here is the "royal: we as I doubt you've ever contributed to an open source project in your life. If you would like to see mine you can consult my website at www.JohnMunsch.com. I distribute code and educational materials using open source licenses. If you'd care to point out your credentials...

In the seventies, so legend has it, some computer illiterate (yes, there was no PC then) Literature university students were taught Unix commands. Half an hour later they managed to use the timesharing system and use the wordprocessing application programs to type their assignments.

I learnt to use some Unix commands on my desktop. I'm happy I took the time to do so. It's a breath of fresh air from stuffy GUI.

"Hang on, did I hear you say, "stuffy"?"

That's right! I encourage all newbies and even experienced Windows users to learn to type commands, instead of clicking menus, buttons and windows. It is a powerful way to empower users.

"But how?" It's quite easy. Go to
http://ss64.com/download.html
to download the commands that you need to learn. Download the exe file if you don't have WinRAR. If you have Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows NT4, you can print out and practise the commands reference for the command line.

For REAL knowledge, you should firstly have access to a broadband connection. This is because the command line utilites on www.cygwin.com can prove to be rather large. Yes, these are free Unix commands and programs that can work off a Windows OS. Yes, it's possible to learn Unix and Linux without having to install another operating system, because cygwin provides these facilities right from the convenience of your desktop.

If you have any questions you can e-mail me at s underscore auyong (one word) at yahoo dot com.

Just before I sign off, here's a Scripture passage to remind you about the love of God:
"For God so loved the world that He Gave His Only Son (Jesus Christ) that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life." Yes, Jesus Christ is calling you to follow Him and experience freedom from your sins. Obedience to Him and the Bible brings you eternal life, a chance to go to heaven, a place where there is no sorrow, but everlasting joy. Refusal to follow Him means eternal condemnation and being cast into hell.

Thank you for your time.

Once again, you can e-mail me for tech support.

Simon

I am sorry, but installing software is a mess in Linux. And yes I do use it and am learning more all the time.

Please don't compare EMACS to WORD. WORD is intuitive, e.g. if you want to center text you click a button that looks just like centered text. Someone using EMACS has no such luxury. When Wordperfect was compared to Word, it was shown that the keystroke commands were far faster, but someone new finds that the GUI enables them to get up to a reasonable speed far faster.

when KDE 3.1 is released it will pretty much take
care of most of the complaints. patience. Linux
has made tremendoes strides in ease of use . Mandrake
Linux is very very easy to use. if everyone would
give 3.1 a test it just might be something we can
all united with.

I think the biggest problem, and I am thinking one that will never be solved because of the current Linux developer paradigm is that of the dependency issue. It is making it more complicated than it needss to be. Currentl there is this attitude of, "I must only use one version of a library at all costs". I am talking about on the whole system now.

I am sure that when memory was cheap and libraries were fewer this was a workable solution, but for todays times it just seems stupid.

It makes a lot more sense to statically compile and provide all the libraries that are needed with your app, than to go and say, make sure you have X, Y, and Z packages.

Please don't give portage or Apt-get or URPMI, I have tried them all and they don't work as advertised I have had failures all the time and it can mean that certain dependencies conflict amongst apps.

It would be great to have a folder called 'apps' or 'programs'. You drag the zip file you just downloaded into this folder or click on the 'install.bin' file. If it is a zip file the Environment, KDE, Gnome etc detects this activity, looks in the zip file called 'install_instructions.cfg' and based on this prompts the user for a set of instructions, like, "Add a start link to the Desktop?". Uninstalling is a simple as clicking delete and the environment gives you the option of complete removal, partial (leave work files), etc, etc.

Let me say that if you like the dependecy thing, which I am sure can be great for servers and workstations fine build a GNU/Linux system that way. If you're building a GNU/Linux for normal users and want to make it easy for developers to create apps for this potential larger group, do something along the lines that I mentioned above.

Its the same code just packaged and used in ways to better suit the needs of differing target users.

John,
Thanks for your article on Linux. It's great. I installed RH8 and used it for a couple of days. I loved their Desktop but didn't like their multimedia support (or the lack there of). No sound - nothing; so i re-installed Suse 8.1 again. It wasn't a painless xp-riance at all, but i managed to get it up and running rather smoothly. As you said, Linux is not mature enough to be used by an average user; not yet.
Don't you think that most applications, such as open office should be integrated better into the OS as far as looks and feels behaviour are concerned?

