Derek Croxton has written an editorial on how he sees the Linux and Open Source communities, and his personal experiences with Linux. Excerpt: “A novice’s greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type; or, as so frequently happens, knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet somewhere, but with no idea of what it means or how to alter it if it doesn’t behave exactly as advertised.”
Two Years Before the Prompt: A Linux Odyssey
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Why are we so afraid of CLI? It’s not that complex to follow instructions, and CLI instructions are a lot more plain to read than:
“now click the funny lookin button that says ‘blue’ but not the normal looking one that says ‘blue’.”
In the end, the hard part of following instructions is knowing things, like the vertical sync of your monitor. That’s the stuff that makes life difficult.
The future is not gui, the future is logical interfaces for the job. Gui’s are great for some things, but as any CAD user will tell you, sometimes commands are quicker and/or more accurate.
It’s bad enough to see all the mac theme copies, do we need to copy the anti-CLI perspective too? Or can we have our own way of doing things? Keep in mind I am referring to Mac before OS X, and even now they try to make sure the terminal is just a geek toy.
I can understand Croxton’s thoughts around graphical environments and the escape from the CLI in GNU/Linux but I must say that if applications are to be configured the same way as in Windows (via a GUI) we will eventually get our precious applications “Windowsed”. I personally prefer the small, yet powerful, ones with a well written help.
The major point in his editorial though, that our OS probably never will be as successful as Gates’ version unless we can escape the commandprompt, is completely and sadly, true.
Excellent editorial!
“A novice’s greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type; or, as so frequently happens, knowing a command that he copied verbatim from a document discovered on the internet somewhere, but with no idea of what it means or how to alter it if it doesn’t behave exactly as advertised.”
I’m an old casual DOS user, but that’s exactly what it was like for me the first time I used Linux. I din’t know the directory structure, I didn’t know any config files (where are they, what should I expect in them), I didn’t know any commands. I was essentially rendered CLI impotent. (And any kind of impotence, I would assume, feels very very bad.)
I found a small cheatsheet of commands. (From a friend, I didn’t have an internet connection at the time.) I remember it had something like: ls, cd, rm, vi, mkdir, man. I wanted to figure out what command that I don’t know, does what task that I want to do, but ‘man’ only works if I already know the command. I thought to myself, “Then why does it even exist?”
(Let’s just get ‘vi’ over with and just say, “Beep!” … “How the &$#* do I just exit?!”)
Now, I had to find a directoy with the few commands I knew and ‘man’ everything I could see, writing down what would be useful. (I at least knew that unlike DOS, where most basic commands are stuffed into command.com, everything in Linux was it’s own program.) I didn’t totally trust this method of figurign things out though, because things seemed to be scattered everywhere with little thought or reason. (Before you flame, I said “seemed.”) It was much more like reverse-engineering or solving a bothersome puzzle than just ‘using’.
Then, many of those commands seemed to have nonsensical default behaviors, requiring long strings of flags to execute as you would expect it to without any flags at all. Some broke consistancy and had different flags for the same thing…
Every command had far too many flags. The whole thing had too many commands. (Ten useful commands out of ten that exist is easy to learn. Ten useful commands out of a hundred that exist is hard to learn.)
That was just for basic operation. I want to get to another disk, install programs (where? how?), change how things operated… The whole thing is made another hundred times more difficult if you’re afraid to break something and must find the ‘right way’ out of all the possible ways.
I just gave up on figuring it out and got a book. Even that wasn’t as thorough as I would have hoped…
BASH and friends are just not friendly to ‘figure it out yourself’ or ‘learn by doing’ methods, but if you’ve got Linux now you probably have an internet connection. A terminal window an a browser window right next to each other should make a CLI pretty easy to learn and use…
//oh, well. ramble off
Personally, I love managing a computer via CLI. I wasn’t always this way and didn’t learn to appreciate what I had until I switched to Gentoo Linux.
I can much, MUCH, more easily change settings, share files, manage services, etc. using nano from the shell prompt.
Now that I look back and see how cumbersome the same actions are with a GUI in X or a particular DE, or even Windows, I’m not sure how I got along clicking away like a chump.
