On 07/24/2015 01:18 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
I advocate for those who use a computer to get things done rather than playing around for hours with on disk layouts. I'm one of those that thinks there are better technologies on Linux than what Microsoft and Apple have to offer, but the coddling of ninjas, and lack of discipline sucks resources away from making Linux distros mature enough to be used by masses rather than as primarily for servers or by computer geeks who just like to tinker and understand. There's more to an eco system than having people who understand how something works; you have to have people who actually use the tool to get other things done. And for that to happen they can't be f'n around with otherwise useless shit like partitioning. Figure out *one layout* that works, and apply it to everyone, always, for 10 years, until the ninjas figure out something better.
One Right to Rule Them All. Indeed. So why do we have that range of models from Ford, Chrysler, GM, Toyota? Why do we have the two seater cars and stretch limos? Walk into a Staples and look at the range of calculators they have ... then at the HP calculators that use RPN. Part of the success of the UNIX/Linux is that it is unconstrained, so flexible, that is gets cut and sliced in so many different varieties and derivatives. The whole world isn't Windows or OSX. I'm not denying that there are people who don't want to look under the hood, even of Linux. But this forum is about people that do. I'm not preaching to front office types. I know that even the people here will have their 'toys' that they don't take apart. My phone, tablet are 'production" not "development", even for me. But even when it comes to phones and tablets there's no 'one layout" that works. People choose the apps they need, configure then how they need. Even the less technically sophisticated now about things like memory cards; even the less technical executives know about the business vs person mechanisms to keep those two apart. Even the less technically adroit will try out different music players, different video players, different cloud storage.
Microsoft, Apple, are successful in the desktop space because they say no effectively. They make decent choices for the user under the hood and prevent them from options that the user will either have difficulty supporting or those that company doesn't want to support.
That's a very naive way of looking at it. Also very limited. There are situations where the limited decision space can be useful. The military does this by training, training, training so that some things become reflex and you don't have to stop and think about them. If you've been driving shift for a few years you'll know this: you don't have to stop and think about speak and engine revs and are you going up hill or down and what weight you are towing -- you just change gears at the right time without thinking about it. The boundary between what DOES get standardized - where the pedals are - is one thing. But what you can make with the car SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO is quite another. One of the primary differences between Windows and Linux is already there in the decision space. You have to decide to install Linux. Yes you could be given an installer that, as I've pointed out elsewhere, uses an autoyast script to make the installer do anything! ANYTHING, absolutely anything. I once tried setting it up so that it wouldn't install on anything less that a 250G drive and would create /boot, /swap and a LVM and then a pile of LVM LEs, consulting the person doing the install only for his name and password and time zone. So don't try telling what the installer does, because it does whatever you tell it. We've seen that with different version of openSuse over the years working quite differently. That they now do a BtrFS RootFS is part of the script. Complain enough and that will be changed. heck, its only the autoyast script! And yes I've asked Novell about this: "If you want we'll provide a master install DVD for you that works that way ..." its just a script after all. As for preventing making choices that the user will have problems with... HA HA HA. Defaulting to BtrFS has seen a lot of problems for a lot of users, so I'm not convinced. -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org