----- Original Message ----- From: "Sean Rima" To: "SUSE Linux List" Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2003 9:02 AM Subject: Re: [SLE] Linux isn't ready yet

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Hi Michael!

I beg to differ, I use CUPS which does allow y ou to notify if the printer is out of paper/ink etc. Yes there are aspects of linux that are not newbie friendly but the more that Linux is pre-installed and simple user config then Linux will take over in the desktop market. A look at the new files arriving at freshmeat showes that development is there. However the development of commercial/shareware software does need to be encouraged.

I'm using CUPS, too. Regardless, I found myself in the position that my printer was stopped, but accepting jobs. I couldn't get the printer to start again; it stopped as soon as I started it. I have friends whose knowledge of computers is the on-off switch and a couple of software packages they use constantgly. This is the majority of computer users, I believe. They couldn't cope with this. Personally, I like Linux a lot and intend to keep using it. It has the potential to move to the average desktop, but it needs to take into account the majority of people who are not computer types. I'm hoping that development comes. That's what I was talking about.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Sean Rima" To: "SUSE Linux List" Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2003 9:31 AM Subject: Re: [SLE] Linux isn't ready yet

...

Personally, I like Linux a lot and intend to keep using it. It has the potential to move to the average desktop, but it needs to take into account the majority of people who are not computer types. I'm hoping that development comes. That's what I was talking about.

I have to admit that I am not a GUI man, I prefer the console, therefore it is possible to view what is going on better. I think that development will occur, maybe slower than the Windows platform but then we have better choice :)

The software choice is almost overwhelming, to be sure. The development is definitely going to be slower than on the Windows platform for an obvious reason: money. I'm not talking about the money to develop the software - the thousands of very dedicated volunteers (thanks to any reading who are in that group), but the money as in profit from development. The problem with real computer types developing in this way is that they (unconsciously) expect the user to be a computer type. Telling a computer type to restart the print service seems natural. The problem is that the user might be a 65 year old grandmother who can usually find the on switch. Please understand, I really want to see Linux do better on the desktop. After I've been around it enough to know how to really use it, I'm probably going to look at the source - I've done OS development before from mainframes to micros. I honestly believe that this is the main obstacle it needs to overcome (well, this and an almost unlimited advertising budget from M$).

OK, I'll jump in here with a different opinion.

From a technical perspective, Linux is more "ready for the desktop" than Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 were. Remember IRQ conflicts? Driver incompatibilities? DLL hell? Registry corruption? And the list goes on.

Linux still has some technical issues to resolve and printing is one of them. Font rendering is another. But a lot of progress has been made on these problems in the last year and I expect to see a lot more in the next year. The biggest problem desktop Linux needs to overcome is the perception that Linux is not ready for the desktop. Linux is seen as the plaything of a handful of geeks. <flame bait> We Linux geeks tend to perpetuate that perception. How many times have you seen "l33t f00lz" sneeringly refer to average users as "Joe Six-pack" or, at best, somebody's grandmother? As if they aren't intelligent enough to understand computers. The implication is that since they are not computer geeks they must be idiots. These people are NOT idiots! They are computer USERS. The computer (and its OS) is a tool. Nothing more. They want and deserve a tool that just works. And they don't want to spend hours RTFM-ing just to print something. Elitist attidudes only serve to alienate these people. They deserve our respect and consideration. Just had to get that off my chest. :^) Thanks for listening, Mark Stahlke -- Powered by SuSE Linux Just Say No To Windows

On Sunday 16 February 2003 13:04, Mark Stahlke wrote:

OK, I'll jump in here with a different opinion.

From a technical perspective, Linux is more "ready for the desktop" than Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 were. Remember IRQ conflicts? Driver incompatibilities? DLL hell? Registry corruption? And the list goes on.

Er... don't know if you've noticed, but no-one in real life has been using either of those for years. The current target for Linux-on-the-desktop to hit or surpass -- in terms of the user experience -- is WinXP. Or, at least Windows 2000. I'll be getting that on my office laptop in a week or two. (Currently WinNT) If you go to a store, even a store like "Trailing Edge" or similar second-hand-and-end-of-production jobber, and buy a computer with OS, you get Win 98SE or something newer. Comparing a commercial Linux offering of today to Windows of 1994 is spurious... a straw-man at best. /kevin

On Sunday 16 February 2003 12:59, Kevin McLauchlan wrote:

If you go to a store, even a store like "Trailing Edge" or similar second-hand-and-end-of-production jobber, and buy a computer with OS, you get Win 98SE or something newer. Comparing a commercial Linux offering of today to Windows of 1994 is spurious... a straw-man at best.

/kevin

The point I wanted to make is that the "standard" desktop OS wasn't ready for the desktop when it became the standard. Cheers, Mark Stahlke -- Powered by SuSE Linux Just Say No To Windows

On Sunday 16 February 2003 22:45, fsanta wrote:

On Sunday 16 February 2003 20:33, Mark Stahlke wrote:

...

On Sunday 16 February 2003 12:59, Kevin McLauchlan wrote:

...

If you go to a store, even a store like "Trailing Edge" or similar second-hand-and-end-of-production jobber, and buy a computer with OS, you get Win 98SE or something newer. Comparing a commercial Linux offering of today to Windows of 1994 is spurious... a straw-man at best.

/kevin

The point I wanted to make is that the "standard" desktop OS wasn't ready for the desktop when it became the standard.

My students say that Linux looks old fashioned. Apart from the more intelligent ones, most use xp at home and kde at school. Appearence counts for a lot. Is there anything apart from gnome and kde where one can drop stuff onto the desktop. And is as fast? xfce comes close. Steve.

