Is Windows Ready For Joe Longneck? 714
Carewolf writes "Is Windows ready for the desktop? We have heard it year after year, that now is the time for Windows on the desktop. But is it really time? Richard K. Yamauchi at OSNews don't think so and has writen a piece that list a number of issues that needs to be solved before Windows is really ready for the masses and "Joe Longkneck"."
Yes (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yes (Score:3, Funny)
I've been reading 'is linux ready' for so long
I see it when it's not even there
Very true (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if it's somebody who's not used windows, or at least not often, will Joe User overcome the stigma that "Linux" is for geeks? And if it's a longtime windows user, will Joe U be mentally ready and willing to switch, especially when all his friends are using windows. People are notoriously resistant to change, even good change.
If 'nix crawls into the office desktop market, it stands a better chance of getting into the home desktop market. And the #1 reason it would get onto office desktops is of course: cost and licensing. Perhaps after we get 1 or 2 large companise sucessfully using a 'nix desktop, people will become more aware of linux as something other than a geek tool.
Switch == no problem (Score:5, Interesting)
-an MSword clone (and plug and play printer support)
-a p2p app
-a CD/DVD player
-a CD burning app
-a browser
-an email client
if all these things had an icon on the desktop that they could just double-click and use; if all of these things had a decent UI so you could use them without having to learn how; if game developers started making the latest games available on linux; and if, and this is the most important if, if people understood that switching to linux would mean that their 1.8 ghz pentium 4 which right now runs like a 386 because it's so smothered in adware, spyware, and conflicting whatevers, would actually run as fast as it should AND it wouldn't crash 3 times a day; they would switch in a second.
If at any point they have to type "make," or even look at a CLI, forget about it.
Re:Switch == no problem (Score:3)
1. The understanding that Redhat has the above
2. The understanding that, after installing Redhat, your computer will be fast and crash-free
3. The latest games
Until we have all this, people won't migrate.
Re:Switch == no problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but someone had to teach them what the commands were. I'm sure they were very apprehensive about it until they got the hang of it. With a GUI, you can click around and explore with confidence that you won't break anything.
It's not that users are dumber now, they just expect it to be obvious how to use their computer. And it should. I mean, if you're just starting out you have to read through man pages just to learn how to create a new directory. That's not right. Time spent learning how to do something that should be obvious is time well wasted.
That said, the CLI has its place, and I think it's just SO COOL how I can open up a terminal in OS X, or if I want, totally ignore it.
Re:Very true (Score:5, Insightful)
That depends on the geeks who perpetuate this stigma by telling Joe that he can't handle Linux because he is just a dumb Windoze luser.
Re:Very true (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish I had mod points. That was insightful. I've found that people are much more willing to try GNU/Linux when I encourage them to ask questions and experiment. It also helps if you're willing to help people solve their Windows problems...your opinion means more after a few Windows driver updates so they're much more open to the idea of trying something different if you recommend it.
I also never recommend that a lifelong Windows user switch "cold-turkey". I help them set up a dual-boot system so that they can always fall back to what they know if they need to or if (and I know it's heresy to mention it but...) something just works better in Windows currently. It takes a lot of patience to teach people how to solve problems (in GNU/Linux or in Windows) but it pays off in the long run. You know, that whole "teach a man to fish" analogy and all.
Educating people is what we need to be doing...not convincing them. Teach them how to be geeks themselves and then let them make their own informed decision about what they like best. Seems to work most of the time; people are very interested in saving money and, once they're aware of the options and over the learning curve of a new environment, I've found that most of them prefer GNU/Linux. (And all the games included in the distros helps them win over their families.)
--K.
No, that's the #2 reason. (Score:5, Interesting)
IMHO that's only the #2 reason. It's been ready for desktop (and even on it in several big shops) for some time now, has had those advantages for years, and hasn't yet been widely adopted.
For an advantage to be compelling, it has to provide about an order of magnitude cost/benefit improvement to drive a switchover. Linux may be getting there - mostly thanks to Microsoft's cost and cost-of-restrictions increases, which are passing ten times the cost of retraining. But that frog has been boiling for a while and it still hasn't hopped.
I think the #1 reason to switch - and the one that will create a "shelling point" (where everybody realizes it's time to switch) - is the security issue. Microsoft's vulnerabilities are notorious, and getting more so.
The SQL worm crashing BofA's ATMs on the eve of Superbowl weekend won't go unnoticed (no matter how much the media spins it as an internet problem, rather than a Microsoft problem).
And we can expect more and bigger infrastructure hits on companies using Microsoft products soon. Not just because someone will upgrade the recent worm to screw around with the databases once it's infected the servers. But because Microsoft just showed their source code to the Information Warfare departments of several major powers - while still keeping it closed and hidden from the academic security community.
(Yes: the info war departments. Who else is in a position to "audit" the code and certify its security to their governments' politicians? Of COURSE they won't use this opportunity to learn how to write new warcracking tools and deploy them against their enimies' infrastructure. [Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.])
So expect more hits on the Microsoft software monoculture. And eventually even the PHBs will wise up - or the government's shiny new internal-security bureau will wise them up, in an uncomfortable manner.
Yes, that worm was an attack on servers. But once the PHBs get the idea that Microsoft in their IT operation is a risk, some of 'em will realize that it's a risk even if it's only on the desktops.
Perhaps after we get 1 or 2 large companise sucessfully using a 'nix desktop, people will become more aware of linux as something other than a geek tool.
Right. Herd animals. The situation is like penguins going into the water from the ice pack: The first ones in have a higher risk. So they make rushes at the water and try to get a bunch to go together - slamming on the brakes at the last moment if there isn't enough movement toward the water. But at some point several go in - and the rest of the flock follows.
(There's a joke somewhere in the reversal of penguins jumping into the water vs. businesses jumping into the penguin. But for the life of me I don't see how to phraise it.)
Heh. If Sadam wants to thrash the US infrastructure right now, he could announce he wants to take Microsoft up on its offer. That would open a few eyes and might start a panic switchover. Something like a sea lion on the ice BEHIND the penguins. Of course if he already has anti-Microsoftware wartools ready he's ahead to keep quiet.
tried it, didn't work (Score:4, Funny)
This is what we discovered:
1. Most open source software worked on it, but not as well as in Linux, they had a "ported" look and feel.Emacs works better on Linux.
2. The Windows community isn't accessable, where on sourceforge are they? No freshmeat link.
3. What's up with their browser.
4. It's not Gnome, It's not KDE, It's not fvwm, which desktop is this anyways?
In the end, the only use we found for Windows that actually made sense was as a Samba client. Maybe Window will be ready for the desktop after it's next release.
Re:Very true (Score:4, Insightful)
FUD? This is last week's experience. Changing video modes is a bitch.
If that's not the average experience, that's fine. If people are having my experience, then that's another story.
As for what I actually said in my comment, it was not as much a gripe about a problem I had last week, but more of a reflection of some of the problems that plague Linux. It's really meant to be used with the CLI. Simple as that. You can ignore my complaint (how typical) or you can address it. You chose to accuse me of spreading fud. If that's the type of bs newbs like me are going to have to deal with, then the parent poster is right, you can forget about Linux ever making it mainstream.
Re:Very true (Score:5, Informative)
If X is properly set up by your distro vendor, it will automatically detect and use the highest possible resolution your videocard/monitor combo can handle. Simply switching monitors should not influence that.
Now, in certain edge cases, this may turn out to be problematic. But then again, the solution to similar problems in Windows often mean editing the registry (getting nVidia drivers to do more than 60Hz refresh on some systems for example).
