OSNews > Thread > "Often Forgotten" by fretinator

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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Often Forgotten

by fretinator on Mon 28th Apr 2008 18:53 UTC

Member since:
2005-07-06

Linux won't truly be ready for the desktop until someone computer illiterate can sit down at a the computer and with little effort do what they want to do.

A computer illiterate person who sits down in front of a Windows computer is usually absolutely lost. Only an experienced user can walk them through what to do. The most classic problem is saving files. Where did that Outlook attachment go? Help!!

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RE: Often Forgotten

by Crono on Mon 28th Apr 2008 18:57 in reply to "Often Forgotten"

Member since:
2006-11-08

Exactly.

This whole "review" boils down to "The system works different than Windows so that's bad" and "The programs work different than popular Windows-alternatives so that's bad, too".

Seriously, that one definitely wasn't woth the read.

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RE: Often Forgotten

by dimosd on Mon 28th Apr 2008 19:49 in reply to "Often Forgotten"

Member since:
2006-02-10

A computer illiterate person who sits down in front of a Windows computer is usually absolutely lost.

Ever since computer illiterate people were allowed to use computers, they spoiled the fun for the rest of us ;-)

Edited 2008-04-28 19:51 UTC

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RE: Often Forgotten

by phoenix on Tue 29th Apr 2008 02:24 in reply to "Often Forgotten"

Member since:
2005-07-11

What's even more frustrating is watching people try to attach a file (which they just finished typing and saved) to a new e-mail.

Or, trying to explain to people that you don't "save it to my Excel". We have some people at work who can't grasp the concept of files stored on disk and being able to open them in multiple applications. To them "Excel" is their file manager. (Or OpenOffice.org for those that are using our Linux systems. They manage their files via the File -> Open dialog.)

It's not that people are dumb, or computers are hard. It's that people lack common sense and the ability to think things through logically. That, and they are too lazy to experiment or explore.

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RE[2]: Often Forgotten

by RIchard James13 on Tue 29th Apr 2008 05:33 in reply to "RE: Often Forgotten"

Member since:
2007-10-26

It's not that people are dumb, or computers are hard. It's that people lack common sense and the ability to think things through logically. That, and they are too lazy to experiment or explore.

I don't agree. If the system lumps all the files into an anamorphic mess we call a filesystem and then we expect a person to realise that the computer doesn't remember the files we just told it to save when you run another program, we should be blaming the system not the user.

Of course the solution to this is to rewrite all the applications using file selector that is not stupid.

We can't really train 1 billion people how to navigate a hierarchical file system by using pretty icons. Much easier if the system kept track of the files for the user.

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RE[2]: Often Forgotten

by spanionIust on Tue 29th Apr 2008 06:57 in reply to "RE: Often Forgotten"

Member since:
2008-04-29

Common sense? The common thing about 'common sense' is that it ain't that common.

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