Simon,
"I encourage all newbies and even experienced Windows users to learn to type commands.."
You're right, but most people use the PC to play games, surf the net, write letters, for accounting, and what have you, and don't care about the underlying OS or H/W.

Anyway, thanks for the gospel message .... it is the most important message to humans, ever.

happy new year to all of you

> As you said, Linux is not mature enough to be used
> by an average user; not yet.

The problem is, why did you decided for Linux then, if you are not willing to read Howto's, Manuals and FAQs ? Linux is a complete different Operatingsystem in the means of old Unix. Linux is probably more mature than you imagine, the problem is that more and more Joe Users like you come from Windows and expect that Linux is equal to it - which luckely is not. If you can't deal with the complexity of Linux then this Operatingsystem is deinfately wrong for you. If you still think you made the right personal decission then you need to live with the fact that Linux was and will ever be a complex System that needs human maintainance. Once and forever for everyone Linux is NOT Windows. I also share the opinion of MobyTurbo (IP: ---.216-194-21-90.nyc.ny.metconnect.net) here.

http://www.oeone.com

Nice to see that there are people out there coming up with solutions and who are even able to make money off it.

This is the most intelligent assessment I've seen to date about the state of desktop Linux and the issues it needs to address in order to gain wider acceptance. There needs to be some level of standardization. I just hope that some of the developers (Lycoris, Lindows, Mandrake, Red Hat & Xandros) are listening.

Well two little comments from me:

> Desktop Linux

There is no such thing as Desktop Linux. Going strickt with the definition then Linux is nothing more than a big archive (~30mb) full of Drivers, Memorymanagement, Filesystem etc. all necessary to serve as operating system after compile.

> issues it needs to address in order to gain wider acceptance.

Well if you marry your wife then you accept her as she is don't you ? Or do you marry her and tell her afterwards how boring and ugly she is so she need cosmetical operations ? It's the same with Linux, you come to this plattform, you know how complicated it is and you need to accept it. You may try to find solutions to make it comfortable as much as even possible for your needs. But it makes me sick when people come out of nowhere to Linux and think it is a Desktop Operating System which it is not. Same with all the people that I met every day that asks me to show them Screenshots of how Linux looks like. Ever tried to make a Screenshot of the internal operation of Linux ? hehehe.

I read about the first 50 comments ... about as much as I could stand.
It is becoming increasingly clear that people who think that Linux is ready for Joe User clear don't have the slightest idea about who Joe User is.
I have done tech/customer support for over 4 years and I know Joe User about as well as anyone, and I will say this much ...

ANY SOLUTION TO BRING LINUX TO JOE USER THAT REQUIRES ANY ADDITIONAL WORK ON THE PART OF JOE USER WILL FAIL MISERABLY.

People say "Well, new users shoudl be required to do this" or "should be required to read/know that" .. sure, I agree with you, but it ain't gonna happen. You can't change Joe User to make him ready for Linux - it MUST be the other way around! I'm not saying this is a good thing (indeed it is not), but it is a fact of life - deal with it.

One last thing - people who think that politics (such as DRM, Palladen, etc) are going to drive people away from Windows need a serious reality check. Sure, it will drive some people away, but as far as Joe User goes, he's gotten so used to being f--ked by corporations in every other part of his life, it's pretty much considered to be the norm now days. Joe User will turn a blind eye towards Palladen, just like he did for Product Activation when Windows/Offfice XP came out.

@ Andrew (IP: ---.sc.rr.com)

Too much of what you describe sounds like Windows too me, which makes me wonder why you even bother using Linux?

There are install shield type programs for Linux (look at Mozillas sea installer) but there are nothing even close to Portage or apt-get for Windows, and despite Windows/Linux differences I'd still love to just be able to switch out to command-prompt on Windows and type "install mozilla" and have it download, unpack, install, and cleanup after itself rather then do it the standard way with downloading installer "manually" etc...

So in a way, Linux is really easier then Windows, people just don't know it.