Therefore, since this is not a common failing (as you yourself admit it might not be), and since similar problems on Windows are as complex to find a solution for, your snide remarks at config file editing were uncalled for. Since us Linux users have been hearing this for years ('Linux is hard because you have to edit config files'), I think I have a right to feel slightly irate and call your post FUD. Heck, if you had complained that setting the default resolution to a different setting than the maximum possible involved editing XF86Config, I would not have been so harsh, even though the major distros do provide graphical tools for this task.
I did not ignore your comment. I did point out that in the vast majority of cases your comment is inapplicable. Your sneer of 'how typical' is more typical of Linux-bashing MS astroturfer trying to deflect attention from the fact that he's been caught out.
Problems will happen on any system, but if you can't even do enough research to find out that your problem is not common, you shouldn't be surprised if people give you attitude.
Re:Very true (Score:5, Informative)
My comment was very much called for. First off, your example is not relevant. The problem with Nvidia's card (assuming that problem ever existed, let's pretend it did) was not Microsoft's fault. Video support in Windows works very well. If it took a registry hack to make the Nvidia card work, then Nvidia fucked up pretty bad. Know what that means? It means that Linux is just as vulnerable to problems like that. Only, to fix a problem like that, you better know your way around shell.
Secondly, MS provides you with a UI to install, configure, and troubleshoot video card problems. If KDE or Gnome has something like that, I've yet to find it. Strike 2 against Linux.
"I did point out that in the vast majority of cases your comment is inapplicable"
So let me get this straight: Having to enter shell and edit a text file is a totally acceptable way for Joe Longneck to maintain his machine? Sorry bud, you missed my point entirely. I'd try to explain it more clearly if I thought you would respond rationally, instead you're trying to attack my credibility. Pity though, you really should listen. I'm a Systems Analyst. My job is to make my company's products usable. If that's not credibiilty enough to let you know when something's broken from the user-end point of view, then you are ready to be promoted to Mindless Linux Zealot.
"Your sneer of 'how typical' is more typical of Linux-bashing MS astroturfer trying to deflect attention from the fact that he's been caught out."
Heh. I could say the same for your response to my comment. "Oh yeah? Oh YEAH?! Well Windows has the
You're nitpicking the details (like a true MS Bashing Linux Astroturfer) trying to prove that the problem I had didn't really exist. So yeah, you deserved the 'how typical' comment.
"Problems will happen on any system, but if you can't even do enough research to find out that your problem is not common, you shouldn't be surprised if people give you attitude."
How am I or John Longneck supposed to know if it's common or not? That's exactly what this thread is about. You Linux Zealots think the user has to know more about their computer than they should to make it work. It's your attitude that it's not called for. "Well your problem isn't commmon, so we don't need to address it'. Bull-fucking-shit. What happened to me is exactly the type of problem that'll make somebody say "Fuck it, I'm installing Windows. It works."
So yeah, I can undrstand your defensive attitude. You were 'caught out' just like the guy who started this thread predicted. Thank you for illustrating his point.
Re:Very true (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, I use Linux for my webservers, and it works fine there. Just like I've (okay, my production people have, not me) used betamax for video production in the past. If you need professional grade, and you're not trying to acomodate the end user, these tools are great.
But I *like* being able to go to CompUSA and actually be able to buy a game. Not go to CompUSA, look at a huge shelf of software and hunt for the 5 titles that have a *nix version, out of the 150 titles they have in stock. Hell, the situation is better on the Mac, and it's still not to the point where I'd own a Mac, even though I know that OSX is supperior to windows in many ways.
I honestly think that trying to "win the hearts and minds of joe sixpack" over to *nix is a BAD thing. With windows, we have a standard. I could argue for how great the wierd little wall outlet plugs they have in Europe are, but I'd be a moron to install them in my home if I lived in the USA.
The Atari Jaguar was a much better game system than PS One, but it had crap for software, and not much of it at that. So it died. Should we have pushed for everyone to go buy a Jaguar instead of a Playstation because it was better? Never mind the fact that the games people wanted to play were on playstation. No, this is about good vs evil! We have to figure out a way to prop up Atari!
It's the same thing. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but once something achievs a certain critical mass of market penetration, it becomes a standard. And trying to change these standards to incompatible ones hurts.
Now, the audio market has made a shift several times. Records -> 8 Tracks -> Tapes -> CDs
Video has done this once VHS -> DVD. But with each of these, there was compelling demand for bringing something new to the table. And in each instance, the old format was looking very long in the tooth.
But someone please explain to me why we need to topple windows (Which in my opinion is more mature for the end user than any OS except for OSX) rather than developing it further? Or in this case, being closed source, alowing (and encouraging) Microsoft to take it further? I won't let this become an open source vs closed sourse debate. It's irrelivant. I've never looked at the code of 99% of the open source software I run. And I know that the fact that I've looked at source code at all EVER puts me in a very small minoriity. MY MOM DOES NOT NEED THE SOURCE CODE TO HER SOUND CARD DRIVERS!!! If *you* like to tinker... if *you* like to hack the code, more power to you! But why does this mean that we need to overthrow Microsoft's monopoly, and install one that only a minority want?
Is Microsoft a monopoly? Yes. Are they abusing that? Yes. Should they be punished? Yes.
But itself Windows is not bad. It's a good OS. It is not evil. It is a product. I hate a lot of things Sony does, I hate their stupid useless standards that they try to impose, and I hate how they ran MiniDisc into the ground rather than letting it compete as an open standard against CDs. But I love Trinitrons. And I feel that Sony makes better TVs and Mointors than any others I can afford.
I make a distinction between companies and their products. I buy Sony TVs, Camcorders and DVD players, but I refrain on Playstations (I'm a Nintendo fanboy) and anything involving memory stick. And I write letters to Sony telling them why my money goes to Olympus, rather than getting a shiny new Sony Digital Camera with the Carl Zeiss lense, or why I decided not to opt for the Aiwa stereo and went Pioneer instead, or to Nintendo and Panasonic, urging them to bring the Gamecube/DVD player hybrid goodness that is the Q to the U.S., or to Microsoft urging them to bring features like the ability to keep one user's apps running in the background while another user is logged in and using the computer, which I'm told was just introduced in XP.
Companies listen to users, they want to please their customers, so that they can make more money off of them. I have a brand new copy of XP sitting on my desk waiting to be installed, because I'm hyped about some of the new features it brings to the table over Win2K. Microsoft is pleasing me on the OS front. But I don't use their browser. I use Mozilla. People have every right to freak out when something isn't the way they expect. These hybrid cars from Honda and Toyota are great because they work like cars, not golf carts. You don't have to plug them in. They fuel up at the same fuel station as everyone else. People are used to that. Just like they are used to MS word, and being able to port documents between home and work.
You can name thousand and one reasons why Windows sucks. But I don't see any advantage in throwing it out and improving on *nix to get it up to where Windows is now, rather than improving Windows to make it better.
wuh? (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux has nothing to do with a userland desktop. As it sits, the various bits and pieces that make up Linux have nothing to do with rendering a desktop environment. Right now, KDE and Gnome (among others) fill that aspect. And, like Windows, those have a long way to go before they become ready for the average new fish.
The part that really gets me going is that Windows has a lot of baggage that it needs to carry with it. Linux desktop environments are starting from scratch with the ability to target all that is wrong with Windows, but they don't (for the most part). The GUI developer should go work in a help desk of a non-technical business for a while. Only then would they have the insight necessary to develop a mainstream GUI.
Gratuitous suggestion to any GUI developer:
Put an "interface" setting on the GUI. Make it accessable via a standard input (CTRL+ALT+DEL works nicely... or make the Windows button do something useful for a change...). When a new fish encounters one of these particular machines, he/she will be able to switch to a standard interface that they are familiar with. Programs will act in a predefined manner. People will spend less time trying to figure things out.