Of course, like anything, the CLI is powerful for some tasks and just pointless for others, such as word processing, graphics editing, surfing the web (lynx is ok, but…), etc.
The right tool for the right job.
I can better manage a web server via ssh as opposed to vnc or terminal services any day.
To me vim is Zen. To use vim is to practice zen.
Every command is a koan. Profound to the user,
unintelligible to the uninitiated.
You discover truth everytime you use it.
— [email protected]
The whole article is nothing but a troll.
Here’s why in no specific order.
0) He claims to have been running Linux since 1993, but does not know that Macromedia offers easy rpms to install its software and the instructions on how to run the script are also dead easy.
1) He rubishes Linux by claiming that it’s just gueswork to know whether what works in one distribution will work in the next one. Nonsense, the four big distributions generally provide identical hardware support. (Suse, MDK, Red Hat/Fedora, Debian).
2) Check out the screenshot on that review. It is of Arklinux, which never had the horrible unattractive KDE 2.0 look, because it didn’t ship until much later. This guy is out to make look Linux as bad as possible.
3) The whole thing is his opinion at best. Yet every other sentence has the word fact in it, when the review is far from being factual.
4) “Several distributions have had no trouble recognizing the touchpad on my laptop, but I haven’t found anywhere to configured its advanced functions – things like being able to tap directly on the pad rather than using a button…”
Why doesn’t he tell us which laptop and which distributions? Because I can use my touchpad fully on MDK, Suse, Red hat and Debian.
He then goes on to claim that powermanagement isn’t compiled into the kernel by default. What planet is this guy on? All current distributions will display a nice icon with your battery status and most allow you to suspend to disk and resume without any issues. There are some issues, both because Linux is still maturing in this area and because many bioses have a buggy ACPI implementation, but for the most part, it just works. Of course, if you choose to run Gentoo or LFS, it is up to you to make it work.
5) “If I had been able to buy the laptop with Linux pre-configured on it, no doubt everything would be fine.”
But you have been able to do so for the past 4 years.
http://www.emperorlinux.com/
http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html
IBM’s laptops were sold with Linux for a while, are known to work with linux and are internally tested to do so. Wait for announcements by year’s end.
And as of late:
http://www.hp.com -> See the nx5000
6)Since this is an article directed at new users, can someone tell me how speaking about something that you don’t understand helps new users? I quote:
“If the difference between widget style, window behavior, desktop environment, and window manager is still unclear to you – well, that’s probably because it’s unclear to me, too. I have certain notions of what they each mean, but I could not begin to give a good definition of each.”
Well, don’t bring it up, damn it. Just say to the user that you will be clicking on things to open programs and that your experience in this sense will be fairly similar to what you now do in Windows.
He continues to do this throughout the article to make Linux seem messy and difficult. There is too much choice in window managers, too many in text editors, too much choice everywhere, and you will be confused. The truth is that most distributions that you would put on a desktop, particularly the one on the screenshot, Arklinux, now default to one desktop, install sane defaults and choose best of breed programs.
7) “Since I am considerably more comfortable with computers than the average Windows user, I think I should prepare you for .conf files now: get used to them. Although things are getting better, […] the fact is that most Linux programs still operate this way.”
Nonsense. Utter nonsense. This is an article about desktop usage. My wife has never ever had to touch a configuration file. Everything that she needed to do whether it was in evolution, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Juk, Bookcase or whatever was always readily available through a GUI menu option.
8) “You see, when I right-click on a package in KDE, I get three different options for how to compress it, but nothing for how to un-compress it. I don’t doubt that there is some way of un-compressing it from the gui, but I long ago learned how to use the tar command, and I haven’t gotten around to figuring out the “normal” way (which I would still prefer on occasion).”
Damn, I must be living in la-la land, because in KDE I can just right click and I am given the option of Action->Extract to and Action->Extract here as well as different options to put the files on a CD.
9) “Software in Linux is very difficult to install”
” Gnome and KDE have different locations for icons on the desktop and programs in the main menu (the “start” menu in Windows), so which should the install package look for?”