1. Linux deos need to get easier, SuSE is a good easy one, but some things in SuSE should be easier.

a. I don't want to find some config file and edit it, all gui programs need a gui setup tool

b. A better way to install, I can install a .rpm. That doesn't mean I don't want a better way, when you install it should ask you if you want a icon on the desktop & ask where you want to put it in the menu, maybe even ask you what folder you want it in.

c. A compiled binary would be nice, I hate finding programs that sound good, but only come in source.

2. More commercial software, yes commercial, opensource will not die because of it, I would love to see more game also people know about Norton Utilities so they get it if they want it. For linux you have to search and most people want something now. Plus more commercial software might be good for linux.

I'd still love to just be able to switch out to command-prompt on Windows and type "install mozilla" and have it download, unpack, install, and cleanup after itself rather then do it the standard way with downloading installer "manually" etc...

So in a way, Linux is really easier then Windows, people just don't know it.

Well, that depends now, doesn't it? First of all, in this case, the program is called mozilla, so the command 'install mozilla' makes a lot of sense. But what if you wanted tod download and install MusicMatch Jukebox? Would it be:

'install musicmatch jukebox'

- or -

'install musicmatchjukebox'

- or -

'install musicmatch'

Or is it case sensative?

'install MusicMatch'

And even in the case of mozilla, how is Joe User to know the command? What happens when he screws up and types one 'l' instead of 2, and then doesn't understand why it won't work? And as far as Joe User is concerned .... the command prompt? What the hell is that, and how the hell does he get there? Keep in mind that when you say 'Linux is ready for the desktop', these are the kinds of questions that Linus has to deal with on a very intuitive level.

Also, even in Linux, this works well assuming you have the right distro, and even if you do, in the case of Debian, there are a lot of other hardships for Joe User which has nothing to do with app installations. Often times when a distro succeeds on one hand, it fails completely on another.

> But what if you wanted tod download and install MusicMatch Jukebox?

I agree, I've had such moments with portage myself (couldn't spell rhythm), but suggested features to solve that is to have it analyse the text and suggests similar (like your regular IMdb find) hits, like if I had written :

root:> emerge rythmbox

it could perhaps say :

Package "rythmbox" couldn't be find, where you perhaps searching for :

>> Rhythmbox [media/music]
>> Bio-Rhythm [games/toys]

That would solve such things, because I think portage (as linux) is case-sensetive and knowing that the gift p2p program are spelled giFT are not common, but having the suggestion feature would really not make it a big deal.

I've learned my fair share of people where to find and how to install software, and granted that they surely would want a nice GUI wrapped around portage, but aside from that I think even your newest user would learn it pretty fast and never look back.

By definition working in tech support means only talking people who are having trouble. I don't think that's a good sample of the user base, as it automatically excludes people who never had any trouble and those who were able to find a solution themselves.

After reading this article I felt that the author only wants a free software implentation of Windows.
You should look at this in this case : http://www.reactos.com

GNU/Linux (please note the GNU) is an operating system that was meant to be a free software implentation of Unix.
Unix was never meant to be used by any one. As a power user, using the unix shell daily I fully understand how powerful it is comparing to GUI tools. What *nix shells allow me is to express some complex tasks I want to do.

But shells doesn't allow you to express all the things I want to do. For example, I'm a big fan of mindmaps. To draw mindmaps you need a GUI.

Every GUI operating system allow me to draw mindmaps if there is a software available. But mindmaps are a good example, they help you to gather ideas. Found where ? On e-mails, webpages, from people, and so on. Could this software allow me to connect each ideas with its source ?

GNU/Linux is only a collection of free softwares. Because *nix are operating systems designed to allow someone to answer to precise problems, there's a lot of redudancy. It's something I like, because I'm able to think about what I would need to answer my problem, and to choose something really adequate.

I don't really think, ever, that something that was designed 30 years ago for power users could now be used massively.

Is something like Windows really so desirable for mass usage ? I don't think so. I don't think that the desktop metaphor is something interesting for the average user. Does the concept of files and folders is something that helps tasks expressiveness ?

Look at iTunes. iTunes is a software that hides completely that you are in fact manipulating files. You are only manipulating tracks, identified by its artist, name, album. This has sense.