Perhaps a level of standard interfaces could be added - NOVICE, INTERMEDIATE, ADVANCED and the applications could all be tied into this. i.e. -BEGINNERs would never be able to save documents into anywhere but their own designated document storage. ADVANCED users could browse application on the file system at the file level while this complexity could be eliminated at lower levels (if grandma accidentally deletes wreng41.dll, it isn't her fault but she never should have been able to pick into it in the first place...)
I could go on and on but I think that the most we will ever get from an OSS developer is, "RTFM". I'm still waiting for MacOS on X86.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
This already exists. Assuming the machine has KDE or GNOME installed, you will be able to choose it when you log in. Assuming they log in as a new user, all the defaults will be in place. Even if they don't, they'll only have to deal with whatever modifications the owner of the machine has made to their layout, which isn't necessarily huge.
The GUI developer should go work in a help desk of a non-technical business for a while. Only then would they have the insight necessary to develop a mainstream GUI.
Perhaps a level of standard interfaces could be added - NOVICE, INTERMEDIATE, ADVANCED and the applications could all be tied into this.
Argh! This is a prime example of one problem with usability, everybody thinks they are experts. I once saw it called the science of personal preference. Don't get me wrong, I'm no expert either, but I have followed the GNOME usability effort closely.
User levels really really suck basically. Nautilus used to use them, and they were pulled because they suck. Why do they suck? Well, firstly people tend not to be good at judging their own ability level. Smart people who lack confidence choose Beginner and lose out on features they would probably have found useful. Most people choose Advanced regardless of their actual level of ability, and are then flooding with prefs and features that are no use to them.
I find it amusing you mention tech support and then user levels straight afterwards, user levels play hell with tech support, as you instruct users to click buttons or menu items that aren't there, or worse, have different functionality to what you were expecting.
if grandma accidentally deletes wreng41.dll, it isn't her fault but she never should have been able to pick into it in the first place...
Presumably in order to do this Granny would have had to click the "Yes, show me the Windows directory" link, dismiss the numerous warnings that pop up when removing such a file, and somehow evaded windows file protection.
I'm sure there are grannies out there that are capable of it, but hypothetical relatives are only of limited use when talking about usability.
huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Duh!
How can you say that? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought I misread this... (Score:4, Interesting)
All kidding aside (Score:5, Funny)
Windows is SO hard to use... (Score:3, Funny)
It's SO hard to get anything DONE!
Re:All kidding aside (Score:3, Insightful)
The best windows thus far was Windows NT 3.51.. ran stable as f*ck.
Re:All kidding aside (Score:5, Funny)
"People are better than cockroaches"
Exibit A:
Number of people in the world: ~6,000,000,000
Exibit B:
Number of cockroaches in the world: A lot more than that
Exibit C:
Number of species of humans: 1
Exibit D:
Number of species of cockroaches: 5,000
Exibit E:
Chances that humans will survive a major war or asteroid strike: slim
Exibit F:
Chances that cockroackes will survive a major war or asteroid strike: near certainty
Exibit G:
Number of times humans could have evolved into a superior form of life but we were to arrogant to go out and find the monolith: 1
My favorite reason here... (Score:5, Funny)
The Norms (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Norms (Score:5, Insightful)
When normal people buy computers they don't think of it the same way we do. They think of it just like buying a DVD player. It's a machine that is going to do a few things. The one I get has to be able to do the things I want. They don't care what OS, how fast, or anything. Because you can't care about what you don't know about. This guy wanted a machine that could help him do multimedia work. Sounded like amateur film making or home movies or something. And that particular machine did the job for him at the right price. That's why he left the store with it. He probably could have gotten a faster machine for less money, but what he got was adequate.
The reason people go to Windows so often is because some of the things they want their machine to do, can't be done with linux. The high quality polished interfaces and software just aren't there. Does linux have stuff as nice as After Effects and Premiere? No. So if someone wants to do video linux is already out of the picture. Does it have AutoCAD? no, so architects aren't goign to use it. Games? no.
Windows is and has been ready for the desktop for a long long time. It does EVERYTHING. It may not do it well, and it may crash sometimes, and linux may be more powerful, faster, more stable, or better, at certaint things. But if there is somethign you want your computer to do. And computers are capable of doing it. Then a computer with Windows is capable of doing it. That can't be said for any other operating system. When someone else is selling a machine that does everything, you need to sell a machine that does more than everything to even stand a chance.
only Windows can do everything? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly why Apple is going to such great lengths with its "Switcher" ads and its courting of alpha-geeks . . . to dispel this kind of myopia. As far as consumer-oriented operating environments go, of course Microsoft Windows is the predominant brand. But Apple Mac OS X can do everything too [for certain smaller values of everything :)] The only thing that I've found can't be done in Apple Mac OS X that can in Microsoft Windows is that Apple Mac OS X can't be Microsoft Windows. But that's why we have Virtual PC!
Emulation; things you can't do with Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Games? no.
Well over a thousand titles have been released for the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance platforms. Just connect a cartridge reader to your parallel port and install the cartridge reader's driver. Then insert your Game Pak into the cartridge reader and "dump" it into a file on your hard disk, which you can use with the VisualBoyAdvance [emuhq.com] emulator. You can emulate most PS1 games as well, and this time, the reader is already built into your computer because PS1 games come on CD-ROM discs. (I chose GBA and PS1 because of the ease of finding media readers for those platforms.)
"Games" does not mean "first-person shooters, real-time tactical simulations, and massively multiplayer online games". Some people prefer platformers such as "Metroid Fusion" for GBA to Quake clones. (Not that "Metroid Prime" is a Quake clone or anything.)
But if there is somethign you want your computer to do. And computers are capable of doing it. Then a computer with Windows is capable of doing it.
Really? Then why does the least expensive edition of Windows XP support only one processor per machine, encouraging vendors not to make dual-CPU machines in the home user price range? (*Linux and some *BSDs support symmetric multiprocessing out of the box.) And why does the Windows kernel limit the number of simultaneous open incoming TCP connections to a ridiculously low level unless you're running Advanced Server? (On *BSD and *Linux you can change this either by recompiling the kernel, by editing a text file, or by running a GUI app that does either of those.) And why do the headers to write a file system module cost $1000 [microsoft.com] to license, putting it far out of the CS student/hobbyist price range? (On *BSD and *Linux, the source code for several sample file systems comes with the kernel source code.)
Re:Emulation; things you can't do with Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, hey, lets talk about MAME and stuff too! Think about the thousands of games available that way!
Talk about irrelevant.
First off, most people don't want to play GB/GBA games on the PC. They want to be able to go down to the store, buy some game released for the PC, and install it. Period.
Linux fails on this... even when you use Transgaming and whatnot. Until that changes, it will continue to fail on this.
Alternately, games could start coming with Linux binaries and auto-installers, but that's even more far fetched... the market is too small. To get this you'd have to solve the first problem, and then demonstrate some significant advantage of spending development time on Linux binaries over running it via Wine/WineX/whatever.
Then why does the least expensive edition of Windows XP support only one processor per machine
Maybe because home users would not benefit in the slightest from a dual CPU setup? Or most power users either? And, look, use XP Pro and you suddenly have multiple CPU capability. How is this something Windows can't do?
And why does the Windows kernel limit the number of simultaneous open incoming TCP connections to a ridiculously low level unless you're running Advanced Server?
Because you're not running a server? Uh... this is part of MS's licensing scheme. You can complain about that, but you can't say it's "something Windows can't do".
And why do the headers to write a file system module cost $1000 [microsoft.com] to license, putting it far out of the CS student/hobbyist price range
Because MS has no interest in that market would be my guess. Stupid of them, but that's their choice. How does this make it impossible to write alternate FS's though? Difficult, yes. Undoable? No.