I think if your students used Window Maker with a little bit of imagination, they would come up with a look many times that over Xps mix match MHO -- The most valueable Treasure you have, lay within you. Regards Ralph Robinson icq#26003826 www.superhanau.de (in renovation)

I've always left sendmail as a part of the default install. Reason being I figured it is required for internal mail delivery. Can I remove this from my install and still have internal mail delivery ie update notifications to root and so forth

On Mon, 17 Feb 2003 14:14:07 -0800 Rowan Reid wrote:

I've always left sendmail as a part of the default install. Reason being I figured it is required for internal mail delivery. Can I remove this from my install and still have internal mail delivery ie update notifications to root and so forth

Yeah, just manually run "/usr/sbin/sendmail -q" whenever you want, maybe put it in halt.local. If sendmail isn't running, the mail gets put in either /var/spool/clientmqueue or /var/spool/mqueue. It gets moved to /var/spool mail if you start sendmail or call "sendmail -q". Stop the sendmail daemon and play around sending test messages to yourself. See where they go, then run "?usr/bin/sendmail -q" and watch what it does to the messages. Some programs are finicky about using the sendmail daemon on port 25, but most programs for the localhost, will just call /usr/bin/sendmail. -- use Perl; #powerful programmable prestidigitation

...

My students say that Linux looks old fashioned.

Kde does not look old fashioned. At least, if you want to customize it a bit... I always get positive impressions from my desktop, even from Windows lusers and some one else too...

Praise

Try automounting 18 kde clients with customised wallpaper, icons and maybe some of their own designs. From an overheating AMD 1100. With 512 RAM. At the start of a lesson. It cost next to nothing. Let the contadiction stand. And I just hope that my Director is reading this. At least we can pretend to have a network under Linux. Steve.

Elitist attidudes only serve to alienate these people. They deserve our respect and consideration.

One can network 20 computers with w2000 for less than the cost it takes Hewlett Packard to come over for three days to make your $80 Linux lan print properly. It says here. Steve. </smallprint>

On Sunday 16 February 2003 19:06, Herman Knief wrote:

fsanta wrote:

...

...

Elitist attidudes only serve to alienate these people. They deserve our respect and consideration.

One can network 20 computers with w2000 for less than the cost it takes Hewlett Packard to come over for three days to make your $80 Linux lan print properly. It says here. Steve. </smallprint>

Well, it only took me five minutes to get my lan printing properly with Linux... which is a lot cheaper than buying the 20 copies of W2K, even at my consulting rates... but then, I'm one of those elitists. :-)

Well, c'mon then. Tell us how it's done! I too am elite. I use 8.1. But the hard way, r'ing tfm nfs, nis, autofs. . .I'm totally computer illiterate.

On Sunday 16 February 2003 19:52, you wrote:

fsanta wrote:

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On Sunday 16 February 2003 19:06, Herman Knief wrote:

...

fsanta wrote:

...

...

Elitist attidudes only serve to alienate these people. They deserve our respect and consideration.

One can network 20 computers with w2000 for less than the cost it takes Hewlett Packard to come over for three days to make your $80 Linux lan print properly. It says here. Steve. </smallprint>

Well, it only took me five minutes to get my lan printing properly with Linux... which is a lot cheaper than buying the 20 copies of W2K, even at my consulting rates... but then, I'm one of those elitists. :-)

Well, c'mon then. Tell us how it's done! I too am elite. I use 8.1. But the hard way, r'ing tfm nfs, nis, autofs. . .I'm totally computer illiterate.

I bought a cheap $40 print server from Hawking Technologies and attached it to my Canon BJC-6000. Gave the print server an IP and then used Yast2 to configure the printer (remote lpd print queue pointing to the printer server IP. Done.

Exactly what I did except mine's an OKI print server. Send several print jobs from various clients at the same time and it locks up. The only way to unblock it is to ssh to the client and do a rccups restart. The amount of time it takes to do this is small so I don't really mind. To be able to solve it would take much longer. I think this is where the original post left us.

->On Sun, 2003-02-16 at 21:00, fsanta wrote: ->> One can network 20 computers with w2000 for less than the cost it takes ->> Hewlett Packard to come over for three days to make your $80 Linux lan print ->> properly. It says here. ->> Steve. This is a load of crap. We have 4 hp4 series printers with JetAdmin cards in my office and they work perfectly. They have ip's assigned to each of them on a 10.x.x.x network and getting a new Linux box to print properly is a snap with CUPS. You don't need a bloody print server ..get the printer with a reasonable amount of memory and a network card then run though the simple menu and assign it an ip on your network. This isn't rocket science. The interface to the HP Laserjet printers is much more simple then even my Panasonic VCR is. And this is much less expensive then 20 W2k licenses and letters from the BSA asking the company to pay a second time around for thing's they've paid for. BTW. There is this awesome CUPS book at Barnes and Noble. It's easy to understand and pretty much spells out how do most any of these things. If you don't want to spend the money on the book then read the docs that are available by doing a google search. -- Ben Rosenberg ---===---===---===--- mailto:ben@whack.org Tell me what you believe.. I'll tell you what you should see.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On February 16, 2003 03:50 pm, fsanta wrote:

We only have an epson c70. Under 8.1. Maybe it's just not up to the job.

What's wrong, I know for a fact that the c70 works perfectly under 8.1 with the gimp-print driver (Stylus_C70-gimp-print.ppd). In fact the output of Epson printers under gimp-print is better than the Window's drivers. Charles -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+UIhL3epPyyKbwPYRAiAqAJ92Q9F9tykwdtJM70VOm4yS/fKElwCdHaDG w/u3UOzEzz4almri29ILu00= =LWxR -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On February 17, 2003 07:27 pm, John wrote:

Same here on my Epson C60. The printout of *anything* from this printer on linux, looks *far* better than the same things on my windows partition.