An operating system needs to be consistent. Having a different syntax to understand for each configuration file you cross over in *nix is just something crazy. Mac OS X or KDE are good examples of this. Icons, keyboard shortcuts, way to use applications are consistent across the whole system. What is even better in OS X is that developers are pushed to design well by Interface Builder.
Every operating system needs to have central repositories for common applications data, like browser history, mails, music... Because I don't want to use the same application every time I'm using these data, but I do want to access them without having to do imports and configurations.

The last point is about applications. Especially in a free software environment. When you can have any application you want, the only problem is finding it and using it. Leave those dependancy problem and packaging problem away. The operating system should have a central place to gather all available applications (something like apt-cache, but graphical, like BeBits, more integrated would be better) to help users to find them.
After they find it, have something like Java Web Start. A click away from running, with updates automatic checking, and downloading. After two or more uses, it should ask the user if he wants a shortcuts to use it somewhere.

GNU/Linux can be improved to be more user friendly, Apple did it for Mac OS X. But is it really the task the free software should work on ? Couldn't we search other ideas, better ideas ?

Take a look at BrixOS ( http;//brix-os.sourceforge.net/ ), there's nice ideas there.

By definition working in tech support means only talking people who are having trouble. I don't think that's a good sample of the user base

No, it's a little more than that .. talking to people who are interested in buying new computers and wanting Internet access. When asking people what version of Windows they're running, 'Windows 97' is (or was) a typical response. Joe User isn't half as computer literate as people think he is. He's not stupid (some Joe Users forget more in life than I'll ever learn) - he's just not good with computers.

Especially in a free software environment. When you can have any application you want, the only problem is finding it

Actually, that depends on what you're looking for. There is a lot of free software (with a lot of it being quite good), but saying 'you can have any application you want' is stretching it a bit.

By definition working in tech support means only talking people who are having trouble. I don't think that's a good sample of the user base

Part of my job when doing tech support for an ISP was writing technical documents, one of which was setup instructions for installing TCP/IP and DUN in Win 95/98 (This was before solutions to automagically configure everything actually worked worth a damn).
When I first arrived, the instructions were about 7-8 pages long and almost none of the customers could complete it successfully. So, I started to tweak it - changing/adding explanations on the parts where customers had the most trouble and clarifying trouble spots. This gave me a great insight to how the common user views things and what does/does not trip him up.
By the time I had a 95%+ success rate with the setup instructions, the manual was almost 50 pages long. But if it didn't work by the time a customer got through with it, it was because something was wrong with their computer

Lycrois, Mandrake 8.2, Peanut 9.2. All have been installed on a couple of 233mmx with 128mb memory. 2 were gift's from me to 2 "computer dummys". Both had used 95-98 since they came out. Both were very comfortable with in a week. Both have not looked back. One has stayed with Lycrois, the other has try all three and likes Peanut. Age of these people......both are 63 years old! I build computers for people who can't afford them out of parts I am given, or I find on the curb. The one using Peanut is getting into the command line. Both have had there systems for about 4 months. The only problem is they have to duel boot in 98 to use AOL. I think this says alot about the state of Linux. It has a ways to go, but I for one am not afraid to show people, I mean, what are they going to do, ask me to remove it? Linux has a bright future, and I am staying with it.

PS-I have tried BeOS,Unix,and a few others, I CHOSE LINUX

For the poster you said "Some of us have Girlfriends", I searched and could not find a linux or windows package called "girlfriends". I even checked for Mac and BeOs. Then I searched for OS/2. No "Girlfriends" package. So I searched for Amiga. Nope. I don't know how you have "girlfriends", I dont' think such thing exists. I even searched for "Have a life" and I could not find an RPM, TGZ, or binary for ANY operating system. If you have something important to say, than say it. There's not need for this flamebait. Unless you were kidding, then I guess the jokes on me.

for anyone searching for a GUI frontend to portage, try Kportage (on gentoo: emerge kportage).

For the suggestion problem, it's a good idea to have portage suggest you which package you are searching... why not submit the request on bugs.gentoo.org? or if you know python why not code the feature by yourself and submit it to the gentoo devel mailing list?

that's the way opensource works, not talking, but coding

Not really like Windows. Windows has the whole registry debacle. MS also decides that with every update you should give away more rights that have nothing to do with the updates.

I would really just like more than just one OS that competes on open hardware for space in the average user domain.

