GUIs are fine! Steve - if you liked your old Mac GUI you gotta see OS X Panther! and the CLI in the latest Mac is fun and customizable.

Just a passing comment, Freakygeek, can't you use all 2352 sectors (or whatever units) by passing a few arguments to cdrecord to the to burn music disks .

GUI's are fine, but sometimes inefficnet. Copying is twice as slow, and as rpm, unextracting, etc.

I have made ISO Cds in the terminal, and I use XCDROAST to copy CDs, I just have never burnt music CDs in Linux..

@witeshark, We have macs running Mac OS 10.1 at school.. I love the GUI, and if I had a mac for my use that would run Mac OS 10.3 I would, but Macs are pretty costly..

Well, Freakygeek55, I don't think anything is wrong with using GUIs if you need to use one. I like Linux because the GUI is not forced on me. I tried KDE and it is ok but a bit bloated like windows is. My problem is that in the
effort to make computers easier to use MS and advocates have actually made them harder to use by hiding the details from someone. What I mean by that is that the computer may be easier to use with a GUI, but when something goes wrong and you can't use the GUI then alot of people are lost. I think a better approach is that of Linux. You have the command line and you have to learn it to a certain extent so you end up knowing what is going on in your machine. While at the same time the "OPTION" to use a GUI like KDE ( which I use once in a while to learn) is always there.
Of course there is the option in Windows of using the command prompt or so called dos window. Plus MS is to feature and bell and whistle oriented.
Their OS is insecure but they still feel the need to try and compete with
"features" such as "fast-user switching" and GUI enhancements. MS needs to worry more about security and stability at this point. If it's pretty but can be cracked then it is not worth the effort for the beauty.
bhooder

MS is ugly, customizbilitiy is the question, in linux i dont like any of the window managers (the ones i like either wont install , or need motif (ew)), so now im looking into programing , in MS i can only customize whatever tehy want me to, i cant change the window borders or thet are pictures, or move or anyhitng, in windows i cant even use the CLI witout it crashing anymore, if somthing breaks you have ot go thru like 1000000000 directories before you find what you need,

thats why i always say windows is for geniouses, onyl tehy might be able to get it to work so it wont crash and actualy fix it, and still be happy

linux is much simpler, everyhitng to fix the computer is the same stuff you use to run the computer, if i want to customize the GUI i can, if i want to custonze the bash promt, i can (and did ), linux has bells and wistles, if your willing to learn it, but most important is that i dont need to be some super genious to use linux, all i do is start up the computer, enter my bios password, wait like 10-20 seconds and there im! in linux and rdy to do anyhting

i want to use the cdrom
insmod isofs
mount /dev/hdc
ls /mnt/disk

in windwos :
boot up enter bios password
wait 1-2 minutes for it to giv me the option of witch user to be
login, wait 2 minutes for the programs to start up wich i dont need
open up spybot, and go to process list, kil the process wroamg (somthing like that, it prevents me from using control alt delet and i have no idea how it got ther),
press controll alt delet
kill like 10 processes that i cant stop from starting up (iv tryed to stop tehm , trust me)
then im rdy to sue teh computer?
want to use the cdrom? every problem!
go to start -> mycomputer
click on cdrom
wiat 1 minute only to find out windows has jsut encounted a serious error and explorere crashes,
so then i go*owell*
i go to IE, then windwos crashes from a error caused by :unknown error from IE

hmmm wich is most easer to use?

If I could only get one of my close friends, who really does indeed know alot about computers, he just is stuck in the PC world, well if I could get him to switch over to linux. Or atleast try it out.. I mean you are right.. In Windows its so easy to get spyware, and so using your computer is hell after awhile, because it gets to the point where it takes 5 minutes just to boot up.. Linux takes me a minute max to boot up.. The only reason it takes awhile is I have to mess with Boot Loaders and Boot disks (I am Tri-Booting My System)

Back to the orignial question of making Linux easier for the general public, Linux is pretty simple, and easy.. Thats after you have been using it for awhile, I mean I cannot imagine all I know about it.. Still I have tons to learn.. and Linux would be nicer if Slackware could see my Toshiba CDRW/DVD drive.. also I have had some trouble untarring things.. and RPMs are Hell to get going at times in FC1..

Now if I was to weigh my computer problems, the Windows problems would be a ton more worse then the Linux problems...

Skyro

I couldn't agree more with you, its windows that is the difficult one to keep running without crashing for the simplest of reasons.

I'm very new to Linux and I've found it pretty easy to use. I read about Slackware, it was described as "not very user-friendly", but I think it's very straightforward! There is some room for improvement in some aspects, but Linux is constantly improving... I'm happy with it the way it is. Afterall, it could always be MORE complicated

linux is cool...it has so much potential.....
i have 15+ years computing experience(starting with a tandy color computer 3 in 1987)......

in my opinion, the gui tools should have more use...and power in setup and configuration...

im good with whatever....but it would be nice too have the changover happen a little quicker and easier....

rock on!!

The only real hassel I have is with finding libs for some apps and tools.
It would be nice if there were some process where you didn`t find out after hours
of download that you need a lib module you can`t find anywhere because the deps
aren`t linked or it doesn`t seem to have a source.

I know this guy john ludwig I once tried to install a 3-d gui with once. That was a bitch and a half, like 50 dependencies and only about half of them were linked. I had little expirience at the time too. It was a damn fun learning expirience tho. Ahhh RIT. .. sucked so much but I had fun there.

its called yum isnt it ?

packageing systems still cant beat source tarballs for people who arnt smart enough to use "easyer" stuff, like me

and blame the developers that 4get to mention what libs are needed to install, i find it anoying to downlaod what you think is everything, then find out that your missing "libXft.so"., thats just an example, i think every lib that package requires should always be listed in an easy to find requirments page, for the most part tho, lib deps are easy enough to find as ./configure usualy finds them, then tells you what you need

I think personally where linux falls down is server set-up time..

I run some bulletin board software, small web based apps running under appache, but i often find an area where i seem to waste a great deal of time is lockdown.

Even though the old windows defaults are the main security breach, so are the defaults in Linux. Yes the defaults are a bit more secure, but the defaults are the hackers main targets.

I find getting information on basic monitoring tecniques, iptables rules etc a complete nightmare.

If you are a low budget business like myself a great deal of time is spent locking things down, making sure etc etc...

That said, i still find this linux stuff pretty cool..and the fact that there is help out their in the community is good..

What is it, you want a GUI?

Its not really a nightmare. If you want to set up a web server for instance, you *have* to know the basics. If you want to write a book, you have to learn to read.

Iptables rules *ARE NOT* a nightmare. Its quite useful. Its just a connections layer manager. Thats what the web is all about, networking. If you find iptables a nightmare, it means you don't know anything about the internet. The internet is just a bunch of connections you manipulate, subnets, gateways etc. which is what those folks at Switzerland designed (don't blame Linux for designing it!)

Iptables is so simple, how can it be a nightmare? You drop all packets on all ports, on TCP, UDP, save for certain exceptions which you define, etc. You forward, masquerade a packet to a certain port.

Of course what you want is probably an "access all easily" thing, are you a phobe of the commandline as well?