Hi Tom, Tom wrote:
While yes in theory everything should work and you have a completely accessible system from the getgo, the getting there is not easy in the slightest for a blind user, the learning curve is quite frankly pretty horrendous and unless this changes then the situation of people not wanting to use it and considering it just another thing that the nerds and geeks like to play with is going to remain the same. My reply: I don't know what information you are basing your opinion on but it isn't correct. The modern Linux operating system like Ubuntu, Vinux, whatever is very user friendly from the Gnome desktop environment. In fact, a modern Linux operating system is as easy to use as Windows if you are using it via the graphical user interface. I think the main source of confusion here, the reason people think Linux is so hard to use, is the Linux shell environment. There are plenty of Linux users like Michael who love the Linux shell and constantly brag about what they can do in the shell, about how they can type this or that command, and bingo they have a superior experience to that of Windows. While that might be true a lot of Windows users are going to listen to that and think to themselves they aren't going to want to learn a bunch of shell commands, type everything into a console, just to run the entire operating system. What people like Michael seam to miss is through bragging about how cool the Linux shell is they often forget maybe somebody new to Linux might not just want to jump into that kind of environment and will want to use a graphical user interface. There are a couple of really good ones for Linux called Gnome and KDE that are extremely popular with sighted users for that reason. Since Gnome is the most accessible desktop for Linux right now lets talk about it a bit. The interface is very much like the Windows desktop. You have a main panel, kind of like the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, a desktop like Windows, and you have an application menu that resembles the Windows start menu. There are dozens of graphical Windows-like applications for Linux such as gedit that is like Windows Notepad, there is Open Office that is a lot like Microsoft Office before they switched to the menu ribbons, there is Mozilla Firefox for web browsing, there is Evolution which is like Microsoft Outlook, there is the Calculator which is like the Windows Calculator program, and there is a media player called Totem which is like Windows Media Player. So when you come down to it if you install Linux and you have setup to start directly into x-windows with the Gnome desktop a person coming from Windows to Linux will not have a very big learning curve at all. It is not this horrendous learning curve you are talking about. Unfortunately, as I said before, Linux users often tend to put the cart before the horse so to speak. Instead of bragging about how easy Gnome is, that they can run apps just like Windows, they tend to run off on a tangent and talk about the shell or some other advanced aspect of Linux a newby isn't ready for. I've been on Linux mailing lists were a few die-hard users go on and on about how if they don't get the source code for a program they don't want it etc. They go on and on how they can modify everything, recompile everything, and they tend to talk right over the heads of Mr. and Mrs. Smith who only wants to use the operating system for basic day to day tasks. They aren't out to build the OS from scratch, script this or that, or anything like that. Some of these Linux geeks really need to come back down to earth for a minute and talk about the operating system in terms that the average Joe or Jane can understand and will be actually interested in. It is as though some of these Linux geeks have lost touch with the fact maybe not everybody wants to use this or that advance feature they are bragging about. For instances, in the prior e-mail Micahel was talking about how many tasks he can perform fromt he shell like getting a list of mp3s in his music directory and have it save to a text file. That's fine and dandy, but even though I'm a Linux user myself I generally do not see a need to do that. In fact, 99% of my time is in Gnome using Firefox, as I am right now, using Gedit which is better than the text editors like Nano, listening to audio books in Totem Movie Player, and things like that. About the only time I use the shell is to play text adventure games because Speakup is better than Orca when it comes to that sort of thing, and when I'm compiling programs since the GNU development tools are commandline programs. What turns me off with some of the Linux geeks out there is because I use Gnome I've had a few die-hard Linux users come out and call me names because I choose not to use the shell. Those are the kind of Linux geeks who give Linux a bad name because they only want to talk about what they like about Linux rather than what someone else might like. Why does it really matter to them weather a person likes using Gnome for the graphical user interface or the shell? Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
