-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On February 17, 2003 09:06 pm, Kevin McLauchlan wrote:
And you know about this stuff, and how to do it efficiently because you installed or setup your PC once, in 1996 and once in 1999 and once in 2002, and you remembered all the techy bits from just those few occasions?
Your crystal ball on my computer knowledge, especially Windows, is rather foggy. I have known Windows intimately and have installed it many times since 3.0 (the reason why I didn't use early versions was because they truly sucked- I was using DESQview instead). Since then I have worked and troubleshooted on Windows up to NT4, although I have also worked with Win2k as well.
Of course not. You have far more frequent and recent experience of the command-line and the screw-driver.
Although my use of the commandline dates back to CP/M on an Osbourne IIB (yes, I started very young), it doesn't mean I don't use GUI's. In fact GUI's have been a hobby of mine. I have worked with DESQview X, GEM, Windows, Norton Desktop, Workplace Shell. the GUI in OS9 and under, BE, Aqua, various window managers and environments under X, etc. It usually take my less the 10 minutes to get the hang of a new one.
But that's not the experience of a Windows user in an office. If the IT department even LET them do their own install/upgrade, they sweat it out every few years and then they don't change anything. If, like the majority of people who bought home computers, they had it pre-installed...
Well this is true but what does it have to do with what I have said? My complaint of Windows XP is the over use of Wizards (notice I actually said that I don't mind WIn2k). Wizards have its place when guiding a user through a very complex task, but not simple ones- the control panel is one of them. Instead of presenting the user with a form with clearly labelled fields, they have to spilt it up into multiple dialog boxes with long questions which doesn't always make sense. So install of filling up a form, click OK and be done with it, the procedure is: (1) First dialog box of wizard pops up (2) Read a long sentence or paragraph that sometimes make no sense (3) Enter the value and click next or whatever (4) Repeat step 1-3 on all subsequent dialog boxes of wizard that pops up (5) Click OK.
THAT is the market that Linux-for-the-desktop is now courting. Linux already HAD you, when it wasn't trying to be anything more than geek-joy. But now, it's looking for some real market- mind-share.
Notice you said early that people buy their computers pre-installed with Windows. This is one of the two reasons why Windows seem to be easier for them. The other being familiarity- they have used it before in school or at the office. Have you ever seen newbies trying to install and use Windows? They have just as many problems as with Linux. I think the only way for Linux to really pentrate the consumer market is if more OEM's pre-install Linux on their machines.
Y'know, if Linux evangelists really wanted to educate the average Joe... , somebody would have come up with a GUI app that would accompany an upgrade utility (like YOU or apt or whatever).
Although things can and should be improved, what is wrong with YOU or apt as it stands?
What it would do is TALK to the user as s/he installed or upgraded/ updated some software. It would show the contents of every config file that was being automatically modified, and it would show the contents of every config file that wanted to be manually modified, with before-and-after views and a bit of explanation that showed why the change was made, and why/how one file points at another, points at another... "Oh, and here's where we've stored the backup files, in case you want to reverse what we've just done. And if you are accustomed to the arcane Windows registry, don't worry. These are just text files.... see? Like building blocks. Fear not."
Hum... this is like saying the Windows installer should show every hive that is modified in the registry. Also, upgrading an rpm's doesn't change the config files. If something important changed since the last version, it is communicated by email to root.
And if you are accustomed to the arcane Windows registry, don't worry. These are just text files.... see? Like building blocks. Fear not."
Most uses don't need to edit config files. Almost everthing can be changed with YaST2 or through the app itself.
"And by the way, the foregoing activity has been logged in *this* file, and if something goes wrong when you reboot (which you probably won't need to do, but...) then the boot logs are stored here,
Does Windows XP installer tell people that there is a boot log in the root directory? The SuSE manuals also exist for a reason.
and the wonderful people on the mailing lists will want to ask you about them in order to help you help yourself."
I thought this was stated in the manual. Charles -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+Udra3epPyyKbwPYRAuVzAKCnaBV1uEaq9s0wEpRMAY047NIYtwCgoraT T0zExJu1B8SnY5ZE4lKVR/Q= =aWt1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----