Well, that’s what the freedesktop standards are for. Most reasonable distribution now offer a unified menu structure that makes finding things easy. And, anyway, given how clueless the author of the article is, why would he package his own software and not, to give an example, just stick to using the thousands of packages that are available for MDK through the official CDs, contrib and plf?
“It is rare to have a program that will install itself, create a desktop icon, and put itself in the menu tree. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced this. So, if these things are important to you, you will do well to figure out how to do them yourself.”
FUD, FUD, FUD. Nonsense. This guy is nothing more than a liar. I have no idea what he got paid to write this dribel, but he could have done a better job disguising his bias.
Wait it gets better:
“The problem comes if you need, say, version 4 for your new program, but you already have version 3 installed. You can’t simply overwrite version 3, because then all the existing programs that depend on it will break. Apparently you can’t just have separate copies of 3 and 4, since I have yet to find an installation tool that will let you do this. Instead, you…well, frankly, I don’t know what you do. ”
Basically, he admits once again that he doesn’t know what he is talking about. If he had taken a minute to understand software installation on Linux, he would have understood that you can install packages in parallel. Both deb an drpm packages allow to do parallel intallations that allow you to keep more than one version of a library in the rare instances that this desired. Most times, a library is backwards compatible with its predecessor, which you can always test before installing by using the test switch in rpm and debian. This guy has been running Linux since 1993? Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.
And more to the point, these issues simply are not there for distributions with good package managers, which is most of the modern distributions.
” It would be pointless for me to beg the Linux experts to come up with a solution to this problem. I’m sure they are aware of it and would have done something if they could.”
NO, what is pointless is the whole article. What you think is a problem isn’t one. My friends prefer to install and update programs by going to one trusted source provided by the distribution than to hunt around the next for a program not knowing whether it will contain a trojan or adware as a payload.
He then tries to conclude by sounding reasonable about what he thinks Linux needs to do to appeal to a wider user base. The trouble is that Linux already does this. Linux is today (Suse 9.1, Mandrake 10) easier to install than Windows. And mainstream users are already using it:
http://www.mialug.org/downloads/images/projects/MWC/MWC-TrainingSes…
I use Slackware BTW since 3.x
I think the difference is wether you want to fly the space shuttle or just drive a car (Automatic).
“All of the distributions I have used are of the more user-friendly type”
He says he is focusing in on the easier to use distro’s. I still find it funny that they have these problems installing software. Which some of the “harder” distros do not.
“You see, when I right-click on a package in KDE, I get three different options for how to compress it, but nothing for how to un-compress it.”
Weird on my desktop there are several options to decompress it on the right mouse button. But then again in slackware packages are not handled by GUI systems and Patrick V has not rewritten the RMB menu.
“The instructions from Macromedia explicitly state that the configuration tool must be run from the command line,”
Which proves that Macromedia need to clean up their act in that department.
“you can’t install a program if the shared objects that it depends on – its “dependencies” – are not on the system.”
A non-existent problem on Slackware. Yet Fedora and other distro’s still have a problem with this. This is why i cannot stand them, they are dumb and they treat the user as being dumb.
“The problem comes if you need, say, version 4 for your new program, but you already have version 3 installed. You can’t simply overwrite version 3, because then all the existing programs that depend on it will break. Apparently you can’t just have separate copies of 3 and 4, since I have yet to find an installation tool that will let you do this.”
Yet another non-issue in Slackware but other distro’s still fall into this trap.
“It would be pointless for me to beg the Linux experts to come up with a solution to this problem. I’m sure they are aware of it and would have done something if they could.”
I think he should be kicking up a stink, if those of us who use more “difficult” distro’s do not have these problems then the maintainers of the “easier” distro’s really need to pick up their act.
Does Slackware support SATA for via chipsets right from the burned iso?
“I made the plunge into Linux at the start of 1993 under the assumption that things had improved enough that I could get around Linux without the command prompt at all, or at least with minimal exposure to it.”
Does anyone else think this part doesn’t make a lot of sense? Wouldn’t 1993 be somewhere around Slackware 1.0? The first 1.0 Linux distribution ever?
Anyone who was there: Did it even have X back then?
“I distinctly recall installing a version of Linux 6 years ago“…
I assume he’s not talking kernel version 6… It’s just nitpicking, but I hate when people say things like “Linux 6.”