Yes, the quality of the gimp-print driver is amazing. The funny thing with the c70 is that they even went further. The max resolution of the c70 driver in Windows and MacOS X is 2880x720 dpi although the printer is capable of more. The max that gimp-print support on the c70 is 2880x1440 dpi. If you like to experiment, the latest gimp-print have even better quality than the one ship with 8.1. You will need to compile gimp-print with CUPS support, if you are using CUPS. You will also need to recompile ESP Ghostscript. There are also 2 other drivers you can try to see which will give you the best results: (1) Ghostscipt's gimp-print STP driver through CUPS or LPR/ng (You will need to compile and install Foomatic and compile gimp-print with Foomatic support), (2) Ghostscript's gimp-print ijs driver through CUPS or LPD/ng (same precedure as stp, but you will need to compile gimp-print with Foomatic and ijs support). Here are the gory details: http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Epson-Stylus_C60 I am currently using the ijs driver. Charles -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD4DBQE+UeYH3epPyyKbwPYRAj6dAJidyt5FCtYKg3iXLQQWN26nbWSNAJ91VnTN Ip50PHTmSp+yBfcsALkUZQ== =Gd0B -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On February 18, 2003 03:11 am, Andrei Verovski (aka MacGuru) wrote:

Hi, Charles Philip,

Thanks for suggestion. Can you please tell me how you have rebuilded GhostScript and Gimp-Print RPMs? or you just compiled them and installed with "make install"?

Either modify the SuSE spec file or use checkinstall (there is an RPM of it on the 8.1 CD).

I have tried to modify SuSE SPEC files, but this is quite cumbersome, too much patches I do not know purposes for.

Those patches are for the version that is shipped with SuSE. All you have to do is to comment out the lines that reference the patch files. Also, I forgot to mention if you are going to use the Ghostscript drivers, you might have to delete the ~/.lpoptions file in order for printing to work. Charles -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+Ue723epPyyKbwPYRAnjXAJ4+jgRp2ZShtv9epwNfvm8Fdali7ACeOBVB PaTYaMzbgTa488SNmGas37o= =iW1T -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Sun, 2003-02-16 at 21:41, fsanta wrote:

Would it be easier and more reliable than an epson c70? What would you recommend?

A lot easier. I don't know how reliable a C70 is so I can't answer for that, but most postscript printers are designed for heavy usage. I don't think they'll let you down. And the only configuration necessary is the IP address of the printer. As for what I'd recommend, well, Ben recommended HP JetDirect and that's what I've used too. But anything postscript with its own network card should be excellent.

On Sunday 16 February 2003 11:35, Michael Satterwhite wrote:

----- Original Message ----- From: "Sean Rima" To: "SUSE Linux List" Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2003 9:31 AM Subject: Re: [SLE] Linux isn't ready yet

...

...

Personally, I like Linux a lot and intend to keep using it. It has the potential to move to the average desktop, but it needs to take into

The development is definitely going to be slower than on the Windows platform for an obvious reason: money. I'm not talking about the money to develop the software - the thousands of very dedicated volunteers (thanks to any reading who are in that group), but the money as in profit from development. The problem with real computer types developing in this way is that they (unconsciously) expect the user to be a computer type. Telling a computer type to restart the print service seems natural. The problem is that the user might be a 65 year old grandmother who can usually find the on switch.

I haven't had a printer hooked up to one of my machines since I moved in '91. I switched my wife over to linux from NT last year and she didn't notice. except that the icons changed. She acttually shut down NT and logged back into linux one day when I was cleaning up some files on the NT partitions. As to restarting the print service did you try putting it into a cron job so that it will attempt a restart on a regular basis? If you want a user friendly linux you should check out what there doing at Xandros and Lindows. With the more general purpose distros you will have to do some tweeking to make the machine "perform" like a windows machine.

Back to the computer stuff. Let's have a look : Grandma switches on the computer with SuSE 8.1 on it. Up comes the ""Log in"". She tells the computer that it is ""grandma"". A desktop appears with icons. She wants to check the email, so on the toolbar she clicks the "internet connect button". Clicks on Kmail icon and tells that it is ""grandma"". and gets her email. Clicks on print and it PRINTS the email. Clicks on Konqueror icon and the webbrowser is working. Doesn't have to worry about virii or defrag or blue screen of death or anything else. Now who says that Linux is not ready for a 65 year old ""grandmother""?

Here Here! The other thing is how many "average desktop users" do you know that have actually installed Windows? Even my father who considers himself fairly computer savvy (meaning he can install and uninstall programs, defrag, and run disk cleanup) is afraid to install Windows. He will call me to come home and do it if he ever gets over the fear that something important that he needs will get deleted. Until someone starts putting Linux on desktops that people buy it won't get far in the consumer market. Gretchen

** Reply to message from Gretchen on Sun, 16 Feb 2003 21:51:04 -0600

Even my father who considers himself fairly computer savvy (meaning he can install and uninstall programs, defrag, and run disk cleanup) is afraid to install Windows. He will call me to come home and do it if he ever gets over the fear that something important that he needs will get deleted.

