Mega Man X

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Linux and Windows cannot compete against each other, because they fight in different fields. Linux is more related to servers and multi-users and programming while windows is more aimed to single user and desktop. It's like comparing a bike with a car. They both can do practically the same(transport), despite speed and places one can get in that another can't as well security. However, they are pretty different to drive.
It's simple really. Are you an user who checks your e-mails and send those annoying powerpoint presentations with dogs wishing you a good day, Windows is enough. Are you a freaky gamer who needs to play always the latest shooter? Windows is for you... Are you a programmer, student, who has time and patience to learn and tweak, take a look at Linux.

One thing is for sure. After the great initiative of Microsoft using NT based system for their newer OS, there is not much of advantage of using Linux. Win NT, 2k and XP are just very good, despite if you only check e-mails, need a stable platform to program or play games or watch movies. Linux still lacks on media, administrations tools, a descent package manager and games... That's a fact...

h3rb1

Sure they can compete, any computer can be a server or a single user machine.

Yes, but I can drive both right now without any problems. I remember my first training wheels, and driving lesson.

Mega Man X

A car and a motorcycle can also compete in the same road. Fact is that they are designed for different purposes, so you are losing the entire point of my comparison... as in the other thread...

Artimus

I kind of agree with whansard. I don't mean to sound elitist, but if you design a system that even an idiot can use, only idiots will use it. I'm all for being newbie friendly, but do we REALLY need to dumb a computer down to the level of a toaster?

All of us have made it this far by doing our homework and learning from our mistakes. Once again, at the risk of sounding elitist, do we really need someone who doesn't know that the computer itself isn't the monitor (Well, except for a few Macs...) to be using Linux? We have enough to deal with, do we really need to explain concepts like what is a username, why do you need a password, and why you can't be on the phone and the internet at the same time?

There's a difference between trying to be User Friendly and Idiot Proof.

Mega Man X

Well, a computer is an object. Some peoples use it only to check e-mails, search things on the net and that's it. Why would they need to know how to edit Xfree86 to change resolutions or add a bunch of lines to get TV-out working?. For some peoples, computers has to be as easy to use as a toaster. You plug your scanner, you insert the CD that came with the scanner and you are out scanning. Not loading a bunch of modules and giving permissions to different users to access that device...

Believe me or not, there are peoples who actually have a life outside the computes, others not even use/need one. And occasional users just need to use it as a TV to watch a movie, a toaster to eat a toasted bred or a fridge so the food won't go bad.

Judging peoples by the OS they use, is like judging peoples for the clothes they wear, the music they listen... It's a silly belief, really. So don't call Windows as being a system for idiots, or that peoples who use it are idiots. Windows is a very versatile OS that can be used for both the inexperienced user as the programmer. And that's a positive thing about it.

Just because you know that XFConfig is located at /etc/X11 and to read/write to windows partitions through Linux you've to add a line at fstab don't make you smarter or better then anyone else. You just know a little thing more then somebody else does. Maybe that somebody else does not need to know it either. And you cannot call that somebody stupid just because he uses the computer to print a few recipes of a cake he/she found of the net. They just want to get their job done and Windows does it .

kev82

people who are only using the computer for email/web/etc should not even attempt to set up things like CUPS/SAMBA/etc because any attempt to dumb down the setup so normal users can do it will end up as security problems.

i think as a computer user you have 2 choices

a) read all the documentation, learn all of the concepts and set it up yourself.
b) pay someone else who knows what there doing

Eg: i dont blame the car manufacturer because he hasnt provided easy dumbded down steps for changing the carbuerreta, because no-one should attempt to change a carbuerreta unless they have enough background knowledge - in just the same way that "aunt tillie" shouldnt try to install CUPS without knowing the background knowledge.

administering a computer should be done by an administrator, the sooner the general population understand this the better.

toastermaker

To me the original article this thread was linked to didn't really advocate "dumbing down" the operating system, just providing better documentation.
The author appeared to know his stuff. But struggled to get something going only because of insufficient documentation.

Computers are becoming so inexpensive that even poor people like me can own a few, but I would be hard pressed to come up with the money to pay someone to make a house call every time I needed to change something.

Better documentation would help me set up a more secure system not a less secure one.