BTW, I wouldn't agree with the parent poster that "anything you want to do can be done with a Windows PC", but I would agree that for what most people want to do on a computer, it's a lot easier to do under Windows (or a Mac - dependant on what you're looking for really). Linux as a desktop OS still requires far more Unix knowledge than most people want to deal with.
Re:Emulation; things you can't do with Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Just connect a cartridge reader to your parallel port and
2. install the cartridge reader's driver.
3. Then insert your Game Pak into the cartridge reader and
4. "dump" it into a file on your hard disk
4 relatively technical steps. the first requiring extra hardware. this is EXACTLY the problem. yeah it probably isn't that hard and yeah there are probably 4 different HOWTOs but you have to have the time to dick around and the inclination to dig under the hood of the machine.
I thought the parent poster made a great point. The non technical, idiot or not, doesn't want to fuck around w/ this kind of shit. I do, you do, but that is b/c the tech is a hobby and the process is as interesting to me as the final outcome.
You go on to talk about XP being single processor. Hardware these days has far outpaced software and the casual user really just doesn't need dual processors. Refering to the example in the parent post, he could have gotten a faster machine but what he was really interested in the functionality it was going to give him.
In alot of ways you can liken computers to cars. Cars have evolved to a point (in the last 15 years or so) that you don't really have to worry about what is under the hood. sure if you have specific needs (towing, racing) you are going to be very particular about it having 335 horsepower v8 or whatever. Overall though, the selling points thesed days (as evidenced by what the car commercials brag about) are other things. the toys. does it have a sun roof, does it have gps. the warrantee, etc...
30 years ago, if you had a car you needed to know some things about it. you had to be able to check your oil. that isn't the case anymore. Computing is still very much in the "need to change your oil" stage. Windows and possibly mac do the most user level coddling and try to avoid making you change your oil. linux, as much as I love it, makes you change your oil. Hell, as you point out in your post you have to rebuild your ##$%ng engine (recompile the kernel).
ahh I am just ranting now, i do like the granularity and control that linux gives me but most people don't want to deal w/ it any more than they want to replace the suspension on their car.
Re:The Norms (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, Macs do this out of the box. Cd recording, movie editing, image editing, and audio all work well and intuitively OUT OF THE BOX.
In windows' defence, I will say that I recently bought a sony PC which had a slew of preinstalled software at no extra price - Premere LE, Sound Forge and ACID, Photoshop LE, and a media player which wasn't as good as iTunes, but definitely beat windows media player. If the normal version of windows did all of this, I'd be happier, but it doesn't, and requires a lot of extra (expensive) software do it. Apple bundles utilities to do all these things INTUITIVELY, and intergrates them well into the OS. If you want something more powerful, go get Final Cut, photoshop, premere, etc. But, for most people, the iApps are fine.
Re:The Norms (Score:4, Insightful)
You know that most of end-users do not have any of your X11 software?
The fact is that Windows is sometimes the right tool for the job...
The problem of both Linux and Macosx is that Windows is the right tool for the job for 99% of end-user tasks.
Apple understands it and attempts to fix it as hard as possible. If Linux developers won't understand and fix it than there is no chance for Linux on desktops of end-users. Actually I am negatively surprized how big software player keep feeding their direct mono-competitor.
Hello, IBM! We heard a lot of your Linux support. How about Lotus for Linux? Don't you want to "help" to your "friend" Microsoft to loose more users?
Hello, Sun! You can do better with Star/Open Office in terms of usability, stability and compatibility!
Hello, HP! Can you repeat again why my HP scanner is not recognized by xSANE?
Hello, Adobe! You're so naive tha you really hope that Apple will sell more Macs in future with your software. Don't you have any hope for Photoshop/Illustrator/Premier on Linux?
I understand that opensource developers don't understand end-users. But I don't understand software giants.
Re:The Norms (Score:3, Informative)
Depends on what you mean by 'run'. There are X11 servers so you can access your favorite window manager or desktop environment from within Windows, so maybe the answer is 'Yes'. If you mean 'execute *nix binaries', then the answer would be 'No', mostly.
How about the best page-layout software? Hmm, mostly need a Mac for that, huh?
No, there's a Windows version available too. (No assertions made about the relative quality of each version.)
Okay, well I'm sure Windows will work great with my Firewire-based A/D audio rack...
Not to dismiss you out of hand, but you show me a 'Joe Longneck' at CompUSA asking the salesdrone 'Can I hook up my Firewire-based A/D audio rack to this PC???' and I will eat a stick of RAM like it was Juicyfruit.
Congratulations on identifying a tiny niche of consumers for which Windows is not a reasonable desktop solution, but that doesn't do anything to refute the claim that 'for MOST people, Windows on the desktop is acceptable'.
Re:yeah, all they care about is the colors (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mac (Score:4, Insightful)
Come get it! Cheap Karma! Just say you want a mac!
Well, seriously you know this is satire right? It's making a point through humour. Yeah, the titlebars and start bar in the default XP theme are pretty garish, that's the point. On the other hand, I quite like the widget theme, pretty laid back in comparison.
Anyway, personally I think once you get over the big titlebars Windows XP is better than MacOS in terms of themes, the MacOS gui is cool for the first week, then the novelty wears off and it just gets distracting. In particular the stripes that invade it everywhere are just visual noise and ended up irritating me, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere to turn it off, or make it a gradient or something.
Some stuff is just confusing too. Look at this for instance [ranchero.com]. Look at the bottom, I guess that thing at the bottom left is a progress indicator? It doesn't stand out terribly well, nor is it obvious what it does. On the left hand list view there is what seems to be an empty scrollbar, but it could be anything for all I know. It's just a seemingly pointless gradient.
The main problem with XP of course is that not all the apps use the new theming APIs, meaning you end up with a mix of cruddy old icons and grey UIs. Anyway, you know why Windows and GTK traditionally use shades of grey and brown? It's easier on the eyes.
In fact, if you remember back in the days when the web was a shiny new toy, by default web pages were grey. Modern day browsers use white as the default, but in the beginning it was a similar shade of grey to the one Windows used, because it makes reading for extended periods easier. For the same reason, the old green on black terminals weren't so great.
So, the Mac colour scheme is good for marketing purposes, but I don't really see how it could be objectively classed as "better", it certainly is less usable than the old MacOS 9 style ui. But I guess they had to give it some distinguishing feature.
Re:Mac (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, personally I think once you get over the big titlebars Windows XP is better than MacOS in terms of themes, the MacOS gui is cool for the first week, then the novelty wears off and it just gets distracting. In particular the stripes that invade it everywhere are just visual noise and ended up irritating me, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere to turn it off, or make it a gradient or something.
The 'big titlebars' thing is a myth. Somehow, the larger antialiased system font used in Aqua (Lucida Grande 12pt) makes people think the window bars are bigger, but not so. Booting classic real quick will show you that they're the same size.
I have to admit, I laughed at the comment about the stripes... especially ending it with 'option to make it a gradient or something.'
Gradients... are the bane of graphic designers. Gradients suck. They have their place, and that place is a small, subtle effect, or a contrast-y thin effect. Like the blue-orange gradient that pulses when XP starts up. Very specifically not like the task bar and sliders in Windows. XP goes completely nuts with this gradient effect which adds to its gaudy appearance. Another example: the rollover state of taskbar buttons actually inverts the gradient, so it goes from 'puffy' to 'concave'. Flexing, like so much cheap-ass plastic. You may laugh, but things like that make a big difference in perception. Sorta like cheap plastic knobs on the dashboard of a low-end car.
The stripes in Aqua do have a purpose; they denote negative space. I've found that this is very useful for 'clicking off' an item to remove focus. Or, say, in OmniWeb - I can see how big a graphic with a white background really is, as the 'negative' striped space is different from the default white BG of most browsers.
