Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 28th Apr 2008 18:01 UTC
Last week, the Ubuntu guys released Ubuntu 8.04, named "Hardy Heron". Instead of posting 24408 news items pointing to different reviews of this new Ubuntu release from all over the world, we decided to collect a few of them over the weekend and present them all in one gulp. I have a feeling some of you might like not seeing three Ubuntu items every day.
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Member since:
2006-02-18
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
(thanks, fortune!)
To be quite honest, the average consumer today is quite the fool when it comes to computers. And that is through no fault of their own. When you are working and have a family and the such, it is totally reasonable to assume someone does not want to spend the time reading new documentation and forums to get their computer to work.
To most people, a computer is simply an appliance, not a toy or hobby. A truly modern OS should be transparent to the user much like a refrigerator is. You do not need to understand the mechanics of a fridge to keep your beer cold and the same should go for computers. They should not need to know they are learning a new filesystem, they should not have to care. The system should be intuitive enough that the simple tasks most people use computers for are quick and accessible.
Linux has the opportunity to be the "People's OS" but there seems to be a great deal of internal resistance to making it a populist system. Much like when someones favorite indie band makes it big, people for some reason do not want their own private operating system being the next big thing.
Ubuntu, and for that matter Fedora, SuSE and the other "mainstream" Linux distros are making great strides to the sort of transparency needed, and I hope they keep making this progress.
Edited to fix my quoting mistakes
Edited 2008-04-28 19:04 UTC