//i just can’t compete with other’s shredding of this editorial
“Does Slackware support SATA for via chipsets right from the burned iso?”
I don’t think so. The ISO has boot 2.4 kernels, and 2.6 only as a compile-after-install option. You’d need to boot into 2.6 to install to a SATA drive.
And does that question really belong here?
I assume he’s not talking kernel version 6… It’s just nitpicking, but I hate when people say things like “Linux 6.”
I distinctly recall installing a version of Linux 6 years ago
=
(I distinctly recall installing a version of Linux)(6 years ago)
//I’m a programmer…when it’s confusing, just add parenthesis
“I distinctly recall installing a version of Linux 6 years ago”…
I assume he’s not talking kernel version 6… It’s just nitpicking, but I hate when people say things like “Linux 6.”
hey, read that again
I distinctly recall installing a version of linux, 6 years ago.
He is talking about an expirance he had with linux 6 years ago.
Why am I always posting stupid things when I should be sleeping?
They want their FUD back!
“Does Slackware support SATA for via chipsets right from the burned iso?”
Perhaps it does.As an example .Would be the first barrier for a newcomer with his new PC and a SATA HD faces when installing
Slackware.Would be fairly simple to integrate the sata_via.o
module wouldn’t it?
” It would be pointless for me to beg the Linux experts to come up with a solution to this problem. I’m sure they are aware of it and would have done something if they could.”
What a bizarre statement. Not asking for help, as he beleives none to be available. Plus the fact that dependency issues have been adressed many times. He classes himself as a “second generation linux user … ordinary geek, computer power user”, yet he struggles with installing/upgrading software, extracting tar files, and editing .conf’s.
yes, linux did have X back in 1993
I had slackware then, it was a 0.8 or 0.9 release I think.
X was there OK, and the Window managers were twm, mwm, openlook, and fvwm. When windows 95 came out, fvwm released fvwm95 and fvwm2… Then came KDE and Gnome.
But that guy in the article has not got a clue.
Your rebuttal is nothing but a troll.
So this guy writes 1993 when in fact clearly meaning 2003, doh, big deal, kill him.
And yes he does have problems that probably could be solved very easily if he knew what he was doing, the problem is, he doesn’t in many cases and that is exactly the point of the article.
If you people are really interested in the success of OSS, stop your stupid bitching and listen to the problems noobs have, for Christ’s sake!
He does seem to be telling a few pork pies.. He says he tried to set up Linux, 6 years ago, then he says it was using X11R6. Hmm I think it was still X11R5 up until 2000, I am not too sure on that one. It could have been 2001.
But anyway… how is it he has had to go into the command line so many times when he himself said at the start of the article that he had only ever used the “newbie” distros ????
no did you READ the article. If he meant 2003, how then did he try it 6 years ago ?
Yes, I read the article and yes there is a difference between actually using it since 2003 and trying it out for the first time 6 years ago.
That was a rambling way of saying Linux GUIs aren’t mature yet. Obviously, you can’t get rid of the CLI – it’s fundamental to UNIX. What you can do is create GUIs for all the CLI stuff users need. This really isn’t very hard, and is being done right now by both KDE and GNOME, but he is right – it hasn’t happened yet.
“I’m also not writing a critique of Linux distributions, although I hope some developers out there might read this and get some ideas. My main purpose is to prepare new users for likely sticking points, as well as to reassure them about things that will not be as hard as they had feared.”
“I have had very little difficulty with any of my installs: keyboard, monitor, mouse, sound card, network card, and other essentials are usually automatically detected and configured without my having to do a thing.”
I really don’t think this is such a troll. The guy’s big problem is that he is flitting between distributions and thus is able to find examples of anything “not working”.
If people stopped talking about Linux and spoke, instead about Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake and so on this sort of extrapolation from one distro to them all, wouldn’t happen. It would also help if distros provided proper manuals (remember them?).
RE:””A novice’s greatest fear is sitting in front of a motionless command prompt with no idea what to type; ”
Midnight Commander – bash# mc is the best friend a user can have while using Linux in CLI mode
While I understand that the CLI can be less intuitive, it better for certain high-skill jobs.