Some stuff is just confusing too. Look at this for instance [ranchero.com]. Look at the bottom, I guess that thing at the bottom left is a progress indicator? It doesn't stand out terribly well, nor is it obvious what it does. On the left hand list view there is what seems to be an empty scrollbar, but it could be anything for all I know. It's just a seemingly pointless gradient.
There are much more horrible Aqua basterdizations to point to, but this one is not as bad as you might think. The thing in the bottom-left is a progress bar. It doesn't stand out because there is no progress going on in the screenshot. Aqua progress bars either pulse or animate when active; they are clear when inactive. Believe me, you'd notice it. The bar on the right side of the left pane is an empty scrollbar; this is done so your text is not popping 12-pixel gaps when appearing/disappearing while resizing. It keeps the text more readable.
The main problem with XP of course is that not all the apps use the new theming APIs, meaning you end up with a mix of cruddy old icons and grey UIs. Anyway, you know why Windows and GTK traditionally use shades of grey and brown? It's easier on the eyes.
I'd say the main problem with XP is the hackneyed half-MDI interface they cling to, but that's just me. Windows used gray because MS had no interest in making the UI look like anything else for a long time (basically until OS X shipped). It's not inherently easier on the eyes... in fact a lack of contrast can have the opposite effect. The default grey of webpages gone by had more to do with a lack of background tag than any 'web usability' effort.
Personally speaking, the problem with XP is the huge chunks of UI that get 'blown through' each other all the time. I hated that on Mac OS Classic, and I still hate it in Windows. Makes your computer seem sloooow. At least Aqua never ever does that, what with the double-buffered display and everything.
So, the Mac colour scheme is good for marketing purposes, but I don't really see how it could be objectively classed as "better", it certainly is less usable than the old MacOS 9 style ui. But I guess they had to give it some distinguishing feature.
I diagree. The Aqua interface is good for marketing, and dragging the computer-using public kicking and screaming into a bold new world where we can count on antialiased text and an uncluttered GUI standard. It also looks fantastic on LCD screens.
Re:Mac (Score:3, Insightful)
Ooops, sorry, my bad. I thought you meant the Aqua titlebars were bigger than Classic's.
Ok ok! That was just an example. I meant, you can't change it to anything else. Anyway, I know some people who really like gradient based themes. I don't so much, prefer the flat look personally, but whatever floats your boat yes?
Yes... and no. I'm a big anti-theme guy actually, just on principle; I saw the horror that Kaleidoscope wreaked on too many Mac labs. Choice is good, obviously. By the way, you can theme OS X, using Duality or a similar app, and there are plenty (!) of non-striped themes available. (All the widgets are just stored as individual PDFs.)
No, they are there for branding basically. In any UI it should be pretty obvious what will be interactive and what won't be.
Okay, you're right, its a brand thing as well. I have found them useful anyways.
I don't really understand... the empty scrollbar was on a list view, the items didn't stretch all the way across, so it wouldn't be popping in and out.
Exactly. Rather than have the scrollers appear and disappear when resizing, they have opted to keep a 'filler' bar there so it looks less jerky. I'm undecided on whether or not it's better myself, as you're right, people don't read generally when resizing. But that's why its there.
No, too much contrast on screen is harsh on the eyes. Yes, too little can be bad as well (though for some people high/low contrast can make a big difference), but there was indeed a reason grey was chosen as the background colour, and it's because the early days of the web were dominated by technical articles, and grey was known to be less harsh on the eyes for extended periods.
Quick: tell me if you're browsing Slashdot with anything other than RGB 0,0,0 for text and 255,255,255 for white. :)
Blown through? Do you mean when you can see the UI repainting when the system is under load? I don't really know what you are talking about here...
Maybe I'm on crack, or my computer is.. but on my XP system, every time I launch a new browser window, or save an attachment, the UI blows through whatever's under it for a good 2 seconds... and this on an Athlon 1.8Ghz with a decent video card, lots of RAM, etc. So you tell me.
You are right of course about OS X's speed disadvantage in this area, but it's safe to say they are now where other OS display technologies are going.
Anyways, this has already gotten long. Sorry if it seems like I'm ranting, I just enjoy the discussion. Cheers.
Re:My favorite reason here... (Score:5, Interesting)
HOW can you possibly say that with a straight face and mean it? Unless you really believe it. Please tell me, AC, how different from NT 4.0 or 2000 that XP really is? Oh wait, it boots faster? Or hold on a sec, the games are in a completely different place. Or maybe it's this new fast-user switching?? Gee, that is kinda rough.
Now how about copy-paste? Still CTRL-C, CTRL-V huh? Hmm... Alt-F4? Still works. Still got the minimize, maximize, close and system buttons on the title bar... doubleclicking the titlebar still maximizes... pgup pgdown still work...
Please, I'm VERY curious to know. Just how unusable is XP? Really? I mean, this row of secretaries over here saving dozens of trees by using Word Excel and Email are really confused because they're getting their jobs done with an obviously broken operating system...
</rant>
Stating the obvious... (Score:5, Funny)
The real question is whether Slashdot's ready for a built-in spellchecker!
Re:Stating the obvious... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Stating the obvious... (Score:4, Informative)
Notice: This article is sort of a satire of another article. Some of the abbreviations/acronyms are purposely wrong on purpose. It's just for fun and not meant to hurt anybody's feelings.
It's how they spell it in the article too. Just an observation.
Orange
Re:Stating the obvious... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a question of the spellchecking, it's a question of when the editors are going to take a college journalism or writing course and learn "sic".
yeah, but... (Score:5, Funny)
No, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe that isn't the right question: why do some care that much? Linux is the right thing for me because I am a developer and have access to a wide variety of high quality tools for free. Someway, Linux is good for developers _because_ it is made by them and for them. It is a bit like programming languages: most of new (esoteric?) languages are good for writing compilers, because that's what their designers do.
Re:No, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, I love the message Linux people are sending out: We don't want you here, go away luser... wait, why choose the Evil Empire(tm)... whaaaaa, you are being brainwashed...
Re:No, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I wouldn't care at all if other people all used Windoze, as long as I was able to use Linux unimpeded. Unfortunately, due to Microsoft's monopolistic control, this isn't possible. It's always a fight with them. I'd be perfectly happy if I could use Linux at work and at home, doing everything that MS-users do (but without all the blue-screens and slammer worms), using the same file formats and network protocols. But that's not good enough for Microsoft; they have to use secret, proprietary file formats and protocols, and any other means they can to achieve lock-in, so they can control not just 95% of the market, but all 100%. If MS followed published, vendor-neutral, freely-accessible standards for everything, free software advocates wouldn't be complaining about them at all, because then MS would mostly become a non-issue to them. I don't care much for Fords, but I don't waste my time bitching about how crappy they are because I'm never forced to drive one (except every few years when I manage to rent one perhaps). I never try to drive somewhere and find that a particular road only allows Ford cars on it. I'm not required to drive a Ford to get to work. So I really don't care much about them; I drive a car I like instead. Why can't MS leave people to choose what they want like Ford does?
L33tism. (Score:5, Insightful)
It think some distros are ready. Windows compatable? No. But user friendly, yes.
Re:L33tism. (Score:5, Funny)
I dread the day Linux becomes "Mainstream"(tm) and thus a viable target for advertisements, spammers and script kiddies. I fear the software and Linux kernels we might see, such as "Bonzi Buddy QT/GTK", "AOLinux" and ofcourse "mod_drm" compiled into the kernel...
Re:L33tism. (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to think that too, but lately I think that's not going to happen. I have this theory.
Every platform has a culture you see. The cultures of Windows, MacOS and Linux are distinct and different.
The Windows culture is one of rampant commercialism, I guess because Microsoft was always a figurehead of capitalism and because being dominant and without any distinct culture imposed on it by Redmond, it adopted the culture of western/american society as a whole. So you get apps that forcibly display adverts, practically all the software is commercial, 30 day trials or spyware funded. Hence the high piracy rates.