Apple is a closed hardware company.

BeOS would be cool of it was kept current and had support from hardware manufacturers.

I think the hardware people would get behind a common driver specification if MS did not have such coercive power.

Please tell me again the flaws in the idea behind distro makers adopting different distros for different users. I mean more than just the make up of the packages, but the whole packaging scheme.

Yes, Apt-get and portage may be powerful, needlessly so for most users in my opinion. You did cherry pick by selecting Mozilla. Are you going to tell me that you have never been denied and install because it would affect another piece of software you need in Debian. It happened to me the second day I was trying Debian, and with more than one package.

I will say this though Debain and Gentoo are not for average users, I am just trying to say that Apt-get and Portage are not good systems for average users. I do like the idea of the average person using a system like synaptic. They could just click on the app (not the package) and it would install. Please keep in mind most people care little about the packages that go into a useful app, they care about the app. Please don't show them something like 'libbonobo' etc.

Hello Andrew

> Not really like Windows. Windows has the whole registry debacle.

Well you meet the Registry shit again in GNOME 2.x called GConf. Windows Registry is imo done right while GConf is not. So basically your horrible nightmares with Registry arrived Linux now.

Yeah Ali/Mantis, we all know a centralized database in binary format in a single file is the best way to preserve applications' configuration. Yeah, it's "done right", while Gnome's gconf, with many XML files in different directories depending on the applicaction, and *documented* configuration keys is much much worse...

Now is when you say you only do positive comments about Gnome instead of trying to spread FUD

> we all know a centralized database in binary format
> in a single file is the best way to preserve
> applications' configuration.

Exactly that is so but besides that I'm against ANY implementation of a Windows Registry like System and I'm not the only one with this opinion.

> Yeah, it's "done right", while Gnome's gconf, with
> many XML files in different directories depending
> on the applicaction, and *documented*
> configuration keys is much much worse...

Ironically this is exactly the case.

> Now is when you say you only do positive
> comments about Gnome instead of trying to
> spread FUD

Call it whatever you like, I'm just expressing my opinion about that and I will probably never go away with this opinion.

http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1410
http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1489
http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1387

Quote: Johnathan Bailes comment 135
"I do NOT like the way the gconf and the gconf-editor have been implemented I agree with you on that."

I bet even after I came up with Links that contains some different contexts written by other people you still claim that everything comes out of my ass and I still know you will continue blaming my name on all places. Anyways be it that way people will figure out on their own even without my opinion.

Oh by the way I would like to know your real name since I think that you are in a little advantage now.

Well Ali, since you love losing discussions, but I don't have so much time in my hands right now, I'll just post some links and leave the too long posts (since you love links, heh):

There's no need for me to discuss technical things with you. I already did, many people already did and rebated you, and you still use the same points. So to make it easier to answer you without losing so much time of life, someone already made a good post about your anti-gnome trollings:

http://www.gnomedesktop.org/article.php?thold=-1&mode=flat&order=1&...

And this is from a thread where you were left without valid points and showed how mature you are insulting me, my country and my parents. The audience loved it (and I plaid my role very well, out of modesty) :

http://www.gnomedesktop.org/comments.php?op=showreply&tid=3208&sid=...

Oh by the way I would like to know your real name since I think that you are in a little advantage now.

Actually, you theoretically have the advantage cause you use different nicks, and even IPs (the ones from cyberspace.org... using lynx on a remote connection to do trolling? you sure are obsessed) ) . Anyway, I admit it's too easy to spot your messages and identify yourself instantly. Keep trying

P.S.: The links posted in the gnomedesktop forums really show that like 10 people there have problems with the *concept* of gconf (many of them are you, actually... I specially mean the Gnome Armageddon one you wrote). Nice to see you need to resort to external links to talk badly about Gconf. Specially if those forum posts there were rebated

P.S. 2: Happy new year

> There's no need for me to discuss technical things with you.

No there is really no NEED since your opinions are simply as valid as mine. You favorisite GConf which I have no problems with and I don't favorisite it. Regardless to say all the problems that developers deal with each day. Ever tried to use GConf over NFS ?

> http://www.gnomedesktop.org/article.php?t hold=-1&mode=flat&...