yup, my husband was like that .. still is really , except at one point when a windows desktop hurled an orb disk at his head. (He'd had the temerity to try to run a backup , and evidently , w2k , I think,wasn't in the mood.) He agreed to try a Linux partition. He'd been noticing the Linux boxen I had setup never rebooted. And he had many times in the past been told by Windows gurus and the MS "support" teams to reboot the computer as the first thing to do when there was a problem. And there always is a problem of some sort or other. So having had his head threatened by the OS's tantrum, he figured anything was better than continuing to use it. ( He'd begun computers w/ OS/2 and only went to windows when things got to be sticky at the end of the public os/2 life span.) I installed Linux for him and he was happily ticking along until a virus took out his windows partition , and as it had changed the fat table he couldn't boot into Linux either .. and since a reinstall was going to be required anyway He decided to make the windows partition as small as possible and to install it w/o a connection to the network , ours as well as the inet. Then plug ethernet cord back in and install linux... all goes along swimmingly until windows once again takes the box down hard. At that point I was not available to reinstall it for him, so he began to install it ( linux ) by himself coming in to ask about anything he was really uncertain of , otherwise just going w/ the defaults. Each time he did that , he'd discover something or other he'd left out of the install , and , having been completely head cased by the time he was spending w/ w2k his solution was to once again delete the partition and reinstall.. after he'd done that about 5 -6 times , and taken notes ( I insisted he do that ) he got to a point where he could actually customize the installation . However, since that week end , he's not needed , nor wanted to reinstall anything again, aside from the odd program or game. BUT; he could do , if he needed or just wanted to reinstall it. And one really great thing , all the documentation for the default install anyone could ever want. It might be worth the agro to actually spend that sort of week end w/ the end user , or small groups of end users . the one absolute thing they get out of it is ; they lose the fear that they will lose something important, or that they will somehow damage the box. I don't know where that thought enters the brains of these folks , but it seems to do w/ most users I've taught ( backups , can you say backups? I thought you could , now do it!) Gil ,realized if he had current backups and something took his box out , he could be back up right at the point he'd left off when the trouble started in no more than one afternoon. For a writer, that's important . Or so I've been told. Now he does backups daily of his work product , and likely weekly for his email , unless there is an important discussion going on . For him , computers aren't really fun, and only mildly interesting, but to get his work done on deadline , and to carry out conferences w/ the collaborators on his articles etc. the computer and especially the net are his lifeline. And best of all , they got me home to the tropics instead of being up in the lands of ice and snow. Next step to the equator ... wheeeeee! What more can anyone ask of any OS ? <VBG> -- j afterthought: Where there's a will, there's a probate

Dear Gretchen, You must always remember two important things about M$ Windows: 1. The users are NOT Micro$ofts main customers; the OEM PC manufacturers are. 2. Windows operating systems are made to be 'installed' by the OEM, not the end customer or the user. They have vey little incentive to make the install process easy. PeterB On Sunday 16 February 2003 09:51 pm, Gretchen wrote:

...

Back to the computer stuff. Let's have a look : Grandma switches on the computer with SuSE 8.1 on it. Up comes the ""Log in"". She tells the computer that it is ""grandma"". A desktop appears with icons. She wants to check the email, so on the toolbar she clicks the "internet connect button". Clicks on Kmail icon and tells that it is ""grandma"". and gets her email. Clicks on print and it PRINTS the email. Clicks on Konqueror icon and the webbrowser is working. Doesn't have to worry about virii or defrag or blue screen of death or anything else. Now who says that Linux is not ready for a 65 year old ""grandmother""?

Here Here!

The other thing is how many "average desktop users" do you know that have actually installed Windows? Even my father who considers himself fairly computer savvy (meaning he can install and uninstall programs, defrag, and run disk cleanup) is afraid to install Windows. He will call me to come home and do it if he ever gets over the fear that something important that he needs will get deleted. Until someone starts putting Linux on desktops that people buy it won't get far in the consumer market.

Gretchen

-- -- Proud to be a SuSE Linux User since 5.2 --

On Sunday 16 February 2003 10:31, Sean Rima wrote:

I have to admit that I am not a GUI man, I prefer the console, therefore it is possible to view what is going on better. I think that development will occur, maybe slower than the Windows platform but then we have better choice :)

My question to you is this: Operating from the console, in an office environment, how do you: a) write formatted documents such that other people with MSWord (or similar) can read and edit them -- reports, procedures, specifications, proposals, etc. b) read, revise, update such documents that you receive from co-workers c) read/create/edit spreadsheets and forecasts from/with your co-workers d) get (and respond to/accept/decline/edit) meeting invitations and other activities that are handled via MS Exchange (or equivalent) scheduling software e) read or edit/update powerpoint (or other presentation app) presentations f) use your employer's chosen Configuration Management and bug-tracking system (like Rational ClearCase and ClearQuest) g) deal with the various company-internal web-based forms for everything from Help-Desk requests to travel-expense re-imbursement, to purchase requisitions (for new equipment, consumables, etc.) h) run the company accounting software for accounts-payable, accounts-receivable, etc. i) research price, features, availability of parts that your company needs (this would be the purchasing department) j) draw (2D, 2.5D and 3D) the drawings for hardware that your company produces. well, you get the idea, I'm sure...?? Those are the kinds of things that the majority of computer users need to do. Every day. Many times per day. Without the OS or the various layers getting in the way. /kevin

I am a middle-aged non-computer type. I think Linux is great. I use it ten hours a day, for work and for everything else. I never did that with Window$. Andrew

On Sunday 16 February 2003 10:25, Michael Satterwhite wrote:

----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Benjamin" To: "SuSE English" Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2003 9:07 AM Subject: Re: [SLE] Linux isn't ready yet

...

It may come as a shock to you but no one says that Linux is ready for the desktop. I don't think Linux is ready for my Aunt either.

Actually, if you look at comp.os.linux.advocacy, there are a lot of people saying it is. I'm not sure I take people on *ANY* advocacy group too seriously, however. They're fun to read, but not too realistic.

Hah! Just look on the boxes from any of the major distributors... SuSE, RH, etc. Especially on the "Personal" editions, they can hardly stop patting themselves on the back, in print, about how friendly and usable [their flavour of] Linux is. And they ARE friendly and usable... until you hit some dumb little user-interface or operational glitch that Windows figured out in 1996. [ Kevin stands aside as 100,000 geeks indignantly rant about "Yeah, but it's a piece of junk under the hood, and riddled with security problems and... and .... ] As usual, the people who are not computer professionals, or infatuated amateurs, are impressed by the experience, not by theoretical excellence. The experience keeps tripping the average computer user. Excellence under the hood means nothing when you waste your time figuring out how to make something work or how to recover from something that should have been automatic. The difference between: a) Windows crashed/locked up and I had to spend 6 minutes waiting for it to reboot versus b) I told Linux to print my document and it stopped when the paper ran out and then I wasted an entire morning failing to find it in the documentation, asking other people who didn't know, and waiting for responses from mailing lists... is the difference between getting on with the work your boss pays you for, versus failing to meet your deadlines and doing a lot of stuff that your boss doesn't want to be paying you for. /kevin (who was told last week to strip SuSE 8 off his office computer and to upgrade from NT to Win2K)

On Sunday 16 February 2003 1:23 pm, Ben Rosenberg wrote:

As I sit here having my morning coffee I'm reading this thread and glancing over at IRC. I see this " Linux isn't ready..blah..blah" and when I checked what was happening in the IRC channel that quite a few of my friends hangout in..I see this...