Plus, many of the peripheral problems he mentioned are resolved in your user-friendly distros. Package installation, for instance.
No time for more.
Gnome does have an untar option for the right-click submenu. Or better yet, instead of getting the tarball, search for an RPM! Download, double-click, what’s the problem!
@PBPG:
dude, that like nailed it spot on.
Am assuming that for the most part people here will be comparing GNU/Linux to MS-Windows, so will not bother to even look up Apple. Anyhow here is maturity for you:
Linux ~= 13 Years
GNOME ~= 5 Years
Microsoft ~= 23 years
MS Windows ~= 19 Years
GNOME 1.0 – http://tinyurl.com/5abbf
MS-Windows 1.0 – http://tinyurl.com/6ke39
MS maybe alot more mature in some areas, but you need to remember that they have been around longer, spend billions in r&d, and have a humongous user base to test their products.
There maybe other arguments that OSS steal/copy ideas from MS/Mac but you need to remember that MS/Apple have also been inspired by other companies (IE: Xerox).
I think that GNU/Linux is doing fine for it’s age, and in my experience it is no harder to use than say DOS or even MS-Windows, as long as you do some minor reading/research.
Midnight Commander – bash# mc is the best friend a user can have while using Linux in CLI mode
I second. When I installed NetBSD for the first time I felt a bit lost because I didn’t know what the directory structure was and what config files were available for editing. But after I got Midnight Commander installed, I started quickly becoming familiar with the new system. Plus I could point Midnight Commander to the nearest NetBSD ftp mirror, browse the available packages there and use Midnight Commander as a GUI frontend for installing new packages via network.
//So this guy writes 1993 when in fact clearly meaning 2003 …//
So you’re basically saying that this guy gets confused when typing the digits 1-9-9-3 and 2-0-0-3.
Uh huh. Right. Okay.
“Obviously, you can’t get rid of the CLI – it’s fundamental to UNIX”
Apple seemed to do that just fine.
– Didn’t anyone tell this guy about the Man pages?
– This is why I switched to Apple’s Mac OS X.
When I don’t want to learn, just do, I use the Apple GUI.
When I want to learn some Linux/Unix commands I start up two Terminal Windows:
1 – for the Man page
2 – for the commands I wish to enter.
It’s been a great learning experience.
And Unix commands really fly on the Mac.
Thanks for coming to the defense of an indefensible article. I take the time to point out the many inconsistencies in the article and I am the troll, right.
Did you really read the article? Did you really read my rebuttal where I point out many of the inconsistencies about dates/usage or did you decide to lash out just for the sake of it? Do you honestly believe that this guy was using Linux since 1993 or do you believe that he is not smart enough to proofread his own article and know the difference between 1993 and 2003?
“I made the plunge into Linux at the start of 1993 under the assumption that things had improved enough that I could get around Linux without the command prompt at all, or at least with minimal exposure to it.”
How ridiculous it is to expect this. No one, except alpha geeks and kernel developers used linux in 1993. From device support to software availability, there was no way to do anything meaningful in Linux without the command line in 1993. Considering that this is the starting point of the article, you can see how it goes downhill from here.
“That’s the frigging reason why he meant 2003. Otherwise his comment would be as sensible as I don’t use Windows cause I didn’t like it in the 60s. If you read what he wrote you clearly see that he meant to say 2003 god dammit!”
Doesn’t “made the plunge into Linux” mean his first time? If that was 2003, it doesn’t mesh with “I distinctly recall installing a version of Linux 6 years ago.”
“Doesn’t “made the plunge into Linux” mean his first time? If that was 2003, it doesn’t mesh with “I distinctly recall installing a version of Linux 6 years ago.””
No it doesn’t. The point of the article is that he tried out several distros in the last two years and had some problems. Learn to live with it kids.
Wether he once tried linux 6 years ago and gave up immediately is totally irrelevant.
But oh wait, someone is saying something critical, quick, let’s not address the issues, but call him names and talk about how he wrote 1993. Lol!!!LOL!!!!
Grow up people!