The MacOS culture is one of "we pay over the odds, so we demand absolute quality". I'm not a big fan of MacOS myself, in fact I think it's ultimately a harmful thing, but it is a pretty high quality product, and Apple charge a premium for it. In turn, having bought into the platform, the users tend to demand everything be done the Apple Way. The Apple Way is the One True Way, and woe betide any company that violates that. An example of that would be focus on the gui, following the apple user interface conventions etc (note that doesn't necessarily equal very easy to use). What Apple says or does must be correct, this is taken for granted. There is similarly a lot of commercial software, but again it tends to be less in your face for fear of disturbing the users "experience", for instance I think it was OmniWeb faded in "free trial" over the web page instead of using annoying popup dialogs.
The Linux culture is the most different. It is a culture of the community above all else. A media player that cost £40 and whose free trial inserted spyware into your system would not be tolerated, period. A free version would be made, it'd be made better, and that'd be the end of it. The whole setup and technologies are oriented around this. For instance, the vFolders menu system is category based, rather than company based like the Windows start menu. Linux users also tend to dislike things that don't play by the rules. Closed file formats are seriously frowned upon, simple shareware style programs don't stand a chance. EULAs are foreign to Linux, in fact RPM and DPKG don't even support them afaik.
When writing software, there is a (possibly unconscious) effort to make software fit in with the culture. I've seen Windows programs that display an "EULA" which in fact says practically nothing of worth whatsoever, even gpld software has this (you don't have to accept the gpl to use the software). They usually offer options to add themselves to the desktop, start menu and quicklaunch area. 30 day trials are common, and adding icons to the tray area that don't do anything other than start the app are all commonplace.
In turn, on the Mac, everything has to be animated. Things can't just appear, they have to fade in. MDI apps don't exist. Everything must have an Apple-sanctioned look (even when it may not actually be appropriate sometimes) and so on. Some things, like inventing your own widget toolkit, just "aren't done".
So for Linux, would you want your app to stick out like a sore thumb by invading the menus, shoving itself everywhere and generally being impolite? On Windows users accept that as the norm, the price of using Windows. On Linux, this would gain seriously negative points, so companies would be less willing to do it.
So, I doubt you'll be seeing BonziBuddy for Linux anytime soon. Maybe one day, but it really depends on whether we, the geeks, can steer the culture of the OS in a favourable direction by making it hard to write unfriendly software, and making sure users don't tolerate invasive programs.
It's just a theory. We'll see how it bears out in reality.
Re:L33tism. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well shit! I mean, it worked for the Internet, right?
Right?
Re:L33tism. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not a big fan of MacOS myself, in fact I think it's ultimately a harmful thing,
What exactly is so harmful about the Mac OS itself? Mac OS X's internal design might have its problems, but its user experience and applications are much better designed than most Linux or Windows apps.
Re:L33tism. (Score:3, Insightful)
Apart from Real of course.
Re:L33tism. (Score:3, Funny)
How userfriendly does an OS need to be? Do I need everything to explained to me? Do I need wizards, and step thru diagrams to explain to me how to setup a device/net/sound/etc configuration?
I dont want the bloat, give me a stripped down, fast OS that I can add applications I want... Win98 took only 120megs to install, WinXP uses over a GIG of space. Not to mention all the software it comes with that I will NEVER use. Strip that OS down, whack it with a shovel, put it in a zip file, and give me ntfs format. Give me the power, and screw joe six pack.
We seem to complicate every good thing, till its an out of control, large beast that consumes our time and life. I dont want 2 gig linux distros. I dont want happy happy joy joy dialog boxes, and forced howto intros.
BTW, I use WinXP for applications and games.
XP? Give me a break.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:XP? Give me a break.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. The "Fischer-Price" interface. . . (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, so it isn't carved in stone. You can change it. But it still points to an attitude that MS takes toward its users that isn't very flattering.
They don't just think of their users as ignorant, lacking "savvy" or even mouth breathing sister marrying redneck morons.
No, they think of them as *juvenile.* Oddly enough, even the mouth breathing sister marrying redneck morons can be offended by this. Even the juvenile ones. Go figure.
Everytime I look at the default XP interface I start looking for the little steering wheel and want to beep the horn.
KFG
buwhahahah (Score:5, Funny)
The paragraph on clicking is worth the whole article alone. Why are the funniest things always the closest to the truth.
Always reminded me of the "mac needs a second mouse button" rant. Its true that power users love the second mouse button, but it still makes me want to pull my hair out when people single click on shit that needs double clicking, and even worse, trying to guide somebody through the gui and having them double clicking where they should be single clicking.
Say what you will about Windows, but the clicking conventions are a complete and utter mess. I'm not even sure power users can predict with 100% certainty when a particular drag and drop in a particular context will result in a move, copy, or make shortcut action. (And yes I know about the left click drag - its hilarious, that feature is a total hack for how confusing the drag & drop heuristics are.)
Re:buwhahahah (Score:5, Funny)
REAL mice have THREE buttons...
Not One,
Nor Two,
But Three, is the number of buttons on a real mouse.
Re:buwhahahah (Score:5, Funny)
The buttons on a mice shall not be six, nor shall it be four. It shall be five.
Three is right out. Five shall be the numbers of buttons on a mouse.
Re:buwhahahah (Score:3, Funny)
Reality (Score:5, Funny)
I have this neato mouse that has 101 buttons. Unfortunately, it's a bit large and hard to move around, but I find this disadvantage is offset by the large number of buttons available for entering commands.
Re:buwhahahah (Score:4, Funny)
Re:buwhahahah (Score:3, Funny)
Re:buwhahahah (Score:4, Funny)
They also have two buttons and white gloves and won't fall into the public domain for another 800 years.
"Don't Touch" directory (Score:3)
"The best way to get someone to touch something is to put a sign on it that says Don't touch"...
Comic Relief (Score:5, Insightful)
I only wish the article went into a bit more detail about all of the challenges Windows faces on the desktop. In order to be funny, some things were exaggerated too much at the risk of discrediting valid points.
After reading the same types of articles with Linux as the subject matter, I am tired of seeing them all have the slanted perspective of, "Is Linux ready for Windows users?"
Point 10 reminded me of a Gateway advertisement I saw recently for a computer that comes with the Internet:
10. Freedom. You can use the inter net with Windows XP. It's built in.
mostly satire but point #9 is valid ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know the author of the article says he's sorta writing a satire of another article (yes, some of us do read the article) --- but one point he makes I think strikes home at some potential problems downline for Microsoft when he writesThe problem is that the development tools have indeed become too expensive. Long gone are the days where one could buy a simple 'Turbo' this or 'Visual' that compiler for $99.95. And along with that, goes much of the supportive development by independent programmers and small companies.
Similarly, have you seen what it takes in the way of system resources to write a simple COM component perhaps a XML-based web service on
Sure, J2EE is a behemoth as well, but at least you're not going to get licensed out the wazoo and knickle-n-dimed to death when you write your 150 lines to say "Hello World!"
Need proof? Turbo Pascal -- it changed the way we looked at the PC.
Re: you CAN develop for windows for free (Score:5, Informative)
No, you don't get the Visual Studio development environment, but you CAN compile VB.NET, C#, or C++ code with it.
