HI Paul,
I guess I have to agree, but disagree at the same time. I think the
problem stems from people expecting linux to be like windows and it isn't, it is
much more powerful, and the underlying concept of how it works is different, so
there are bound to be difficulties going from one to the other anyway. Sure it
may not be ready for you average user, it may never be, but at least it is
progressing and evolving.
"MURRAY, Paul" wrote:
> bits sniped out here and there
>
> Totally. I am dissapointed with linux. I used unix years ago but have been
> working in Windows for the last 5-10 years. Linux does not cut it as a
> desktop environment for the kind of users I deal with all day. I can barely
> make sense of it. When linux boots up, I feel like I am facing a blank wall.
I must admit I find the opposite here, bad experiences with windows has lead me
to try an get away from windows as much as possible. ( ah the good old days,
when I had a dual booting OS/2 warp/linux box).
> Any OS where you have to know the scan rate of your monitor to get a desktop
> up does not cut it in the real world of people who want to run a word
> processor and have email. I still can't run 24-bit colour.
I have had mixed experiences with xfree, but in the end I have always been able
to get better performace out of xfree than windows, but yes I agree, windows
canset up a better intial gui, and there is much more support for 3dfx cards at
the moment.
> I installed Win98
> on the same machine. Insert boot floppy, insert CD, go make coffee.
> Installing linux? Ha. Still doing it.
>
> No way would I recommend linux to my friends who do not have years of
> computing experience.
yes and no, I would recommend linux to anyone who wants to learn more about
computers, or have specific duties that a computer must perform (i.e server) and
doesn't want to use any microsoft products.
In the same way I would recommend macs to people with particular needs.
> Please someone tell me: what's a good mailer? And by good, I mean having
> facilites equivalent to netscape mail. I want to have folders and I want
> incoming mail to be put into folders according to rules that I make up. I
> have only _just_ gotten fetchmail working and downloading mail from my POP
> box. It all goes into "INBOX". I know that linux _can_ do this sort of
> thing, but the feelgood visual tools are just not there.
I run netscape, seems to work okay, its what I use on the win98 machine and my
bookmarks etc and easily readable by both.
> To run linux, you
> have to be a UNIX sysadmin and not everyone is.
I think this is a point a lot of people miss out on, that linux is a multi-user
operating system and not really a single user operating system like windows is.
> Much as I hate MicroSloth, they _do_ provide a unified set of tools for the
> kind of people who purchase a computer because they want to do things with
> it.
But microsoft goes too far, in that they try to force their unfied set of rules
at the expense of others, eg Java
> Linux and Windoze are as different as a professional rally car and an
> off-the-shop-floor hyundai. Linux is great for people like you and me who
> are into comuters _as_ _such_. But not for anyone who simply wants to use
> one to get some work done.
I disagree, it depends again what you want to do. For example desktop
workstations, linux is perfect for networks, using slower machines as
X-terminals, running something like staroffice from a central server. Doesn't
matter how many terminals you have there will be no licensing fees, linux is at
least as secure as a NT station.
>
> I could go on. And I shall. Even now that I have X running, the tools look
> clunky and amateurish. Windows apps have polish. I have run netscape for
> linux and the XT numpad cursor keys dont work, and home and end don't do
> what I'd expect. Why the hell not? Probably something buried deep inside
> some blecherous config file, or in a keyboard driver that I am supposed to
> actually compile. Who the hell ever heard of a personal-market OS where you
> had actually compile source code? Why would, say, an advertising exec even
> want to know what compiling _is_?
I doubt the advertising exec would even setup his own computer even if it was
running windows. My experience with these sort of people is if they don't have a
computer technician inhouse, they get the store to do the installing. The only
market I can see where linux will find it very hard to get any ground is the
first time computer buyer, and these people need machines that are easy to
install.
> There is a lot to be said for having a
> monopoly and corporate nazis enforcing look and feel guidelines. There's a
> lot to be said for drag-n-drop.
>
> X freezes on my machine. Turns out that the Mandrake distrib of X may have
> problems. Arrgh! Who needs this? Isn't this exactly the kind of thing that
> linux fans give windows a hard time about?