And the point of the critiques is that the article is full of generalizations that do not provide enough substance to make the author sound either truthful, reasonable, knowledgeable or intelligent.
From reading the article, it is impossible to know precisely when he tried Linux, what trying Linux actually entailed for this guy, what distributions he tried or anything else.
It is clear from the tone of the article that it is meant to help no one, but rather to scare unsuspecting readers away from Linux.
What problems is the author really having? By his own admission, the Linux installation was dead easy. That he installs too much software and has too many text editors. That he doesn’t know how to read the manuals that come with the distributions or use the built-in tools that make software installation a non-issue? Whose fault is that?
And you, Ralph, my dear friend, appear like an apologist who will jump on any bandwagon so long as the destination is flaming Linux.
And your exhortation to other readers that they need to “Grow up” sounds like a thinly disguised projection of your very own intellectual immaturity.
1. help
and, drumroll, wait for it . . .
2. man whatever help comes up with. Should help most of the uninitiated to get around the CLI. If they need more then get a book, I’m sure there is a CLI for Dummies out there somewhere. They have everything else for Dummies in paperback nowdays.
FYI, the auther did mean 2003 not 1993. This will be fixed online as soon as possible.
It’s a bit hard right not due to the slashdot affect. Once the site is running smothly again, I’ll update the editorial.
It’s been updated.
Sorry sometimes errors can go un-noticed.
…or maybe not…
fixed now
“And you, Ralph, my dear friend, appear like an apologist who will jump on any bandwagon so long as the destination is flaming Linux.”
ROFL, yes, that’s exactly my problem. ;-D
I know it’s silly but I somehow feel the need to defend myself now. I love Linux and contrary to what a lot of people on sides like these try to tell us I’m convinced that it is ready for the desktop and for joe user. However, knowing quite a lot of “Joe users” that are now running Linux, I also know that people do have problems with Linux and nearly all of their problems fall into the category described in the article we are talking about.
Now I know that most of these problems can easily be fixed or are no problems at all but just the user’s fault, but this doesn’t make them any less problematic for the average computer users who encounter them.
And it is precisely because I love Linux that I can’t stand people who dismiss these kind of problems as trolling or flaming Linux. No matter how stupid the problems are, they are real for the people who encounter them and if we want Linux to succeed (and I’m sure it will) we should take them seriously and learn from them and not attack the people who encounter them.
yes but….
if the guy was having problems with using his distro choice, then he should have posted the problems on the distros forum, and not write a clearly uncomplimentary article about Linux in general.
you say you love linux, and have a lot of joe user friends who have the same problems…. it is almost you duty to show them how to sort things out. I mean, did someone else not do the same thing for you when you started to use windows ?
The thing is… the posts the author raised are not getting ignored, they are getting flamed because;
1: The guy simply appears not to know what he is talking about.
2: The article had mistakes/lies
3: This is a news site, not a fault reporting site.
4: We are here to discuss OS news, not take someone elses problems and fix them for them
If you check any of my post, on anything on this site, you will see I always put a valid email address into my name. I do this just in case anyone wants to send me a private message asking for help.
OK Ralph, rant over.
TO WINDOWS USERS..
You see, that is the difference between the Linux community and the Windows community.
Windows users will normally fix problems on their friends PCs, and might fix strangers problems… usually for a free
However, under Linux, everyone is prepared to help “everyone” else out, and almost always for free, or a couple of beers. I have yet to meet a Linux user who is not glad to help someone move over from windows.
Of course I do help my friends out when they have computer problems. What kind of person do you think I am?
– 1: The guy simply appears not to know what he is talking about.
But that’s normal, isn’t it? Most users don’t know a lot about computers and they don’t want to learn a lot about computers, they just want to use them to surf the web, write email, etc.
So the guy is a perfect example of many average users and so are the problems he encounters.
– 2: The article had mistakes/lies
Of course it had mistakes. I’m know for example that you can easily extract zip files in konqueror. Just right click on the file and choose extract, or actions -> extract (that’s where you’ll find in on Suse 9.1). So yes, he’s wrong to claim that you can’t do it, but on the other hand a friend of mine was having the exact same problem and it wasn’t obvious to her that she had to right click, choose action and would then find what she was looking for.
