-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On January 31, 2004 02:42, Jesse Kline wrote: > 1) Many people resist trying Linux because they are scared of using > something unfamiliar. If they could start out without having to learn a > new interface, then they could focus their time on checking out all the > cool open source programs that Linux has to offer.
i understand the psychological issues involved, but in that case perhaps the person should just stay put. if there's no compelling reason for them to move to Linux, such that "what does it look like" becomes a decision breaker, then why should they switch? i can name half a dozen good reasons, but if those don't mean anything to the user, then i'm not going to push =) in a corporate environment, it's up to the IT dpt and "does it look exactly like windows" is fairly low on their "issues to discuss list" when it comes to desktop replacement. the good news is that real world experience and tests have shown that the retraining required for the difference in icons and menus takes <.5 day and can be done en masse in larger roll-outs (e.g. workshops)... what really gets people are the differences in individual applications. this is where XPDE actually has an advantage over most of the theme-it-to-look like-windows 'solutions' as that project is duplicating many of the individual bits and pieces of WindowsXP. it's a losing battle though, as Windows is a moving target and there's a lot to replace. the question is, how much time/comfort is actually saved by this approach, and how much of the same-old problems will they confront? bottom line is that unless the user uses IE via Wine, they'll be using Mozilla (or one of it's wrappers) or Konqueror which all diverge to some extent from IE. which means they'll have to learn some differences between "browsing the web on windows" and "browsing the web on Linux". the differences are, thankfully, minor and usually the person picks them up as they go along without hardly noticing. i really think that the "must look like Windows to succeed" theory is largely the confused dreamings of ex-Windows _users_ with rather little experience outside that realm. it's a red herring not worth chasing; i'd rather see the XPDE folks improving KDE and/or GNOME =) - -- Aaron J. Seigo GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43 while (!horse()); cart(); -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.2-rc1-SuSE (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAHUKT1rcusafx20MRAhR8AJ47l2YfTZ5SBPlkmhjOAlqcQH9lcACfcILf OXi/zWkxYI6IImIF0n27SiA= =3OeO -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