---snip---

[10:41] taking a new computer out for a spin to see how i like it

[10:41] kinda nice

[10:41] w0rd

[10:42] it's weird, this thing makes less noise with two fans than my old machine did with one

[10:43] the only gripe i have with this one is having to deal with win2k

[10:43] errr, not win2k

[10:43] win xp

[10:43] i actually kinda like win2k... well, as much as I can like any windows os

[10:43] but

[10:44] i can't figure my fucking way around XP to save my life

[10:44] all this stupid hand-holding

[10:44] i don't NEED a wizard for every bloody thing ---snip---

So I would take the above to mean that not even Windows works as every end user would like. The guy who is speak in the snippet above is not a computer geek by ANY stretch of the imagination but can get around ok when using one. It seems to me that computers are not VCR's and shouldn't be treated as such. If one is going to use a system such as Windows, Linux or even OSX. Then one has to expect some kind of learning curve to occur. The gentleman in the IRC snippet is pretty well verse in Win2k because he's been using it for a couple years, but XP makes him nuts...is there a big difference between XP and 2k? If there is and one is willing to learn the in's and out's of XP..then why on earth are people so adversed to learning how Linux works? It's no more difficult it's just different and doesn't automatically do somethings. I believe it's fear..fear of the unknown and big ole case of getting completely adgitated over nothing to the point that one can't think.

I like Yoda's line to Luke in Empire Strikes Back. It discribes most of this quite well when switching from one system to another.

" You must unlearn what you have learned. "

This is partly true..people must not thing that everything behaves exactly the same...or frustration will set in. People bitch about this when it comes to XP when coming from 2k, but they still stick with it.

/end babble.

-- Ben Rosenberg ---===---===---===--- mailto:ben@whack.org Tell me what you believe.. I'll tell you what you should see.

As a dedicated and often clueless end-user all I can say is "HERE HERE"! Very on spot. Curtis :)

On Monday 17 February 2003 02:18, Charles Philip Chan wrote: [...]

The wizards in the control Panel drove me nuts until I turned it back to Classic mode. I kid you not, it took 5 times longer to do things with the wizards.

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? Of course not. You have far more frequent and recent experience of the command-line and the screw-driver. 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, or they just did a very basic install on a basic behind-the-curve machine, put in the office suite and then didn't change anything for the next several years, cuz all they are doing is some light office-y stuff, surfing, e-mailing, and maybe tweaking the pictures of the kids that they send to all their similar friends... then they never have any reason to develop your facility with any OS or device managers and drivers and maybe network config, etc. The box to them is as much of an appliance as possible, and they have no use for dicking around with the innards, unless something breaks. No more so than they would dick around inside their TV, just for fun. 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. 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). 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." "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, and the wonderful people on the mailing lists will want to ask you about them in order to help you help yourself." Or maybe I'm dreamin'. /kevin

-----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-----

...

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.

Even more. I saw some of them once trying to install Windows 98, because the previous Win98 was filled with garbage. They were not able to format and use partitions correctly, mainly because the windows installer did not do that and because the windows installer reported "space insufficient" instead of "disk not formatted". This is how windows is better than Linux. Praise

----- Original Message ----- From: "Charles Philip Chan" To: Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2003 1:00 PM Subject: Re: [SLE] Linux isn't ready yet -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On February 18, 2003 07:38 am, Praise wrote: <snip> I wonder where is the shield in "InstallShield"? ;-) It will available in the next release, for an upgrade :))) <snip> __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com

** Reply to message from Kevin McLauchlan on Sun, 16 Feb 2003 14:04:23 -0500

The difference between:

a) Windows crashed/locked up and I had to spend 6 minutes waiting for it to reboot

versus

b) I told Linux to print my document and it stopped when the paper ran out and then I wasted an entire morning failing to find it in the documentation, asking other people who didn't know, and waiting for responses from mailing lists...

um , perhaps someone who can't figure out the printer has run out of paper shouldn't be left alone w/ a computer? Don't leave home w/o one . ( brain cells ) IF you are telling me in this example that the printer is 5 floors down ( or up) and you normally have to wait for the tea boy to bring you your printed materials anyway ? You don't care if the thing is out of paper. You probably wont notice anyway , as the tea boy is likely to be much slower or faster than the printer is , but 5 floors to navigate w/ all that paper ( the jobs that other folks managed to get printed before this , er , "crash". Surely not noticing the paper has run out is not something rooted in the OS .) -- j afterthought: I'm really easy to get along with once people learn to worship me.

On Sunday 16 February 2003 9:25 am, Michael Satterwhite wrote:

----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Benjamin" To: "SuSE English" Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2003 9:07 AM Subject: Re: [SLE] Linux isn't ready yet

...

It may come as a shock to you but no one says that Linux is ready for the desktop. I don't think Linux is ready for my Aunt either.

Actually, if you look at comp.os.linux.advocacy, there are a lot of people saying it is. I'm not sure I take people on *ANY* advocacy group too seriously, however. They're fun to read, but not too realistic.

...

I am willing to put up with the problems because I am sick of Microsoft and every other box software "sellers" calling me a thief until I prove otherwise. I may be a freeloader who hasn't given anything back but no one is going to fine me because I lost my SuSE 8.1 box.