– 3: This is a news site, not a fault reporting site.
I simply fail to see your point? Why shouldn’t an article about some user’s experience with linux be posted on a news site?
– 4: We are here to discuss OS news, not take someone elses problems and fix them for them
See above.
1: The guy simply appears not to know what he is talking about.
But that’s normal, isn’t it? Most users don’t know a lot about computers and they don’t want to learn a lot about computers, they just want to use them to surf the web, write email, etc.
So the guy is a perfect example of many average users and so are the problems he encounters
Hmmm Linux has been able to do all that and more out of the box for a number of years…. How could he have had a problem with that ? Simple, he wanted to spread some FUD
– 2: The article had mistakes/lies
Of course it had mistakes. I’m know for example that you can easily extract zip files in konqueror. Just right click on the file and choose extract, or actions -> extract (that’s where you’ll find in on Suse 9.1). So yes, he’s wrong to claim that you can’t do it, but on the other hand a friend of mine was having the exact same problem and it wasn’t obvious to her that she had to right click, choose action and would then find what she was looking for.
You mentioned 1 point that he made, but ignored the fact that the guy said he had to edit a config file to set up X11R6 ???? Pure utter FUD.
– 3&4: This is a news site, not a fault reporting site.
I simply fail to see your point? Why shouldn’t an article about some user’s experience with linux be posted on a news site?
Because it was not an article posting his experiences. I have known people who have never used a computer before, use a linux machine without having the problems this guy alledged. At the end of the day, KDE and Gnome are both far more intuitive for users than the Windows desktop. Don’t believe me ? get someone with no experience on computers and let them try both..
The author is simply posting an article to scare people from moving to Linux. It is FUD and should not have had this amount of replies and in-fighting between linux users.
He certainly doesn’t think of himself as your overage “Joe User”. This is his signature:
Derek Croxton, Developer III
And he used to point that he worked in a technical capacity for some hot-shop company that uses software to do employee background checks, but that has recently been removed.
*Sigh* I do get the impression that a lot of you guys aren’t really exposed to “normal” users a lot
To answer the points from raver31:
People do have problems with surfing the web and email on all systems, believe it or not. Some examples? Kmail doesn’t show html-mails as html by default, which is a good thing of course, but it is something that can be a problem for people that don’t know what html-mails are. If they for example used outlook express before, they will simply have the impression, that kmail doesn’t work correctly.
If you really want to know what I’m talking about, let someone who doesn’t know a lot about computers configure a pop3 mail account in any mailclient and you’ll see that yes, it is not an easy task for someone like that.
Btw., I don’t know what you try to read into my comments, but I never so much as suggested that you can’t surf the web and write emails with linux. Of course you can.
About the having to edit a config file in order to fix X. Are you refering to this part of the article?
“I distinctly recall installing a version of Linux 6 years ago and trying to get XWindows (X11R6, for purists) running so I could escape the command line. I went through a lengthy setup process, but when it started asking questions like the horizontal and vertical refresh rates of my monitor, I knew I was in trouble. Nowadays, installation is often as simple as you make it: if you accept all the defaults, your only decision will be a password for the root user”
Really, I fail to see the FUD here and if you read it, it is a very positive comment about Linux, so I really don’t understand your problem.
Finally, after having read the article yet again after all the posts here I can’t understand for the life of me how some people can react to it the way they reacted. All in all it is a very positive article about Linux, but as the author clearly states, he focuses on the problems new users may encounter.
To sum it up, if you guys really think you are doing Linux, or open source a favor with lashing out at someone writing an article like this, think again. If you think he is writing something wrong, say so, but to call an article like this FUD and the author a troll is no way to behave and most of all not justified.
” “Obviously, you can’t get rid of the CLI – it’s fundamental to UNIX”
Apple seemed to do that just fine.”
The CLI is still there. Programs still use stdin and stdout. No-one uses bash because the GUI is so good. Just as it should be IMHO.
OK I re-read the article. It is pretty much pro linux….
but here are a few points that I do not agree with..
It would be pointless for me to beg the Linux experts to come up with a solution to this problem. I’m sure they are aware of it and would have done something if they could.
