Comment I'm begging (Score 2) 337
Please don't embarrass us again. I'm literally terrified that this poor guy
will get thousands of nasty e-mails from a bunch of techno-bigots (his term).
He's absolutely correct in every way. I fell into a trap a few weeks ago,
where I was praising Linux, up and down, to everyone. One of those people was
my mother.
She asked me if I would install Linux on her computer, because she's tired of
windows crashing all the time. She's also tired of "gackling:" a term she
uses to describe windows poor memory management, which results in that funny
hard drive sound. Much to my surprise, I told her that she wouldn't like
Linux. This, after I had spent so many hours praising Linux to my little
masses. The fact is, although she is extremely intelligent, she probably
couldn't make Linux go. All she wants to do is send e-mail, surf the web,
make posters, scan things, and make business cards. These are all things I can
do in Linux. I'm not convinced she could. At least, not without a
never-ending stream of panicky phone calls.
I talked my roommate into running Linux as well. He informed me last month,
that if it wasn't for having me around to ask questions, there isn't a chance
in hell that he'd run Linux. See, unless you want to spend several hundred
hours reading HOWTOs, Linux just won't work when you need to get things done.
Currently, my productivity is well over 10x my windows productivity. This may
be because I love Linux, and am able to do almost anything in it. The poor
interfaces don't bother me at all, because I can just design my own from the
things I d/l off the net. Could my roommate? No. He uses fvwm. *shrug* His
machine... Could my mother? I'd have to set up gnome for her or something.
She still couldn't get the scanner to work.
Linux needs a mom's interface before I would ever dare install it on her
machine. Linux does not need to become windows. It only needs a simple and
consistent window manager. Then I could install it for her and she could
happily run her programs without ever rebooting. I'd still have to install
because of the install process. It seems simple to me now. I could do it in
30 minutes if that machine was fast enough. To my roommate though, it's about
200 very difficult questions.
Jet (jettero@.nospam.yakko.cs.wmich.edu)
will get thousands of nasty e-mails from a bunch of techno-bigots (his term).
He's absolutely correct in every way. I fell into a trap a few weeks ago,
where I was praising Linux, up and down, to everyone. One of those people was
my mother.
She asked me if I would install Linux on her computer, because she's tired of
windows crashing all the time. She's also tired of "gackling:" a term she
uses to describe windows poor memory management, which results in that funny
hard drive sound. Much to my surprise, I told her that she wouldn't like
Linux. This, after I had spent so many hours praising Linux to my little
masses. The fact is, although she is extremely intelligent, she probably
couldn't make Linux go. All she wants to do is send e-mail, surf the web,
make posters, scan things, and make business cards. These are all things I can
do in Linux. I'm not convinced she could. At least, not without a
never-ending stream of panicky phone calls.
I talked my roommate into running Linux as well. He informed me last month,
that if it wasn't for having me around to ask questions, there isn't a chance
in hell that he'd run Linux. See, unless you want to spend several hundred
hours reading HOWTOs, Linux just won't work when you need to get things done.
Currently, my productivity is well over 10x my windows productivity. This may
be because I love Linux, and am able to do almost anything in it. The poor
interfaces don't bother me at all, because I can just design my own from the
things I d/l off the net. Could my roommate? No. He uses fvwm. *shrug* His
machine... Could my mother? I'd have to set up gnome for her or something.
She still couldn't get the scanner to work.
Linux needs a mom's interface before I would ever dare install it on her
machine. Linux does not need to become windows. It only needs a simple and
consistent window manager. Then I could install it for her and she could
happily run her programs without ever rebooting. I'd still have to install
because of the install process. It seems simple to me now. I could do it in
30 minutes if that machine was fast enough. To my roommate though, it's about
200 very difficult questions.
Jet (jettero@.nospam.yakko.cs.wmich.edu)