That's exactly the reason that I'm using Linux now, too. I don't think that I should have to explain to Microsoft why I decided to reload my hard drive.

...

Check in every year or so because I have seen Linux improve over the last three years and I am sure that even your middle age non-computer type would be able to use it in another three years. Then I would have never allowed not-computer types to use Windows 3.1 ten years ago, but they still did

some

...

how. ;-)

Actually, remembering Windows 3.1, I'm surprised it survived as a platform. Never underestimate the power of marketing, I guess.

At present I'm a beta tester. I am being allowed to join the closed beta program because I'm testing the Desktop functionalities of SuSE. What the issue is is that you have very technically minded people that look at things in a very different way than the end-user. It reminds me when I first started being a musician. I would hear a song and say woah that's cool. As I became technically proficient I went back to listen to the song and found myself saying what a stupid song, it sucks. Now, how does this relate? As I became more technical in my skills I could no longer listen to music in the same way. I would disect the piece not only on the song itself but on it's technical merits. This doesn't mean the song is bad, and for many of the listeners it was a great song. I became focused in light of my understanding and my abilities on the music differently than I used to. The same holds true for the developers. They view the system from that of a coder/programmer. They know what the system does inside and out and for them using the command line is faster and gives them better control by far. But the end-user isn't in this position and the programmers know this. The problem lays in the middleground. It's a matter of educating the end-user to be mildly proficient when using the technology and at the same time getting the programers to relate to the need for an end-user to have a simple and effective interface. This isn't easy from either end and never has been. One of the things that led to M$ success (outside of blackmailing the OEMs) is that one of BIll's paradigms was "a computer in every home" moto they had at M$. So, in order to do this they were always directing those developers to use the feedback from the end-users to see what they did and didn't find that worked for them. Truth be known, Mr. Gates holds the attitude that most end-users are idiots. But, he wants to be rich so he gives them what they want regardless of the fact that he thinks most are stupid. The Linux community has been critised for being arrogant. The truth is that they are not much different than the M$ camp in many regards except for the fact that the community is not focused on bring a product to market over making programs they themselves can use. In fact the OSS community, up until recently, pretty much designed programs that they themselves wanted and this explains why many of the programs (especially early on) were command line programs without a gui interface. It hasn't really been that long that Linux has begun to focus on the GUI in terms of an end-users interface. Most of the early gui's were stuff like blackbox, or fvwm, etc... that were designed for a coder do customize to fit their needs, The GUI as an end-user tool has only been in high gear in the Linux communtiy for about 5 or less years. Given the time that M$ has had to develop their GUI I'd have to say that Linux has made great strides in a relatively and somewhat short time. The next 18 to 24 months will be very telling IMHO. Linux is making exceptional headway in the server/enterprise sector and it has been the success in this arena that has prompted the increased developement of the Desktop. This is primarily due to the large corporations that want to extend the stability and functionality that Linux servers have to the corporate desktop, primarily to get away from M$ contracts and licenses and to cut the cost associated with them. I personally would love to see the sorts of things I find in M$ Window in Linux, namely wide spread support of gaming and all those little gadgets and programs like EAX support, multimedia keyboards, etc, etc... It's only a matter of time until this becomes a reality.... And end-users such as you and I are a large part of this. The more you see Linux used in the Office, the SOHO, and the home the faster you'll see not only those in the Linux community develop for the end-users but you'll see the OEMs for both hardware and software start to also - it's already happening in the Linux server/enterprise sector bigtime. Hence, why M$, all the while denying it, post SEC 10-Q reports stating that due to Linux they may have to cut costs and to expect lower earnings. Your particitpation in the LInux community is paramount to making this happen. Linux has a learning curve just like anything else. At the same time the developers are working hard at giving Linux greater end-user functionality while not dumbing down the system. It is how it works around here, It's what M$ can't figure out how to stop and one of the single most reasons for the acceptance of Linux. <climbs of soapbox> Just MHO, Curits :)

We use kde in an international school under 8.1. I don't know whether schools count as desktop even though the clients are on desks. The transition was smooth. The only thing that doesn't work properly is the printing. In Linux I don't think it ever will. Yet. On Sunday 16 February 2003 15:07, Paul Benjamin wrote:

It may come as a shock to you but no one says that Linux is ready for the desktop. I don't think Linux is ready for my Aunt either.

I am willing to put up with the problems because I am sick of Microsoft and every other box software "sellers" calling me a thief until I prove otherwise. I may be a freeloader who hasn't given anything back but no one is going to fine me because I lost my SuSE 8.1 box.

Check in every year or so because I have seen Linux improve over the last three years and I am sure that even your middle age non-computer type would be able to use it in another three years. Then I would have never allowed not-computer types to use Windows 3.1 ten years ago, but they still did some how. ;-)

pben

On Sunday 16 February 2003 08:51 am, Michael Satterwhite wrote:

...

As a general desktop, that is.

I was thinking of the problem I had yesterday trying to restart printing services (which I still haven't found in the documentation).

For Linux to be a general desktop system, it needs to be usable by the general population at large. A middle age non-computer type would *NEVER* be able to use Linux. Until it reaches the point that it can recover gracefully from something as simple as a printer running out of paper, it really isn't going to make large inroads against Windows. If you told an average user "just restart the print service", he'd reply "Why do I have to do that? Windows kept going automatically."

There is no question that in many ways, Linux is superior to Windows. Until it grows a bit more in the area of being able to recover from simple problems, the average person isn't going to use it.

I'm a Linux newbie, so I really don't know what's happening in this area. Is there work being done on this type of recovery?

Alle 16:07, domenica 16 febbraio 2003, Paul Benjamin ha scritto:

It may come as a shock to you but no one says that Linux is ready for the desktop. I don't think Linux is ready for my Aunt either.