Respectfully,

kev82

the author himself managed to get things set up after reading enough documentation, if he had sat down and read everything before hand he would have had no problems.

the way i see the article he is saying that there was not enough (dumbed down)documentation at a level where a typical email/web user(aunt tillie) could have set things up properly. eg

If I were Aunt Tillie the archetypal nontechnical user, I am at this point thinking "What in the holy fleeping frack does that mean?

perhaps the documentation could be improved but it should not be taken to the point where people can set things up without knowing what there doing, else we'll have open proxies and mailservers all over the place.

as i said above computers should be administered by administrators either you learn how to do it or you pay someone.

carlywarly

Well, my parents are in their 70s. Non-technical is a great description of them. I made up a PC based around SuSE 9.0 professional. They use the PC for e-mail, surfing, office stuff. I am not on permanent tech support, even though they have had the PC for nearly 9 months. For simple stuff, Linux can be simple .

toastermaker

<quote from the article>
But in this case, the documentation was passively but severely misleading in one area, and harmfully silent in others. I eventually had to apply m4d skillz gained from wrestling with sendmail to solve a problem the CUPS documentation never even hinted about.
<end quote>

Of course you are right in not wanting to see security compromised by unknowedgable users trying to do admin stuff, unfortunately thats the boat I am in myself.

I may not represent a typical "aunt tillie" as I am aware of the implications of my actions and would I hope use any "dumbed down" documentation with care.

Respectfully,

guardian653

Alas, the old argument of "if you can't figure it out then your dumb" or "If your an AOL user, you probably don't know what your doing!" Either of those statements are stupid. Just because you use Windows daily doesn't mean you can't administer a FreeBSD box (which is what I do on my site btw). Or the same applies to *nix, just because you can setup XFree86 without a wizard doesn't mean your the smarter than the Windows guy. Supporting either or is just a big waste of time.

As for the CUPs install in the article; I understand where he was conming from. Some things aren't that obvious and do expect you to know before hand. Reading up before can help, but not always; especially if that person doesn't know where to look at in the first place. But of course, we don't want people to go off and leave stuff they don't need running; last thing we need are millions of sendmail servers open to spammer (or worse, if they had a open CUPs printer, imagine spammers being able to connect and send you full color ads >_<)

To end this... simply don't assume anything....

witeshark

Quote:

Originally posted by guardian653 Alas, the old argument of "if you can't figure it out then your dumb" or "If your an AOL user, you probably don't know what your doing!" Either of those statements are stupid. Just because you use Windows daily doesn't mean you can't administer a FreeBSD box {break} last thing we need are millions of sendmail servers open to spammer (or worse, if they had a open CUPs printer, imagine spammers being able to connect and send you full color ads >_<) To end this... simply don't assume anything....

This is all so true, and I'd like to point out that IMHO there's no way to dumb it down anyway. It's a Unix - like Kernel based and all you can do is improve the GUI front end... Other wise umm lindows? *puke*!!

johnny1959

chem1: THANKS for posting this.
Eric: MANY MANY thanks for writing this article.

Tears were rolling down my cheeks while reading, I felt so released. I was beginning to think myself that I´m probably one of those nobrainers the gurus keep picking on. I´m trying for four weeks to get my printer running. No network yet, just plainly print. Lost in the empty space between LPRng, CUPS, foomatic and other stuff. Moving fast towards a divorce because my wife thinks I´m sickly addicted to the box. Tired of ploughing myself through cryptic manpages and simply unreadable online manuals while the printer keeps sitting there doing nothing.

In the Windows world I was no hacker or professional administrator. A user. Perhaps a power user compared to aunt Tilly. I just want to maintain a small home network for my family. No security problems on this side of the internet firewall. No problem for Win98 and Win NT. (Well, XP is another story.) Driving me nuts for four weeks in Linux. And why should I learn all this crappy stuff? Assumed that I will succeed in a far future, I will forget all of it the moment it works because it will then run without blue screens for eternity (at least that´s what´s promised.)

And if I, thanks to a miracle, will be printing, the next step: put up the scanner with inSANE. The whole pain will be there again.

SAMBA, my goodness....

No idea until now how to integrate the card reader for the camera....

I will not give up like so many, but the price of freedom is high. VERY high.

Eric is right: All you skilled gurus and geeks: Stop programming additional sophisitcated features. Make the existing USABLE.

Thanks for listening.

davholla

I have to confess that my home PC is directly connected to my printer so I do not know how easy or otherwise network printing is.
However for normal use I think Suse 8.2 is as easier to use than Win XP. It has one great advantage - I can stop my lodgers from installing every piece of spyware there is because even if there is spyware for linux, no one knows root and they don't need to use the PC, but for windows XP, non administrative accounts just do not run all software that well and are a pain to set up.