Reid Linnemann wrote:
My ten year old niece has been brainwashed by the GUI quagmire. She saw
my FreeBSD 6-STABLE console on my amd64 3000+ and wanted to know why i
was using such an "old" computer. She had the visual aspect of the user
interface ingrained as a measure of the capabilities of the machine.
Granted, it could be only because she's ten, but I think we'd find a lot
of people think that something has to have more blinky lights and chrome
to be better or faster.
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I seriously doubt that it's only because she's ten. A friend of mine
(who's 37) defines user-friendliness based on the number of tasks he can
complete through a GUI. I used to think like that too, but not any
longer. I first tried FreeBSD in 1998, but I couldn't get anything
running. I just had no idea how, and I was expecting a nice
"user-friendly" GUI, like Windoze, but without the constant crashes.
In 1999 I purchased "The complete FreeBSD, 3rd edition" with CDs
included, and this my second try was a lot more sucessful. I was still
after a fancy GUI, but this time I got things working. Not without
effort though.
Over the years since I first tried FreeBSD, my ideas about ease of use
have changed quite a lot. I no longer define user-friendliness based on
what I can do in the GUI; actually, I'm often annoyed by all the menus,
submenus and all the whistles and bells. It's really a lot easier to
edit a text file to change some setting, than browsing through heaps of
buttons, drop-down lists and all that.
Where most Windoze users find Windoze user-friendly, I find it
user-hostile, because it hides the simplest things under tons of graphics.
For some applications, like image manipulation, a good GUI is a must (at
least that's my point of view), but good doesn't mean complex. And a GUI
is certainly not needed for running a computer.
My friend, whom I mentioned above, says my computer looks like a green
screen from 1970's movies. I once tried to guide him over the phone
through downloading a file using Windoze's built-in cli FTP client. He
didn't even know that such a procedure was possible; he had the idea,
that downloading a file required a graphical progress bar. After the
file was downloaded (a GUI FTP client), he said it was the most horrible
thing he'd ever done, and had comments about this being the 21st
century. So, I doubt your niece's comment was just about her being a child.
--
Sincerly,
Rolf Nielsen
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