My mama is using it all the time, and she is not a computer literate. Praise

Yes, Linux isn't ready yet... I wouldn't argue about the issues making things work in linux... Linux is PAIN!!! But the potential I see in linux, and the VERY DARK future I see in windows make me keep going... I live in Mexico, my laptop was purchased in the USA... In linux I can watch DVD from any region (with Xine), but not in windows.... WHY!!!!!... I paid for them, they are MINE (aren't they). In linux your hardware does (or at least tries to) what you tell it to do (yeah, thell that to the stupid printer)... you tell him to play a DVD and I will play it... no matter what some bozo decided about regions... In linux all the software and your hardware works for you... no obscure programs sending info to some unknown server... or crapplets in the systray. In linux you can fiddle with things as much as you decide; things are open, for you to see, and change as much as you want or can... Linux IS AND WORKS FOR YOU... not for some big company.... IT IS YOURS, paradoxically, YOU OWN IT AND DOES YOUR BIDING, not Bill Gates' of the NSA or the KGB or the Gestapo or Cocacola or Columbia-MGM or whatever... Yes, GNU/linux is pain... I hope for now... but for the sake of all of us, some day, it will be the model and the basis for end-user/desktop computing.... otherwise, computing can become very crappy... when the closed source, spyware laden, palladium crippled pcs start to roll out the factories... Today's linux is PAIN!!!... PAIN!!!... PAIN!!!... but is the price someone has to pay for the Linux that will/could/should be. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com

On Tuesday 18 February 2003 04.17, Kevin McLauchlan wrote:

But, I've had more trouble with Linux in the few years that I've been using it than I've had in all the years of DOS and Windows since 1981.

Bullshit and selective memory!

I'm quite certain that I could install Win 2K on the PC that I'm typing at, right now,

Please do!

and everything would work, including the MS Sidewinder Precision 2 Joystick (USB) that YaST can't even see.

Now I'm convinced you're just a troll. You're actually praising Microsoft software for being able to work with Microsoft hardware! WOW! You've ranted once too often. Welcome to my killfile.

Troll, back under the bridge with ye. On Monday 17 February 2003 9:17 pm, Kevin McLauchlan wrote:

On Monday 17 February 2003 12:22, Praise wrote:

...

...

I don't think Linux is ready for my Aunt either.

My mama is using it all the time, and she is not a computer literate.

We've got two computers here at the house, plus the laptops that my wife and I frequently bring home from work. Now, these next few remarks are entirely my fault, I'm sure, because I just haven't been smart enough or dedicated enough....

I had a SuSE partition on my laptop for nearly two years, and was recently asked to remove it because of the inconvenience. I never got printing working, so I was always booting back into NT to print. (The Red Hat on my other office computer figured it out first shot, though....) There were other problems that annoyed my bosses. So, instead of being a fine example of how Linux is at least as good as Windows on the desktop, I became a re-inforcement for the "let's stay with what we know" crowd.

At home, I used to have dual boot with Win98SE. I turfed Windows when I upgraded from SuSE 7.3 to 8.0, and I have an ongoing love-hate relationship with 8.0 and now 8.1... chronicled elsewhere in this list. Suffice to say that I've had lots of problems. My wife has my previous computer, downstairs in her office, and it has a dual-boot (Win98SE and SuSE 7.3) that she never uses. Well, she uses the computer, but wouldn't touch Linux. She's seen me swearing at Linux and tearing out my hair too many times. She never has problems with Windows on that computer, nor on her employer-supplied laptop. She's very computer capable. Consider her lost to Linux, or a VERY hard sell, some years from now.

Then there's my brother in New Brunswick. He had only user experience with windows on a controlled system at his government office. I bought a second-hand laptop, put SuSE 7.3 on it, drove to the coast and gave it to him, with several hours of introduction.

A couple of weeks after I left, he had one of his buddies come in, wipe the annoying Linux and install bootleg Windoze. Another one lost to Linux.

I bought a second-hand tower, plus the necessaries, installed SuSE and drove 7 hours to give it to my other brother, a person who had never used a computer in his life. I got him going, sorta, and then returned home. A few days later, he called me with a problem connecting to his ISP. The system was not showing the same messages that it had when I introduced him to it. I tried talking him through some re-configuring and failed. I didn't know anybody in London, Ontario who could help him locally.... so one of his buddies came in with Windows and had him up and happy within a few hours. Another one lost to Linux.

I have worked with PCs since one of my first employers began making early IBM PC 8088 clones, and I've gone through DOS (and its predecessor, CP/M) and most flavors of Windows. I've had trouble with Windows, many times. But, I've had more trouble with Linux in the few years that I've been using it than I've had in all the years of DOS and Windows since 1981.

I'm quite certain that I could install Win 2K on the PC that I'm typing at, right now, and everything would work, including the MS Sidewinder Precision 2 Joystick (USB) that YaST can't even see. My two IDE drives would not give it a problem. My CDRW drive and my DVD drive (both IDE) would not require SCSI emulation, followed by some re-direction and other hocus pocus... they would all just work. So, I'd be able to use FlightSim, and play DVDs and burn CDs without a lot of messing around.

I am absolutely certain that the two-year-old ATI video card would be properly configured and that the display would be crystal clear, with nice clean screen-fonts, both in the desktop and in browsers and other apps.

I don't think Win2K would be any better than SuSE 8.1 at making my network connection, but it would be no worse.

I'm not going to do that, but I'm confident that it would work fine, with no agony. On the other hand...

By the time SuSE 8.2 arrives, I'll have most of my system working under 8.1 -- though probably not the joystick -- and I'll install 8.2, just to see what one more increment of usability has been achieved. Then I'll spend the following four months discovering and fixing a bunch of broken things, but maybe I'll actually get my entire computer working before 8.3(or 9.0?) arrives. I won't get the usability that Win2K would give me, but I'll stick with SuSE cuz I'm a glutton for punishment. Unfortunately, the people around me will be firmly frightened back to Windows by my ongoing frustrations.