If you want a visual dev environment and still don't want to pay for it, try sharpdevelop [icsharpcode.net]
If you'd done some research before posting, you'd have realized that your criticism is unfounded. Additionally, there's nothing stopping you from getting GCC running under windows as well. You also have perl, python, or any number of other languages
Re: you CAN develop for windows for free (Score:4, Informative)
Re:mostly satire but point #9 is valid ... (Score:3, Insightful)
- Development has become too expensive, and
- Development has become too difficult
The first point has been addressed (most usefull skills like J2EE andAlthough I hate to see small companies and independent developers hit, I don't agree with the idea that computer programming should be easier or less difficult. This is programming, not assembling furniture. It's now to the point where even the "hold-your-hand" RAD tools are cutting off the non-serious users (VB6 was the bane of bad programming, but VB.NET forces its users to code better, and VB6 "coders" aren't happy about it).
It's exponentially more difficult to be a programmer today than it was, say, twenty years ago and so what I see a lot of (and I'm not saying this is you) is people who got in on the low end (i.e., COBOL thirty years ago) and somewhere between Object Oriented and Polymorphism, fell off the curve. I work at a University that's moving (at some point) from a COBOL-based mainframe to a "web-based" system (whatever that means - PeopleSoft, .NET, something) and the majority of the people who work with me (most of which are at least thirty years older than me) just want to put it off until after they retire.
Once you get ensconced in "difficult" programming, you will either understand why it is how it is and why it is so difficult (i.e., it won't be so difficult anymore) or you'll get so flustered with it that you'll find another profession or hobby. And as programming gets more and more difficult, there will be less and less people to do it, and as a result these people will be worth more since their rarity is increasing.
Or maybe that's just what I want.
Turbo Pascal (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides being the pioneering IDE (text editor, compiler, debugging runtime, runtime library), the whole freaking thing was a less than 40 kilobyte (yep kilobyte) image. My guess is that the runtime library was the first 10-12 kilobytes because that is what got grafted on to your apps. The rest was text editor (I still use the WordStar idioms with Borland editors to this day) and compiler. The belief is that the whole thing was written in assembly language, but my guess is that only the runtime library (largely Int 21 and Int 10 function calls -- remember those?) was in assembler -- no big deal as it was largely hooks into DOS -- and the rest was in my guess written in Turbo Pascal itself -- probably initially hand translated to bootstrap itself.
And you could peek and poke both memory and IO ports and make any DOS Int 21 or BIOS Int 10 or whatever calls you wanted that weren't in the runtime library -- who need assembly language, I used it to control everything from video cards to A/D boards.
And that runtime environment caught runtime errors and put you in the editor at that line number -- what a concept. Too bad something like that doesn't work today. I find that no current Borland product these days produces a useful runtime error line number anymore, mainly because the bombs I get these days are from supplying wrong parameters to the Windows API (as an old Turbo Pascal hacker I have no need for this Delphi VCL stuff, I program to the API), and Delphi throws up its hands because it can't trace crashes into the bowels of Windows.
Arrg! It's a joke! (Score:3, Informative)
Personally, I love joke about the new "better colors".
No proof reading? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to be rude, but you're coming across as the kind of person who turns his nose up at crass humor, but loves Shakespeare (as if that isn't full of crass humor).
Are /. readers ready for subject verb agreement? (Score:5, Funny)
Richard K. Yamauchi at OSNews don't...
Windows on the desktop? (Score:5, Funny)
On the other hand, a Windows Server? What kind of moron would put up a windows server? Desktop fine, but that desktop had best connect to a Linux Router, then a Linux Server, protected by a Linux Firewall. That is unless you LIKE viruses and downtime.
I've got a client who called me up at 9:00am on Saturday wanting me to go down and patch up their MSSQL Server 2000 server to keep their precious precious data safe. It was a real pleasure to say, "Safe? Don't worry, your 150000 dollars worth of MS junk is safe behind the Linux firewall I put together out of a spare computer I found in a basement storeroom."
Windows 2000 with 2 years of uptime (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Time for /. effect? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Windows 2000 with 2 years of uptime (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, Mac OS X Server has been around since 1998. I ran version 1.0 and then 1.2. They were nothing like the current OS X.
Anyway, in this case, when you look at the "OS, Web Server and Hosting History for binomial.dhs.org" for this site, it says it was running Linux back in July. So something is wrong...
Re:Windows 2000 with 2 years of uptime (Score:3, Funny)
Honeypot.
That thing must attract every hacker from the four corners of the world! Haven't they ever heard of a Service Pack? Good Lord.
Are people ready for computers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly there is no wayo to make them totally idiot proof. Nature keeps evolving better idiots. There is a certain level of 'je ne sais quoi' necessary to run technology. You have to have some basic understanding of what youare doing and what the metaphors mean. to this day there are ppl in companies that use computers who can't make the logical connection between a document in the filing cabinet and a document on a computer disk. No amount of 'fixing' an OS can alleviate that. You cant fix a situation hat when ppl get a message onthe screen instead of readin it they clickthe cancel button and pretend it didnt happen. There has to be some thought going on in their head.
Let me give you guys an anecdote, i was workingon a womans computer who was using lotus notes everyday for more than 2 years. In case you dont know LN has a *very* distinctive login window. Anyway so I had to reinstall notes and i had to aveher login. She didn know which password to use, after about 5 different ones she got it. So i logged her ot of notes for the settings to take effect and i neded to have her login *30 seconds later* and she had forgotten which password to use.
This is the kind of situation you would have to design computers around, those who cannot retain information. The only hope for us support people and for those kind ofusers is tohave voice regonition and then you define broad terms to describe things like "I want to see my email" or "where is that damned sales report"
I have a nice dent im my wall if you wanna start pounding your head there now:)
Re:Are people ready for computers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do we 'login' to our office building? No we use some form of key, be that a tumbler lock or a swipe card.
Perhaps if we used a physical means of ID it would be easier for most people to use, USB dongle maybe.
I know there are problems about login for remote system, and I know that some people use pin codes to get in doors.
But I think my point is that so far most computer interfaces have been built by computer engineers that have a certain way of looking at the world.
MacOS was a bit different because a lot of its users were more the creative type, and I'd argue that the Mac interface is more 'transparent' to most people, which is why a large number of people who just want to get the job done like Macs.
Why do we enforce the filesystem concept - aren't we smart enough yet to have data stored on disk indexed so that fuzzy queries like "where is the sales report" can work - Google can do it for the web, why can't we do it for the file system?
The best example I have seen is a local school here in the UK. They were thinking of buying an interactive whiteboard system and invited me along as a tame techie to make sure they wearn't scammed. They also know I'm actually a trained teacher too so could 'translate' what the salesman was saying.
In the end I didn't need to translate - its so wonderfully simple a 5 year old could do it. I saw a roomful of computer phobic adults and teachers grasp the concept in 5 minutes. If you ever used an interactive whiteboard you'll know what I mean, if you haven't its difficlut to describe. They now have three and the 5-10 year olds in the school use them every day with no training.
But thats my point - we still think of the machine as a computer, the rest of the world just thinks of it as a tool. Now if we are as smart as we claim we can make that tool work for other people.
Re:Are people ready for computers? (Score:5, Funny)
Nope, not the designers; that was the *nix people.
The original interface designer's spec for a Login panel called for a small animated 3D man with a friendly mustache. The friendly man would walk up to you (on the screen) and present you with a giant bar full of buttons, all of which were dancing around, animated, all different colours. Then the man would sing a request to you, in a jaunty tune, asking if you could please identify yourself. You did this by waving the mouse cursor in circles around the one you wanted until it understood. Then the little man ate a sandwich and disappeared.
Yeah, you can thank those *nix bastards for the mess we have now.
Well, maybe yes, maybe no, but WTF? (Score:4, Informative)
That leads to the install itself. Yes, windows installing has gotten 100 times better since the days of DOS. Finally, users don't have to type "a:/setup" or "a:/install" anymore. And thank God "Sys c:" is history. And for the sake of all that is holy, good riddance to "format c:
Just goes to show that even in humor there often lies truth....
(Lies truth???)
