Peter Alcibiades wrote:
The issue is, even if you are using Ubuntu, and are using Gnome, odds
are you are not only using Gnome or gtk apps. You're almost certainly
using KDE apps as well. And probably a few others. Because any linux
distro is going to ship with hundreds of apps, and they are a mixed bunch.
...
So there is no such thing, in Linux, as an homogenous user environment. This
is because of the huge variety of stuff the distros ship with.
...
The problem with trying to match the user environment is, you can't do it,
because it don't exist.
Your description of the current hodge-podge that is the Linux experience
is in line with my own observations.
So far we're in 100% agreement on all that you wrote. It's only here
that we differ:
I think we differ in how we look at this - to me, homogeneity is just
irrelevant.
Research on human cognition suggests a different view.
And it is to most users I know, who I end up putting on
a gnome desktop with lots of kde apps. But however we feel about
it, its absence is just a fact of the environment right now.
Today, Linux has a smaller desktop penetration than OS X. Apple has the
highest margins in the computer industry, while Linux is free.
What does that tell us?
Well, it could tell us a great many things, some more relevant than
others in a discussion of UI conventions.
But in part I believe it tells us that Linux is every bit as
unnecessarily confusing for potential adopters as you describe.
As long as Linux is a tool for cowboys to ride the wild range, that's
not a bad thing. For many the state of Linux, both in terms of its
usability and its market reach, is perfectly satisfactory as it is right
now.
But I see an opportunity at hand for a publicly owned and maintained OS
to become the world leader.
Maybe the Linux community doesn't share that vision or that ambition.
There's nothing wrong with a person making a tool just for himself and
his friends.
But if the Linux developer community wanted to achieve global OS
dominance, I believe there's no external force which could stop them.
The only thing that can limit Linux adoption is internal, a lack of
vision in the Linux developer community itself, a willingness to accept
what is rather than ask what could be.
Not everyone is a cowboy, but everyone could benefit from a good OS.
I believe Linux can be that OS, and a few billion people who've never
touched a computer before could benefit. A free public OS could change
the world, in ways no proprietary system could hope to.
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World Media Corporation
___________________________________________________________
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com
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