On Tue, 2009-12-01 at 08:52 -0500, Anton Aylward wrote:
John E. Perry said the following on 11/30/2009 09:18 PM:
John Andersen wrote:
On 11/30/2009 4:01 AM, Anton Aylward wrote:
... But of course, as the modern Linux GUIs show, as OpenOffice shows as MONO shows, there are many people who are convinced that Linux is only going to succeed by aping Windows as closely as possible.
Neither Open Office nor Mono "ape" Windows. Maybe Open Office is aping PFS or Word Start or VisiCalc? Or is Office aping Write and GeoWorks? Mono implements many things *not* available in Windows. And, essentially, the CLR doesn't have much of anything to do with Windows other than having been researched and developed at Microsoft [much like ODBC and DCE was/is]. Is it just ok to "ape" things not originally developed at Microsoft? Back to GConf... comparing GConf to the Windows Registry is bogus as well. Windows Registry is neither the beginning nor the archetype for configuration management and/or centralized information repositories (X.500, LDAP, Mac's NetInfo, AIX's ODM, etc...). Conflating the implementation (Windows' Registry) with the concept (centralized configuration) is an error.
For pete sake Anton, are you totally incapable or recognizing humor even in the presence of smilies?
Apparently.
Well, even recognizing the danger of getting into yet another pointless religious argument between the Hardheaded Old Farts who have to cling to the command line no matter what, and the Empty-Headed Young Twits who can't see beyond the eye candy in their Latest Hot Bling-filled desktop, I think it's worthwhile to have a discussion regarding where computing in general, and linux in particular, are going. Being a fairly HOF myself, but not tied too tightly to the Ancient Computing World, I see the development of GUI's as a brilliantly positive step forward that can make the full power of computing available to anyone who has the moxie to work with it at all, and I refuse to accept the declaration that only the command line can give you real power. Indeed. And my argument wasn't that the GUI was wrong but that the idea that Linux can only succeed by its tools and GUI aping Windows as closely as possible is the only path to follow.
Nobody made any such argument other than you. Who are performing a classic bait-and-switch: proposing someone made an argument and then shooting at the argument. This is dishonest; at best you are misunderstanding the issues, at worst you are trolling.
Back in the early 80s when Windows came out it had to differentiate itself not only from the Apple interlace but also from competing GUI on the Intel PC platform, some of which were faster and had more applications bundled. They did this though marketing, not technology.
I thought they did it my making it possible to develop applications on their platforms. I was around then, there was much more to the issue than marketing [although marketing was certainly important]. UNIX was around then too.... I used it then, but it was *crazy* expensive and way beyond the reach of most users and companies.
I particularly remember one of their marketing claims that the GUI would simplify use because, being icon/menu driven you wouldn't need to learn lots of command line options. They phrased this in such a way that the transition from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word would be a non-issue and wouldn't require re-training since all the functions were there in the GUI. (Isn't there a version of VI like that? :-) )
And many users did transition without any significant issues; I don't know if it had anything to do with the "GUI" or simply that the basic structure of spreadsheets and word processors were pretty familiar by then.
Now when you read reviews of things like OpenOffice it tends to be, for
Most reviews are worthless page fill.
the most part, a technical comparison, since the GUI looks pretty much
I would never call most of the reviews I see as "technical comparisons". Most are little more than authors-gut-feeling or a collection about niggles regarding the authors favorite / least-favorite features.
the same. Even reviewers who are Windows users think its a fair competitor. But when you read reviews of GIMP done by people from the Windows world they concentrate entirely on the GUI and slag the Gimp 'cos it has a different interface.
Because the interface of an application does matter. a lot. Because the point of the application is to do-work, and if a user can't sit down and do-work the value of the application is diminished. Time spent learning a radically different application is time spent not in do-work mode. -- OpenGroupware developer: awilliam@whitemice.org http://whitemiceconsulting.blogspot.com/ OpenGroupare & Cyrus IMAPd documenation @ http://docs.opengroupware.org/Members/whitemice/wmogag/file_view -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org