Re: Slashdot Help (Score:3, Funny)
WWJD (Score:3, Funny)
Re:WWJD (Score:4, Funny)
Aww, hasn't the guy suffered enough for our sins?
I Deleted The Internet (Score:5, Funny)
I don't blame her. My mother is not a stupid person and she still struggles to grasp when to single vs double click. She never had this stuff and it's intimidating. But nowadays she uses the web, books plane tickets and hotel books, uses email competantly, set up Quicken to download her banking stuff by herself, things she'd never have figured out on her own a year ago.
Needless to say, neither my mother or the woman who deleted the Internet will ever use Linux.
Not even MST3Kable (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows is just so mediocre and generally almost-good-enough that reading a satire isn't ever really funny; it reminds you of the low-level frustration you deal with (or used to) on a daily basis. It's like a movie that's not worth watching because it's good, but also not worth watching because it's so bad. Possibly this is why this weird satire attempt so lost its way on the second page. You can try to have fun at Windows expense, but then you realise you're not. Having fun that is.
Anyone have any links to a really funny Windows lambasting? I'd enjoy being proven wrong.
Please be the one to surprise me... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm waiting for the OS that doesn't make me have to ever look for My Files after I save them on My Computer because they are My Documents and My Computer should know where they are. And, while I'm at it, I shouldn't have to tell the computer where to save my files, it should just know based on the type of file it is.
I don't ever want any technical knowledge just to type a fscking report on 18th century painters; the class is hard enough without the additional burden. I still don't like the typing out bit anyway; why hasn't voice recognition gotten really good yet?
Why do we put wallpaper on our desktop? Why do I have a Start button, a Quick Launch bar, and a system tray on my desktop? Why can I see the time, but not the date or the day of the week in the system tray?
Uhhh...Whine whine whine... Bitch bitch bitch... I'm done ranting now, you can move on. Nothing more to see here.
Go figure ... (Score:3, Interesting)
My Dad , a "Joe Longneck" indeed, really Likes Windows XP. Go figure. He digs the Media Player, the new GUI and the stability (he upgraded last year to a Dell P4 1.4 from a Whitebox P2 266 running Win 98)
His only complaint is that the GUI should have defaulted to the old look so he knew where everything was. Didnt take long for him to figure out ho to change it all back.
Go Dad !
the truth that everyone is afraid of..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Joe sixpack will gladly switch if the flow of free software from friends, relatives and acquaintances dries up...
microsoft is popular only because of the HUGE flow of illigitimate software... if they actually had to pay for it, they wouldnt want it.
Good idea, but not funny (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that a lot of the people who write articles about whether Linux is ready for the desktop don't want it to be desktop-ready for any nice, warm, fuzzy, cuddly reason. They want it there so they can invest in it, so they can draw big graphs of climbing profits, so they can sink their bloodsucking greedy teeth in it.
Honestly, if I like Linux on my desktop, why should I care if anyone else does? I've got my fluxbox, my nethack, my vim, and those things aren't going to get any better because a bunch of Windows refugees decide to use them too.
I don't get it.
Windows vs. KDE 3 (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention - who thought up that hideous default sound scheme? I know that I'm going to have nightmares about it tonight. My skin was crawling for the few minutes it took me to figure out how to turn it off.
Not that Windows control panels are much better... Windows control panels are also hideously disorganized, with things in completely nonintuitive places (sometimes you have to access the control panel, other times you have to access certain features that you'd logically expect to be in control panels in menus instead, and other times you have to resort to running command line programs to get to windows that provide you with what you're looking for - e.g. ipconfig, msconfig), but I find that the user isn't quite so overwhelmed with options in Windows as they would be in KDE.
Mac OS X is the first operating system where the equivalent of the Control Panel (System Preferences) is logically organized and not overwhelming. I think that software designers should take a usability lesson here.
Cynical activism hurts Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
First they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win.
I know the article is supposed to be funny, but at its core it comes across as bitter and whiny. If Linux is better, then let it be better on its own merits, period.
Consistency (Score:5, Interesting)
Be consistent. One of the greatest things about MacOS over the years is that it's entirely consistent. Command-W always closed a window, command-Q always quit the program. Programs that didn't follow the guidelines changed, or didn't get used. Windows has this for the most part, but still has a few breaks (no control-Q to quit, because it's actually file->close_window). The *nix world is torn by the emacs, vi, X and "other os" shortcut wars, and that doesn't even get into the look-and-feel of things (like how come half of the programs I use in gnome have their own proprietary open/save dialogs?! Shouldn't someone have just updated gnome's api to support more features in the existing one a long time ago?).
As for themes/skins (my personal dislike of OSX is apple's lack of support towards their user base in this respect), I read a /. post the other day where someone was bashing the plethora of horrid skins out there. However, as long as there are GOOD ones, let the people have their dancing-Barney xmms skin if they want it - they're not power users, and us power users will choose a more realistic skin/theme (esp. if the good one is the default). I agree with that poster, however, with regard to the fact that as developers, we need to put good, useable interfaces on our software (and for other coders, we need to over-comment our code - too many times have I tried to improve a piece of open source software only to be dumbfounded by the 2 lines of useful comments in 1000 lines of code).
Note: I use linux for my primary desktop, at home and at work, despite the inconsistencies, but in hope of them going away.
Re:Hehe funny.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Too bad the article itself wasn't all that funny. Once the writer had the idea, I'm sure it pretty much wrote itself. You can almost hear him snickering as he writes lines like, "how would you like to be running what you thought was a valid Windows XP key, but it was actually a pirated key? Well, no problem, SP1 will let you know."
It would have been much more funny if he just played it straight, instead of dripping with flippant sarcasm.
Also, while my standard for ranting on /. posts is kind of low, people who write articles should be more careful, or at least have an editor look over it. Saying stuff like, "purposely wrong on purpose," is just lazy, as is opening the last to paragraphs with, "first of all," and, "secondly of all." Yuck.
[OT] Foghorn Leghorn (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, what has the world come to, when kids can't even properly quote Foghorn Leghorn anymore! Allow me:
Lookit here son, I say son, did ya see that hawk after those hens? He scared 'em! That Rhode Island Red turned white. Then blue. Rhode Island. Red, white, and blue. That's a joke, son. A flag waver. You're built too low. The fast ones go over your head. Ya got a hole in your glove. I keep pitchin' 'em and you keep missin' 'em. Ya gotta keep your eye on the ball. Eye. Ball. I almost had a gag, son. Joke, that is.
Re:What some people don't realize (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a common misconception. MS-Windows revolutionized the desktop in the same way that Budweiser revolutionized beer: cheap and easily-accessible, but not necessarily good or original.
So much came before MS-Windows that was better-executed (unlike MS-Windows, which is better off executed), such as Altos, AmigaOS, MacOS, Lisa, etc. Since then, Microsoft has not improved much on the interface, concentrating instead on making it prettier. Their few attempts at innovation (such as MS Bob) failed dramatically, and usually quite publicly.
The desktop revolution occurred in spite of MS-Windows, not because of it. The revolution was going to happen, with or without MS-Windows; Microsoft just happened to be in the right place at the right time to force the industry to move their way.
As interfaces such as NextSTEP have shown, the desktop should be a lot better than it is currently. But, Microsoft cannot afford to do anything radical with their desktop; they must move slowly and incrementally, or chance losing their customer base. That is why, though XP was touted as being a "revolutionary" interface, it is really hardly different from MS-Windows 2000.
Clever hackers would take advantage of this interface inertia. Instead of duplicating MS-Windows, we should spend a good part of our effort changing the way people think about information. I don't have all the answers, but I can say that the stupid MS-Windows interface should not be a design template for our own desktops. If we do, we are merely consigning ourselves to a life of constant catch-up to an inferior operating system and an inferior desktop.
At least, that's my opinion. I could be wrong.