On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 07:16:13PM -0700, Nathan Rackliffe wrote:Just go through a bunch of commands and configuration stuff.
Last week I was sitting in a class with my laptop connected to the
ethernet link for the TEC room (The professor must wonder why I sit
so close) Someone came up to me and asked me to share the internet
connection, so we could all be online at the same time. On Windows,
this took about 3 minutes, with no documentation. On Linux, I'm
still reading mailing lists. Linux still needs to be smarter about
what it does and hide needless complexity from the user, while
allowing access to all of the complexity needer or desired.
Sharing your connection is intuitive:
You get the idea. It's totally doable, but you just need to get it
hooked to a ``Share Network Connection'' button somewhere...
<rant> <!-- You have been warned - delete now if not interested --> Exactly. Thanks for illustrating so well what I wanted to say. Linux needs some big improvements in the 'User Friendly' department. One of the challenges that OSS faces is that it is mostly put together by techno-geeks (I include myself in this label). Very few graphic designers or psychologists or other professionals want to donate their time to OSS. And at the heart of it, GUI design isn't about buttons and windows and event handlers, its about understanding how people think and how people need information presented and how people process information. Commercial software producers can afford to get some of these kinds of experts on the team. Most OSS projects probably simply attempt to mimick what the comercial software looks like.
Not everyone wants to spend x hours finding a driver, compiling the driver, finding the right firmware, editing multiple configuration files, and typing in a slew of commands just to get their new wireless card to work. I don't even want to go through all that headache. Like Nathan, I can let Windows do it for me and spend my free time doing something productive. I still want to be able to tweak to my heart's content, though. Linux offers that capability. I think, however, that Linux could be a lot better. Like Mike said, you just have to hook it up to a button somewhere. </rant>
Well there's my .50. I'll try and keep it to .02 next time . . .
Todd
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