Nice try, I repeat here again I'm no responsible for this writing and Thomas simply add my Name into that without even have one single proove that I'm the author. I already have discussed this with Thomas on IRC and even he admits that he isn't 100% sure but he assumed it was me. It's not fair or correct to connect some writings to some person without being able to proove it.

> http://www.gnomedesktop.org/comments.php?op=showreply&tid=320 8&...

Ahh this is the real reason now I understand why you poop on me all the time. Dude, I'm not responsible for that writing.

> you sure are obsessed) ).

No you are and I mean this. What will be next ? Maybe you want to make me responsible for the upcomming IRAQ war ? I 'm sick of all kind of shit being tied to me and my name. But I must admit that I replied to some of the GConf comments on gnomesupport.org but that was only meant to be a normal share of my own opinion. Look it's MY OPINION if you don't share it then it's ok I can easily deal with that but I don't like being forced to share your opinion of the great error-prone GConf that for sure never caused neightmares for developers. That's the individuality between you and me. My right NOT to share everyone else's opinion. That's the rule of life that makes me individual to you. Yes I expected to get bashed for my replies on gnomesupport.org no wonder because it's a place most commonly prefered by GNOME zealots.

Look I only express my concerns about GNOME and only GNOME. What you are trying all the time is to shit on my name and do personal attacks. Even if I take my time and try to be friendly to you and write with you instead ignoring you - you still try to construct situations to shit on my name.

OK Ali, all I'll say is:

You were here posting the same anti-gnome points you ever use. And with a different nick, again. You can try to defend yourself anytime you want, it just won't work, specially if you're caught in the act ))

I don't hate you, just your attitude. Change it and I'll forget that "gay country" post that was yours for sure. I just know it, you just know it, everyone with a brain knows it

I'll leave this thread, cause it's getting down on the front page and it's getting boring (now you try to act like a poor tormented soul again... yawn). But I can wait for your next trolling. Perhaps I'll answer, perhaps not. It depends on how much potential fun I see there. And sorry, OSNews editors... hope you at least get fun out of this

Oh! about personal attacks... what about the "gnome developers are retarded" kind of comments? Constructive criticism, huh?

P.S.: The famous Gconf bug on NFS? You mean that's the only thing you can come up with? Good, once it's solved and the editor redesigned, Gconf will be perfect!

@Dekkard

Ok I see a normal frindly clarifying conversation with you is not possible since your primary goal is to put my name down.

Listen, what kind of nick I use is my own decission and guarantys me some anonymity which is my good right. This prevents trolls like you verbally attacking me all the time. Being anonymous is my good right and nothing to be ashamed of since it's widely used by many people on the net day in and day out.

What I write and why I write is, is my own opinion which I have told you within my last 3-5 replies. It's obvious that you haven't read them after all since it's not your primary goal. You don't want to have an objective discussion with me. If this's the case then simply let me know this and we can stop this kind of childish behave and conversation. What you do is simply poor and probably doesn't do much else than entertaining me and some other readers here.

I welcome you everytime to have a normal clarifying and mature conversation with me but then you have to agree to it too otherwise it makes no sense. Right now you emphasize exactly the points that other people have pointed out with the bad attitude of certain GNOME zealots.

You want to be respected as person but you don't respect the others. You simply get back what you dispense.

@ EcHo2K (IP: 212.131.234.---)

KPortage is excellent, but it's QT, and if you run Gnome you usually doesn't have nor want QT and a bunch of KDE libs installed.

I run Gnome2 and are waiting to see a GTK2 Portage Frontend surface, I can do everything from the console BUT I can't get a proper browsable overview of installed/not-installed libs, if it only does that I'd be a happy and consider any features beyond that extras.

More Portage frontends to the people.

//We've all seen the American police shows, where some idiot gets into a car with a bottle of whisky and a shotgun, and an IQ of 3//

Er .. I've seen the same thing on shows from England, Italy, and Germany. Okay, maybe a M93R instead of the shotgun, but still.

Typical American-bashing idiot, who cries for our help when their country gets overrun.

For me this is something that has to happen before Linux is ready for my desktop. The main reason I'm using Windows rather than Linux to post this is the lack of a consistent GUI. Windows is far from perfect, but I consider a consistent GUI to be as essential as system stability and speed.