Pieter Hulshoff wrote on 13 June 2004 09:16
I guess it was the victory of hope over experience. I hadn't expected Dell to deliver a computer where the service packs weren't installed yet. It will not happen again. :)
John does make my point though: how's the average user going to know things like this? Assuming you buy a fully installed Linux machine from a vendor, I wonder if the user experience will be worse than the one with Windows XP. I wouldn't trust my dad to install Windows XP either...
The idea is this: if you have a fully installed machine (installed by an experienced person that is), would the user experience for Windows XP be so much better than that of SuSE 9.1? My dad doesn't know where to get divx anymore than he knows where to find Packman, so setting that aside, and starting from a properly installed machine: which user experience would be better, and by how much?
I would accept that installers supplying a new machine with XP on should patch it. I have supplied several new machines to a local school recently and I configured and installed them here, behind a firewall and patched them before delivery. But these high end HP machines did already have SP1 installed. I tend to feel that this is something of a separate argument from whether or not the fundamentals of the design and intent of the operating system is better suited to the unskilled home user. It is my belief, and nothing that has been written here has changed it, that Linux will not suit the unskilled user. The vast majority of the strongest Linux advocates on this list are themselves highly skilled users, so perhaps not best placed to judge. Arguments about 'my 6-year-old has no trouble' come down to the same thing - of course they don't they have a highly skilled and experienced tutor to train them in it's use and maintain and assist in the vagaries of installing a new piece of software. 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? I would maintain that far more would manage to find the right combination of 'Next' buttons and install a default configuration on XP than could do so on Linux. Installation of new software is to my mind one of the reasons why Linux is not well suited to unskilled users. Until the linux installation processes are as slick and reliable as they currently are in windows XP (98 and others are admittedly less reliable) they will not be able to compete. Too much specific knowledge and skill is required simply to install your application. The average user to whom a computer is a tool neither needs nor wants this knowledge after installation. Damon