[plug] Fwd: Open source

[Leon Brooks]

On Monday, 1 April 2002 22:18, Phil Gaudet wrote:
> I simply cannot understand the angle LINUX want's to come in on.

Ah! Then your problem is easily resolved!

> Is it
> intent on remaining a fringe player or is it trying to gain a far more
> significant market share?

No. It is interested in being Linux. If it happens to achieve World 
Domination, then well and good. If it stays fringe forever (and I think it's 
far past that now anyway), so also be that.

Some *individual*companies* may have dreams for Linux, but whether those 
dreams and the entities behind them live or die is, in the long term, 
fundamentally unimportant to Linux itself, although it will have an impact on 
the speed at which development happens.

There is no Linux Inc to go broke. One bankruptcy or a score, one corporate 
assimilation or a hundred, one country being nuked back to the stone age, 
would not stop Linux.

> I am actually road testing LINUX at the moment (red hat 7.2) on one of
> my computers and so far it's been good. However, I had a friend who is
> Mr Average on a computer and he was very bamboozled by it. I have
> deduced 2 things from this

> 1. it's radically different to Microsoft so it will take time for the
> average Joe to adapt to.

Yes and no. Your mileage varies enormously from person to person.

Also, you're probably really comparing KDE or Gnome with the Windows UI, not 
Linux with the guts of Windows.

> 2. it's very difficult to master and possibly just too hard for the
> average user.

Sorry to confuse you, I've got to most strongly disagree with that, and at 
the same time agree.

For the average computer user to learn equivalent tasks under Windows and 
Linux (pick KDE as a WM for purposes of comparison, Gnome and other WMs have 
their own relative wins and losses), there is generally no difference. Each 
system wins in some areas. For example, Konqueror as a file manager is more 
orthogonal (less to learn, more of the Law of Least Surprise) than Windows 
Explorer, but Windows has more applications. There are better filemanagers 
for both systems. Linux apps often don't look as pretty, but also don't crash 
as often or as violently. And so on.

It is a simple matter to set up Mandrake Linux 8.2 and a Windows 2000 system 
side by side with OpenOffice and Mozilla for W/P, spreadsheet, browser and 
email, thus covering the basic needs of well over 90% of all computer users, 
and most users will have trouble even telling the difference between the 
machines.

The real issue is in dealing with so-called power users, people who already 
have Windows expertise and are unwilling to re-learn anything, no matter how 
good, bad or indifferent the replacement is.

I know how they feel. If you condemned me to a locked-down Windows box, 
there's a lot I could no longer do, either eisily or at all. If you unlocked 
the box, it would have StarOffice, GIMP, CygWin tools and lots of other 
things installed on it in an eyeblink.

Now as to the point of agreement: Linux is very much open-ended. I haven't 
mastered it and expect never to be able to. In that respect alone, Linux is 
harder for a typical user to learn than Windows.

This actually makes Windows quite dangerous. When learning to fly, there 
comes a stage, usually soon after you start flyind solo, when you really get 
to thinking that you understand, you know what's going on, you're finally in 
control. That's the stage at which most budding pilots bend their aircraft, 
if they're ever going to.

Windows is continually like that. It tends to bury and hide problems, to 
pretend they're not there. It makes you feel like all is going well, 
everything is under control, when it's not. Everything looks and feels so 
simple and easy up front... and then you run into DLL hell... or your first 
virus arrives... or Windows just deletes something vital apparently for the 
fun of it, or adds a new modem device each time you reboot... or suddenly 
forgets which domain it belongs to... or reports devices as fully operational 
when they've no smoke left in them... or starts sending private information 
elsewhere... or does an automatic update and stops booting... and so on.

> Here's another point I find confusing. There are a lot of different
> companies producing their own versions of LINUX. I find this may confuse
> people into which one to choose if there are too many out there; don't
> you think so?

Maybe. If so, they're the sort of person who needs an L on one shoe and an R 
on the other. There are many brands of car, and people are confused about 
which one of those to buy as well, but it doesn't stop them buying a car, and 
in general it doesn't make an awesome amount of difference which car they 
actually buy (they're all basically crappy tin bubbles full of electronics 
these days anyhow).

> Thanks for your views so far, they have been enlightening.

I'm glad: if they weren't, I'd be redundant. (-:

Cheers; Leon