musings for the month
 

there is ever so much debate about linux should be made more user-friendly vs people should get to know linux better...

ever thought about this... given the free 'market forces' at play here... we might get to a point of quasi-equilibrium (quasi because nothing is ever perfect) between the two and define a new way to approach computing? a new 'evloved' Linux? after all, many people do claim that Linux is not Unix... just a Unix work-a-like. and how it should be made more user-friendly (aka Windows)... (and yes, i've heard of Lindows... i'm not referring to it! :p)

most things in this world we know are always in a state of flux anyway (such an oxymoron... lol)

i hope i live to see the day.

I honestly hope that Linux doesn't become easy to use that quickly. The goals of the OS that it fullfils are stability, flexibility, and... an interesting following and community. If it were to mature in its useability too quickly, I fear that all three might falter, especially the last. Where the jokers on this site like myself aren't hardcore hacker enough to have the temerity to post on the LMKL, we all have the goal of learning how the system works more than just having it do what we want. When the majority of the community makes that switch accross I'm afraid things are going to change for the worse.

Regardless, as far as ease of use that I'm hoping for are greater support for the Linux Community as a whole from hardware vendors so that support development won't lag 2-3 months behind the windows world. An example of a good one would be Nvidia or 3Com, and an example of a bad one, Linksys; who packages their gear as Linux Ready, but really includes a text file on their driver disk with a link to a site that is coding the drivers, sometimes great ones in the case of Becker's, or horribly beta in the case of the linux-wlan project for wireless cards.

Nice topic though,

Cheers,

Finegan

Well ya know.. Ur rite... an interesting community may indeed falter if Linux became user friendly too fast.

I've pontificated long and loud on these forums about linux and the common user.

I've come to realize a undesirable trade-off might be the result of becoming user friendly.

Oh well... Cuervo Gold time..

 

I think that making Linux more user-friendly can be really good. But we must define what does "user-friendly" mean. When I refer to user-friendly Linux, I think of a better packaging management (rpm is quite good, but it could be better), better hardware support (well, producers..) and some small things that are needed. Example: copy&paste working with all window managers and terminals.
Making Linux more user-friendly does not mean making it less configurable. Just to allow users, who don't want do touch to source codes, use it without touching them.
It's quite complicated, but possible to do.

i think the main obstacles to user friendly linux are:

a lack of really good office suites like MS Word or Apple Works.
True one click never a problem instalations
Hardware support especially for printers