Life is good. :-)

/kevin

On Monday 17 February 2003 22:17, Kevin McLauchlan wrote:

I have worked with PCs since one of my first employers began making early IBM PC 8088 clones, and I've gone through DOS (and its predecessor, CP/M) and most flavors of Windows. I've had trouble with Windows, many times. But, I've had more trouble with Linux in the few years that I've been using it than I've had in all the years of DOS and Windows since 1981.

Actually, the DOS of MS is a derivative of 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products which Billy Gates stole, er....I mean, adapted for his own use. CP/M and DOS share no common heritage beyond the computer OS marketplace and technology of the seventies. By the way.....CP/M lost. Frankly, I'm amazed that someone with that kind of computer history behind themselves has such a terrible time with Linux.....or SuSE specifically. Since SuSE 7.2 I've been running strictly Linux with very few issues. With it I've been burning CD's (audio and data), printing, scanning, syncing with my zaurus (another loathsome linux contraption), playing games, programming a bit, building a website, photo manipulation (for the pics on the website), watching dvds with xine or ogle, listening to cd music, making a little bit of music, creating documents with Open Office which I than transfer to my work laptop (98se), etc. And doing so happily and outside of the constraints that corporate cretins and legislative lunatics (powered by MS) would love to herd all of us into. Meanwhile I watch my work laptop with 98se continue with it's tempermental tantrums that result in blue screens. And I'm forced to maintain my lady's xp box which exhibits 'strange' problems now and again. But since this isn't an MS list, I won't get into the 'strange' problems.

By the time SuSE 8.2 arrives, I'll have most of my system working under 8.1 -- though probably not the joystick -- and I'll install 8.2, just to see what one more increment of usability has been achieved. Then I'll spend the following four months discovering and fixing a bunch of broken things, but maybe I'll actually get my entire computer working before 8.3(or 9.0?) arrives. I won't get the usability that Win2K would give me, but I'll stick with SuSE cuz I'm a glutton for punishment. Unfortunately, the people around me will be firmly frightened back to Windows by my ongoing frustrations.

When I upgraded from 8.0 to 8.1 everything worked right away with the exception of the zaurus syncing.....and I realized that it was an issue with the upgraded kernel which wasn't difficult to remedy. The key for everything working was the hardware manufacturers supporting Linux. The important point is that I _thought_ about the issue. It appears that the people around you do not take to thinking. They would rather someone think for them. Bill Gates and crew embrace that kind of attitude because it furthers and deepens his own agenda and power base. With DRM, the TCPA cartel and Palladium coming along in various stages coupled with inept politicians worldwide and mangled copyright/patent laws, Billy is well on his way to thinking for everyone. It would be a jewel in his crown if Billy could manipulate events that could lead to Linux being a rouge OS on a consumer level. He and his monkey boy are definitely pushing in that direction. Perhaps Anders is correct in his assumption that you are simply trolling. My suggestion to you would be to stay away from Linux. Go back to Windows. Although I'm no geek, I've had very little problem maintaining Linux. I don't understand why someone would have such issues. Maybe it's bad karma caused by attempting to turn a technical mailing list into an advocacy group? :)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On February 18, 2003 08:16 am, John wrote:

I switched over to linux after about 6 years of extreme frustration trying to make W3.1, W95 and W98 'work', and stay working without the constant corruptions, invalid BSOD's,

I totally agree, this is one of the major reaons why I ditched the last vestage of Windows from my dual-boot system at the end of 1995. Another reason is that with every upgrade of Windows I find myself losing more and more control over my machine. Charles -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+UjbE3epPyyKbwPYRAn1EAKCzagnBFwc+aGCEdgnhsgVMtRdjQgCggG/l mnnaVPiG0Cg6dNcF8rdWSPI= =uJe0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Sunday 16 February 2003 13:38, Curtis Rey wrote:

On Sunday 16 February 2003 8:51 am, Michael Satterwhite wrote: I came late to the computer tech game. It wasn't utill my early 30s that I started using anything on computers. I started with 3.1, just playing some dos games and doing word programs for school. Talk about a pain! The word processing programs were atrocious by todays standard, And trying to install programs was a nightmare in many cases. These were that days in the early 90s when the InstallShield was not around, and hence installing programs in a 3.1 and even W95 was a hit or miss proposition. It wasn't until the widespread use of the "InstallShield" that things got a little better.

Sheesh! Another one, suggesting that the Linux distribution that I buy today is supposed to compete against the user experience offered by the Windows of 1994 and earlier. T'ain't so. All the stuff that Windows developers broke their teeth on in the early-to-mid nineties has been faced and mastered. The moving target has moved on. Today, if you want to sell an OS and its associated tools and GUI stuff to the average office worker, you are competing against XP and the immediately previous version. Installshield HAS been around for the past many years, and has been updated a few times. So, now THAT is the standard. What is the equivalent on the Linux desktop... Synaptic? Last time I tried to use Synaptic for a big upgrade (KDE 3.1), I ended up dropping it and just installing/upgrading all 100-or-so files individually with rpm. The only time I have had InstallShield fail on me in the past seven years, it was a conflict with a virus-checker. So I turned off the virus-checker and InstallShield worked fine. In the intervening years, InstallShield and Norton/McAffee have learned to better co-exist, and even that is no longer an issue. Again, to win the hearts, minds and DOLLARS of the average computer user -- the person who goes to the office every day and sits in front of one to earn their pay (or the purchasing and IT departments that have to supply those people) -- a Linux distro for the desktop must compete against the CURRENT standard from Uncle Bill... and NOT what Uncle Bill was flogging ten or even six years ago. Do you disbelieve that assertion? Why? /kevin