*** Reply to message from "Damon Jebb" on Sun, 13
Jun 2004 11:35:12 +0100***
I wonder how many 6 year olds could install, unaided and for the first time, a piece of software on Linux and how many of the same group could do so on windows XP?
well, comparing apples and apples, as it were, your 6 year old w/ linux would likely be attempting to install and rpm file, and if they have seen windows work they very likely would do something like, "click on the file " they want to install, at that point , up pops a window which says , would you like to install this w/ yast2( ?) not certain is says yast2 it may just say yast... average 6 year old would likely say ( click) "yes" and the thing would be installed, unless there were depency issues, in which case small child would yell for local parental unit, w/o a doubt! Now if you have a really smart kid who has watched you do it, and remembers what to type, complete w/ --force at the end, you might wind up w/ something that doesn't work. OTH, if they install a windows ( any version) program that needs other "libraries" or programs to work, you get a system w/ a program that wont run and very likely a kid who is kicking the bed for you to get up and fix it... 6 year olds can be extremely persistant.
Installation of new software is to my mind one of the reasons why Linux is not well suited to unskilled users
not sure this is true, compilation of programs is likely beyond the levels of most newbies... but that isn't such a bad thing. Also, as a good parent, who would prefer not to have all your computer time together consisting of "okay honey, then what did you install" probably wont put the files needed to do compilations on said kid's computer... at least not until the little dear understands that it really IS better to wait til parental unit has been infused w/ an adequate amount of caffeine to do more than make strangling gargling sort of waking up sounds. ;)
Until the linux installation processes are as slick and reliable as they currently are in windows XP
So, why did the kids at my daughters house throw out XP in favour of an Xbox, for the boy to play games on and a ps2 for the girl???? The only reason they had any windows stuff was for games, a bit of investigation showed they were playing Dos games... so XP was overkill, and after the worm right before the last worm it was gone.. Slick?? So what, wormy.. bad idea, at least we have a builtin firewall that in the home versions closes damned near everything, if not everything... No it isn't that we don't understand what windows does well. We do, but we also understand that what it does badly, will ruin your computing day, week-end, posibley the next week or so before you get back to where you were when it hit the fan... And, it seems extremely difficult to get windows users to understand "backups". Doesn't have to be complex, but, for instance, if you make your living as a writer; back up what you write, to media NOT built into your computer, and do it daily...
The average user to whom a computer is a tool neither needs nor wants this knowledge after installation.
unfortunatly this is true, but at least some are begining to understand... However, somethings are assimilated by osmosis... so the next generation gets more critical... The one real problem I see w/ linux is the lack of documentation that is clear and easy to understand on one reading. WE can go into the details of what this program will do once it's installed. But, currently, if you self compile something that is kde, or gnome, it gets put into user local.. except, of course, all it's libraries are looked for in ( for Suse anyway) /opt kde(x) or /opt/gnome... but even moving it there doesn't always help.. Probably one of the biggest pushes behind teh rpm( type) movement for installing stuff.. at least yast puts it where it will work... usually. ( and yeah, if you don't move it to /opt/whichever, you still have to run SuSEconfig... ) -- j -- nemo me impune lacessit it's just an afterthought; okay ? : A bug in the code is worth two in the documentation.