On 11/16/05, Ben Rosenberg
It IS grown up.
what is .. whining about "mcse noobs"? hardly.
I read an article by a "windows drone" saying X86 OS X is EXACTLY fit for "Joe Sixpack" and guess what .. distros like SUSE/Redhat/Ubuntu are as good as OS X right bloody now. So they must be as good as Windows XP is right now.. since he said OS X was as good as XP if not better.
yes, OS X is better than windows. Linux for the end user desktop is not.
We do NOT have to cut out shellscripting, the shell and everything else that makes UNIX/Linux great in order to bring the Windows weenies onboard..
I didn't say "give up scripting". I'm not an idiot. I just said "give up whining about and being unfreindly towards anyone that is not a "linux jock" and that maybe doesn't have alot of time to parse through 30 HOW TO's trying to figure out how to do something that they could do in windows or netware in 5 min. It's not that this makes linux "bad" ... it's just that it is this very lack of consistent interface and help that will prevent linux from achieving the mass market success that windows currently enjoys. Period. And for "you all" to deride virtually everyone as a "Windows weenie" is just idiotic. You don't get it. Your world view is so freaking narrow that you somehow think that the tiny slice of the world wide audience that is already "on your team" is in fact something more than a tiny slice. But it is not. And if you want it to be, you need to learn something from the "team" that is currently dominant. That does not mean become them, just learn from them. Not deride everyone that is not already a "linux pro". Hell, I'm not a "linux pro" though I will be. And I'm a commited advocate ... you should see the herds of folks turn to run away when they sense I'm about to launch into a FOSS rant. But I need/want to have a GUI available to assist my being productive before I can develop the facility that I will have somewhere down the road. And I want to be able to convince my CUSTOMERS (ie those folks that pay to have advice and assistance providing computing resources and services for there own companies) that choosing linux makes sense for a variety of reasons. All I am saying is get off the "noobie" rant and .... actually try to attract market share.
OS X is 1000000000x easier to use then XP is.. after all it's designed for "art fags" right? And let me tell you this. I can write bash, zsh, tcsh or sh scripts under OS X on my Powerbook or I can use Applescript to do what I need to do.. or I can point and click to get things done. So KDE/Gnome/Linux are now just as simple as any Mac OS X machine I've used and so I'd give up on the argument that Linux has to become dumbed down drek just to be used by MCSE's.
KDE/GNOME are NOT as easy as OSX! What a joke! I happen to believe that for a certain class of user, using specific classes of applications, that need only limited things from the PC and that have a corp IT dept supporting and installing the distro/hardware/apps, linux could be perfect. And, for certain classes of people (my Mom, maybe) that do nothing but internet and email and the occasional word processing thing, and will never install new hardware, etc .... I can setup linux for her and it's great. But for "most" average folk ... nope. Not yet. It just ain't there yet.
We in the Linux community have listened to this argument over and over and over again .. making things easier and easier for "busy" people.. and year after year the bar gets raised higher and higher yet Windows stays the same for the most part.
Again, I am a perfect example ... it has taken me a couple days now to figure out how to deploy a SLES server with a specific version of apache and php and mysql support. I could have done this in netware in 1/2 hour. Maybe an hour on windows. It's not the "fault" of linux, nor does it make it "bad" ... but it was a struggle to find enough time "not billing" in my day to figure out how to do this simple thing. too many other productive people do not or cannot or will not be patient enough to go through the learning curve. It is a linux "growth inhibitor" ... it just is. <snip>
So if both UNIX based OS's are so easy.. it must be something else holding back those "..very very smart very very busy people." such as misperception, conditioning and an unwillingness to change no matter what the cost is... other wise there is no real explanation for it.
no -- they are not. They are easy to do a narrow band of things with. But many many things take hours and hours to figure out when you have not already gained the knowledge of how to do them. And these same things on windows or OS X do NOT .... Because the commercial UNIX OS's are BEYOND easy to
use... with maybe the exception being Solaris. ;D
I just don't think paper admins such as the people they gave MCSE's to for the last 5 years of the .com boom will EVER get it... that is until the close their mouths and open their eyes.
That's another thing ... yes, there are "paper mscse's out there. But please .... there are so many people doing productive things with windows networks, that to just dismiss them all as "paper mcse's" is just ... well, again, counter-productive.
And I doubt any Linux distro will EVER work for them.. even if it had the Microsoft Logo on the box. And if they are offended by such talk.. so be it. It's about time we stop "steppin and fetchin" and say " Yessm.. massa.. we's gonna do it right up good for ya. " Because they will never be satisfied.
Oh, please ... and Ben, I sense that you are a person of goodwill and good intentions. But such drivel as this last paragraph is just beyond the pale .... we are all "linux ambassadors" and should really learn how to behave as such. It's about marketing and capturing the market. THAT is grown up. Peter