On Tue, 2003-02-11 at 02:19, Johnny Stork wrote: > > Ahh, but that was my point "RH isnt the Linux Community". Since RH is the most >purchased commercial version of Linux with the largest market shared based on a >combination of estimates (see how I side stepped "popularity"), then it "behooves" > the "Linux Community" (everyone and anyone with a vested interest in the continued >growth of Linux and open-source software in the commercial and enterprise markets), >to strive to improve all aspects of Linux and open-source, to present a respectable, >truthful and professional image and, to take advantage of any opportunity to spread >the word about, and provide access to, leading edge > releases...especially the desktop environments. With all the talk recently around >the world with regards to Linux on the desktop I was very surprised that a new, wiz >bang release of KDE was not immediately picked up and released in binary for every >possible distribution so as to make it very simple and fast for anyone running RH, or >any other distro, to get their hands on a copy. And I dont mean > building from source. We need to consider all the people we are trying to convince >here...the ones who are most likely coming from a Windows world, or starting with >computers for the first time. And even those with some familiarity of Linux would >often rather get to work on the things they "use" their computers for, such as typing >a thesis, building a web site, preparing a presentation, analysing some spread sheet, >managing some project etc. Sure they could ./configure, oops lets go find some >dependencies now, make, make install, or whatever, but what they really want is >ideally, to open some GUI tool, have it tell them, "Hey there is a new KDE Desktop" >with this and that new features, "Do you want to install?", click "ok" and 10 minutes >later they can go back to work and see the benefits of their new wiz-bang desktop. We >can take many lessons from Microsoft here. Yes they pushed, shoved and bullied most >of the way to the top, but thats not all they did. They also made computers simple >for new users and helped to minimize > the newbie fear factor.....a bit too much in my opinion and so now many people just >dont want to try any harder to learn something new or different.
To be fair MS does not come out with new versions of their desktops with sweet new features and sweet new looks every 6 months or so like the KDE and Gnome projects do. When they do come out with a new desktop you have to pay good money only to find out that it is the same desktop, only they have rearranged all the features to you have to find everything again. In fact between 1995 and 2000 they didn't make any major changes to the desktop. They also don't feed you great new software through Windows update like your describing. They feed to updates and a few crappy programs that push their agenda for proprietary windows media files, and .NET. I also don't think their products are easy to use either, and they certainly didn't invent any of their user friendly features, Apple did. People don't use Windows because it's easy, they use it because everyone else uses it and they don't think they have a choice. And if they don't have a friend who knows something about computers then they have to live with all the spyware and virii that are messing up their system. One of the things that I love about Linux is that there are always new versions of my favorite software being released. It reminds me of the early 90's when I was using a Mac and all these new internet technologies were developing rapidly, every few weeks my favorite software packages would be updated and I would take them for a test run. When it comes to a desktop environment people have a choice. You can take the time to install the latest and greatest software (hell you can even install from cvs), or you can wait until the new desktop is integrated with your distro in the next release (ie. the next version which is probably only 6 months away at most) which is what I think most people expect. Just the fact that you can install a new version of the desktop or even switch desktop environments is something that is unheard of in the Windows or MacOS worlds, and I think it's great! Jesse
