Will, I'd like to point out that you used "ease" and "easier" a total of 9 times in your post.
Are you sure your judgement is not being biased by your love of Linux? I prefer to think the glass is half-empty, so that I don't get complacent with what we have now. There is always room for improvement and innovation. John --- Will Hill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I do want the masses to enjoy free software and can > give lots of reasons why. > It takes less "support" than you think it does and > uniformity is nicely > brought in where it belongs by groups like KDE and > Gnome. Newbies are happy > with those interfaces and so am I, but we can all > experiment with others when > we want. The difference between distributions is > not such a big deal as long > as the user can find the same tools on both. > > The world of X has gotten much easier. Lots of auto > recognition has been > built in to X itself and the distros have filled in > the gaps. You used to > need to manually edit XF86Config and that was hard, > but those days are gone. > It's been a very long time since I've had X broken > and I'm running some nasty > SiS, Nvidia, even ISA cards. Outside of gaming, > nothing is easier than X > now. > > Even installs are easier for the newbie. Sarge > simply asks if you want a GUI > and gives you both Gnome and KDE with lots of nice > fonts. Mepis does not > even ask, it just runs and installs KDE all nice and > tweaked. Other distros > like, Xandors and Suse and even Red Hat have had > good auto configuration for > a long time. Now it's close to perfect. I can't > say the same thing for > closed source competitors where you have to crack a > manual, check a website, > feed CDs and reboot multiple times to get hardware > working. This ease > translates into ease of support for people who > really know nothing about > computers. When someone in my neighborhood has a > computer problem, I can fix > it with Mepis in 20 minutes and they love it. > > Desktop environments are also a great example of > modular software and the > power of free interfaces. You can easily explain > the difference by saying, > there's this one package that manages your hardware > and another that draws > things with it. That there are many environments > you can use with the same > basic drivers is really cool and they enjoy seeing > that. Newbies don't have > to be exposed to the details of config files to > understand modularity. This > flexibility also helps to illustrate how free > software teams work together. > It would all fall apart if people tried to keep > secrets, but they don't so it > all works. > > Differences between distros has never been that bad, > has it? Some of Red > Hat's customizations have been nifty. Their printer > control was the first I > saw that set up gnome and kde applications at the > same time. Now they all > do. As the environments continue to mature, > everything is getting easier. > The differences between KDE and Gnome these days > seem easier to deal with > than differences other vendors push between > versions, like win3.1 win95, > win98, ME, 2000 and XP. Debian has also been easy > to upgrade and I've taken > machines from potato to sid without losing data, > sometimes without losing > settings and preferences. I moved my wife from Red > Hat 7 to Woody and now > Sarge without losing any data or too many settings. > Both Gnome and KDE have > excellent control centers that manipulate everything > in a logical way. Once > you get there, you have it. Windows, by comparison, > is fragmented, and a > pain to upgrade. > > When you get passed all of that, the feature set you > get out of KDE and Gnome > is vastly superior to what you get from a M$ > package. My wife does not > really care why X is broken, because it's not. She > loves KDE and Mozilla > though she uses 1/100th of the applications. It > works well and looks good > for her. Linux is more than ready for the Desktop > and I look forward to > people using it. > > On Thursday 20 January 2005 09:34 am, Brad Bendily > wrote: > > > > X was part of my problem with understanding Linux > > and, I assume, confuses a lot of newbies as well. > > > > The confusion is when someone tries to explain > > the difference between a Window manager and a > > desktop environment and X. It would be a lot > > easier if X could be taken out of the equation. > > Let KDE or Gnome or any other desktop run their > > own X server. It should be installed or > uninstalled > > with that app. I think this is a hurdle that > > GNU/Linux needs to overcome to compete in the > > home desktop market/easy user market. (If it > > wants to compete there.) A lot of people say > > we don't really want Linux to be used by the > > masses. But then a lot of people tell their > > friends, parents and grandparents to use Linux > > so it's going to be used in that market. > > > > If so then a few things in the overall OS needs > > to have a bit more cohesion. I know there are > > supposed to be standards, so why don't people > > follow the standards? Especially the big players > > should. Suse, Redhat and Mandrake (haven't really > > used mandrake in a while so I'm probably wrong > > making a generlization about it) have different > > ways of completing the same task. Whether it's a > GUI > > tool or a CLI tool there needs to be cohesion > > between distro's. At least from the major players. > > Still, there are hundreds of other distro's > > where people want to do their own thing, which > > is fine, because most newbies don't venture > > into "other" distro's. Usually. > > > > Myself, i've always been happy digging into > problems > > and figuring things out. It's just the geek in me. > > But my wife or my mother don't really care to know > why > > X is broke or why KDE won't load cause X is broke > or > > because X can't load drivers or sync rates for the > monitor. > > > > bb > > > > _______________________________________________ > General mailing list > [email protected] > http://brlug.net/mailman/listinfo/general_brlug.net > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