I read an interesting article somewhere, and this article points out one reasons
why I am more in favour of linux and the open source movement, even though it
might be harder to install, than windows or mac or whatever. It goes something
like this, the soucre for a windows distribution is big, maybe millions of lines
of code, all in the one package and only a few (thousand?) poeple have access to
it, certainly not the public, but if there is a bug it can quickly become
expensive to fix. On the other hand there is the open-source code, of which
people with an interest work on the area that they like( and there are many more
thousands of people who work on linux source code than windows), with most of
the apps being freeware, and if you don't like it you don't have to use it or
install it. Yes, linux is harder to install, but in my mind it is definitely
more powerful. I've tried mandrake, but I thnk I'll go back to red-hat, I like
it. Everntually I'll try slackware or debian, and I can do all this without
spending hundreds of dollars on software. I have also found that the basic
hardware support tends to be better in most cases (I agree this is not
nessecarily true for such things as 3dfx cards and win-modems), and drivers tend
to be easier to configure. The machines I run linux on tend to be dedicated
machines, workstation, server, firewall, rather than a general office machine.
>
> I wouldn't have said that Bill Gate$ had vision before I tried running some
> other OS, but now I'm re-evaluating.
I could on about what I dislike about Bill Gates, but to me he only had vision
for taking what apple did and making it cheaper for people to get to. I was
using a gui on a 128K mac long before windows came along, and it was easy to
install, it just wasn't cheap.
> There is just nothing else that comes
> anywhere near windows for making it possible for an
> idiot^H^H^H^H^Hnon-computer person to run a computer.
again I disagree, again I think of macs, which I will always recommend macs to
people who aren't remotely interested in knowing how a computer works (ease of
use among other things is why I think macs are very popular with people like
graphics artists).
> Bill Gate$ did have a
> vision: that of making computers acessible to people who don't like
> computers. And it's a wild success. The kind of people behind linux could
> not do, and are not doing, what Bill did.
yes, but there is a fundamental difference, the people who are behind linux tend
to be people who aren't in it for the money. The only clever thing Bill did was
to get a good marketing team together.
> Linux does not have vision. It has 600 bits of software all half-written by
> students,
err, I don't claim speak for anyone, but I am sure people like the Samba team,
the people who do sendmail, corel who give free copies of wordperfect 8 to
single users ( which works fine for me) etc would resent that. Yes there are
many students who write progams for linux, and some of them may not be any good,
but there are some good apps out there.
> none of which will work unless you have a bunch of development
> libraries that you have to get from somewhere else on the web, and none of
> which really do what you want. Sure the underlying OS is great, the kernel
> is hot, but people don't run OSes. They run apps. And getting apps together
> with a decent interface and good help material is just plain hard work. It's
> boring. I hate doing it. The only kind of people who will do it are wage
> slaves. Comp Sci students would rather be writing memory management tweaks.
>
yes I agree when a library you need isn't installed, but I am sure if linux
wasn't worth the bother companies like IBM, Intel and others wouldn't have shown
any interest.
> Can I say something to the developers out there? RPM your packages. Really.
> If it is not RPMmed, I'm not interested in even trying to install it.
.......
> o death and I don't want to reinstall the whole OS
> and run the risk of wiping it.
speaking of this, the recovery cd that comes with my laptop, reformats and
destroys any partitions that I have made, I don't even get a choice, just one
warning.
>
> At this stage, I would be looking at wiping linux off my "real" machine, and
> putting it on my toy box and using windows for anything serious.
I am doing just the opposite, I am sick of win98 crashing for whatever reason,
so instead I am running vmware for those win98 apps that I need at home, and on
the work machines, well we use macs, and they have always been more reliable
than windows.
In the end it comes down to what you need. Linux isn't for everyone, neither is
mac or windows. I would like to run graphics apps under linux, I can't so I
don't bother even trying, instead I run macs ( not that I am a huge mac fan, it
still does things that s**t me off) for the graphical apps I need. I have a
couple of linux boxes, at the moment for a server and firewall, my home machine
I am converting entirely to linux, and my laptop is a dual boot of linux/win98
of which both come in handy on different occassions,
just my 2 cents worth anyway,
cheers
Johann
--
Johann Kwiatkowski
Spot The Dog Graphics
P.O. Box 79, Moorooka,
Qld, Australia, 4105
mobile 0418 797 419
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] or
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
