Matt Randolph schreef: > Holly Bostick wrote: > >>> >>> In the Windows world, you don't have to ask yourself "is this >>> software available for my OS?" In the Windows world, you buy the >>> hardware first and then check to see if it's compatible AFTER >>> you start having trouble getting it to work in your computer. >>> >> >> >> Which is, btw, completely bass-ackward to start with, which was my >> original point (the assumption that 'pure user, no admin necessary' >> is possible is fundamentally wrong, and patently false based on the >> observed evidence). >> <snip> >> > > I don't think Knoppix really has an administrator. It really is an > enduser only flavour of Linux. It's sort of a "fire and forget" > distro. Sure, someone had to go to a lot of trouble to get it set up > just right in the first place, but once that was done it can perform > reliably without further administrative intervention. The enduser > not only probably won't set the root password, the enduser doesn't > even need to know that it is unset. Or even that a root account > exists!
Interesting. But again, *someone* had to administer the system to set it up so that a user could be 'pure'. > > I don't believe this sort of user experience is limited to read-only > systems like Knoppix, though. Look at Lindows/Linspire. How about > those $200 Linux computers they are (or were) selling at Wal*Mart > (strewth!). I expect those machines ARE intended to provide the > enduser with an essentially administratorless (to coin a word) > experience. Linspire (at least used to) have the user running > everything as root. But do you think the enduser always knows that? I > think the enduser simply knows that when they pay to install > OpenOffice.org from Linspire's private apt servers, it just works; it > installs without their ever having to `su` or `sudo` or anything. > That Linspire user essentially is the admin, though she doesn't know > it and she almost certainly doesn't behave like one. And many now question whether Linspire can even be called a Linux distribution for this and other reasons, despite the fact that it runs on a Linux kernel. We're all wondering if that is then the only requirement, or does it also need to follow 'the rules' to be counted? But that's a whole 'nother discussion. > <snip> > What I think I hear you saying is that being able to get away with > this foolish behavior should not be one of our goals. I did not mean > to imply that careless hardware shopping should be encouraged. > Rather, I used this as an example to try to illustrate how lacking > driver support slows the growth of Linux. If Linux is going to grow > it's user base significantly, it's probably going to have to attract > quite a few of those careless boobs too. And if Linux can't be made > to work on their hardware, do you think they are going to run out > and buy a new computer or will they simply rethink the decision to > try Linux? > > Although careless hardware shopping should not be encouraged, being > able to get away with it (that is, having nearly ubiquitous hardware > support) should indeed be one of our goals. OK, I understand that, but... how exactly is allowing one to 'get away' with such behaviour not 'encouraging' such behaviour? If one has always been able to 'get away' with any behaviour, why would one think that any other behaviour is possible? If for my entire life, I have walked into "stores", taken what I wanted, and left again (which is perfectly acceptable behaviour wherever I'm from), the day I walk into a "real" store, and get taken away by the police for 'stealing' (because I didn't pay, which I have never heard of and thus never even considered that a 'store' represents an 'exchange' of 'money' for 'goods'), it may be true that I have not been 'encouraged' to 'steal', but I definitely have been poorly trained in the actual working of The (rest of the) Real World, and that is not a good thing. Ubiquitous hardware support, on the one hand, is closer than you think (there's not all that much hardware that cannot, no matter what you do, be made to work under Linux; it's just not that it all "JustWorks"), and on the other hand is less relevant than you think (I have drivers that enable my ATI card to 'work' under Linux, but they suck, so whose fault is that? Not Linux's. Nor is it Linux's fault if I plug in my digicam and it is mounted, but I don't know how to get the dv output into Kino, or can't figure out how to properly mount my perfectly-well-detected Flash card to get my pictures into whatever graphics display or editing program I might use). The hardware works fine. But that's no help if I can't understand how to use it, or can't use it effectively. And enabling some kind of efficient communication between the hardware that is being properly detected by the kernel, and the programs the user uses to utilize the device is a design issue, which is an administrative task. If Wine/Cedega will run Morrowind using my ATI card under certain configurations, but not others (or the 'default' config), then someone has to be responsible for setting that up so that the user (who is also me, of course) can just click an icon and run Morrowind. Hell, someone has to make sure that the ATI drivers are installed in the first place-- and supposedly the user is never supposed to know about any of this, and there should never be an admin, so who's supposed to do it then? The Tooth Fairy? The fact that you may be able to "Plug and Play" does not remove the necessity that administration must occur: under Windows, a Wizard does it, in an enterprise situation, IT does it, under SuSE, maybe YaST does it, under Gentoo, you do it (or Mark does it for you :) ). But the fact that at some point somebody has to be responsible for administration is inescapable, and I feel that saying that's wrong somehow is... wrong. Because it's a limit of technology, and pretending that such limits don't exist (or worse yet, attempting to conceal such limits) seems very very unwise to me. > > I was not aware that any company was trying to encourage careless > hardware shopping. If knew it to be so, I'd be as unhappy about it > as you appear to be. One word.... Winmodem (easiest possible example). All winmodems are (naturally) marked that they work under Windows. How many of them are marked that they *only* work under Windows, because a Winmodem is an incomplete piece of hardware, where the functioning of certain physical chips (which are physically no longer present) are replaced by software functions available only in the Windows Operating System (because the Windows Operating System was specifically designed with closed-source APIs to replace the functions of specific chips formerly on the modem PCB)? How many 'real' hardware modems (which have all the chips, and do not replace any hardware functionality with OS-based functions) are distinguished on their packaging from WinModems, or vice versa? And do you think that the 1) creation of, and 2) lack of disclosure on the packaging of, such crippled hardware was somehow not 'encouraged' by the company whose product's market share benefits the most from the existance of such hardware (because the hardware seems to JustWork with their software)? The benefit to the hardware companies, of course, is that their product becomes cheaper to produce, since it requires less chips... and there's little chance that the old PCB with all the chips will need to make a reappearance, because the software being used to replace the hardware functioning is eternal (not least because of the manufacturer's new hardware design). And that's just the easy example. Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