This, to me, is BAD. Bad because the developers do want people to tell them the problems, even if someone has reported it before, it will do no harm to report it again. And saying they would have done something about the problem “if they could” !! hello !! who wrote the software if not the developer ?
I distinctly recall installing a version of Linux 6 years ago and trying to get XWindows (X11R6, for purists) running so I could escape the command line
X11 was not at release 6, 6 years ago, in fact I think it was release 5 up until 2 years ago.
You see, when I right-click on a package in KDE, I get three different options for how to compress it, but nothing for how to un-compress it. I don’t doubt that there is some way of un-compressing it from the gui, but I long ago learned how to use the tar command, and I haven’t gotten around to figuring out the “normal” way
hmmm, no “Actions>Extract Here” or “Actions>Extract To” on the guys KDE right click menu ?
The problem comes if you need, say, version 4 for your new program, but you already have version 3 installed. You can’t simply overwrite version 3, because then all the existing programs that depend on it will break. Apparently you can’t just have separate copies of 3 and 4, since I have yet to find an installation tool that will let you do this.
Really ? I have never seen that happen
The problem comes if you need, say, version 4 for your new program, but you already have version 3 installed. You can’t simply overwrite version 3, because then all the existing programs that depend on it will break. Apparently you can’t just have separate copies of 3 and 4, since I have yet to find an installation tool that will let you do this.
Really ? I have never seen that happen
it can happen, but only if the packages in use are not distro native and the dependency info is poor. most of the time if a distro package is made to update an existing distro package its tested so that it does not break any of the packages that depend on it. if so happens and there is no other way around then all the packages that depend on the base package is allso updated. the problem is that this break with the install anything you find on the net mentality that you get by useing windows.
i just have to say it, windows is the “root” to all the bad computing habbits that exist in the private homes. people are so used to click install files and follow simple wizards and then forget about the program that they get all confused when you trow a package manager at them…
for a complete computer virgin a preinstalled linux distro isnt any worse then a preinstalled windows version. only diff is that they cant use any apps that their windows useing friends use (unless one starts to mess around with wine that is). but this is the same “problem” that you get from useing a mac so i guess its not that big.
but then the question is, who can claim to be a complete computer virgin these days? given the install base most people will at some time or another have had contact with windows. and it does not take long for a user to start building up habbits. and this i belive is the basis of many of the useability rumors when someone jumps from one os to another. habbits are broken, one must start to rely on something other then memory and then the ease of use goes out the door in the eyes of the user.
to make a true comparison of useability one will have to start out blank with all os that you compare and alternate between them so often that you cant learn a habbit from any of them.
yes linux is a diffrent beast from windows. the bad thing is that they are getting desktops that can fool you into thinking that its the same beast. its just like a car, they have the same basic controls but they behave differenty depending on design. if you drive a van like you drive a sportscar then your bound to end up in trouble. hell, even two sportscars have their differences.
to realy get to know linux you will have to go all the way. install it on a seperate box. put the windows box away for a month and only use linux. after that month go back to linux and check how you think about it then. if you still like it fine, but i think you will notice small stuff that you liked in linux that you can do in windows. and that is what make people post stuff like what started this discussion…
The part of this article that interested me was the distinction between 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation users of Linux.
Firsters want Linux to stay just as it is. For them a new distro called Damn Hard Linux. Gentoo on steroids. Seconders want Linux to become progressively easier to use. They should all be given a copy of the well-documented Quite Easy Linux (it’s rather like Mandrake/Suse/Fedora all rolled up into one UeberDistro) and banned from writing articles. Thirders will want Linux to be just like XP, only more secure and less expensive. They should be shot on sight, or if that proves to be illegal, beaten about the head with a copy of Linux for Dummies.
You know it makes sense.
Killing off your latest generation of users is a great way to kill the OS.
Banning anyone but the Uberl337 from writing articles is a surefire way to stop the growth of the OS.
If you want your OS to stay “pure”, with only dedicated developers ever using it … stop giving away for free!
As more people use an OS, they will have more and varied needs/expectations and as an Open system, they are as much entitled to these views, and to use it, as any kernel-hacker.
I always thought that was the point of Open Source.