On Monday 14 November 2005 07:16 am, Kevin Donnelly wrote:
On Monday 14 November 2005 03:21, Steven T. Hatton wrote:
Don't try to get the average secratary to try Linux. It's not ready for that kind of use.
Steven, I do wish you'd stop flogging this horse, which died several weeks ago.
I don't agree with you. For one thing the thread has taken many turns.
And the above in particular is just bunkum. I actually know of one "average secretary" who is doing just that, and my wife (who can't even remember where she's saved files) gets along perfectly well.
Yes, perhaps she can use it, but what happens when she needs to prepare or use an Excel spreadsheet?
I agree this needs to be actively discussed and in a neutral fashion. The argument could degenerate into an "advocacy" forum, but hopefully will be kept above-board. I happen to agree with the current state of usage. There are many things which work great in *nix desktops. (I won't even agrue servers, since MS has no valid server offering.) Secretaries (and other non-geek workers) can mostly use Linux these days without assistance. As evidenced by my family members and friends using Linux systems, they are able to perform most tasks with ease. There are - however - a few sticky points which IMO are causing the mass adoption necessary. First off is the lack of a unified look/feel for applicaitons. This is an issue in Windows apps, too, but more pronounced in *nix desktops. Take - for example - the file open/save dialogs in Gimp vs. the same in OpenOffice. As another fine example is the sorry state of printer management in Linux. Drivers aside, there needs to be something done to make printing easier from the desktop. For example, opening the printer manager and then requiring a password to reset jobs is not user-friendly. (Oh, and it apparently can't be the same password as root's.) Now, I figure that - instead of just whining - I should do something. First off, I'm putting together an employee forum here at my work site (roughly 400 people) where I plan to introduce Linux and the concept behind OO apps. (Open source, not object oriented.) Second, I'm doing my best to learn C++. As I do, I'll start seeing how I can help the aforementioned projects obtain a better user-level functionality. -- kai ponte www.perfectreign.com linux - genuine windows replacement part