Subject: Re: Ease Of Use and Hardware Support (WAS: Linux Laptops)
From: Eric D. (liriodendron@mac.com)
Date: Thu Mar 07 2002 - 21:27:57 MST
on 7/3/02 10:42, Paul Guba at gubavision@comcast.net wrote:
> on this list. Thanks to everyone. Perhaps Linux will never progress
> far beyond that and become a more mainstream OS. Its my feeling it
> will. If only because of MS greed and CFO's always looking for ways to
> trim costs.
I think it'll progress to the point where it'll become a mainstream OS, but,
the one thing that'll hold it back to a certain degree will be its
smorgasbord nature.
However, the advantage that Linux holds over Mac OS X (especially OS X since
it's BSD) and XP is rapidly eroding. Not even the most die-hard Linuxer can
deny that both commercial OSes have made some heavy duty in-roads into the
realm of stability.
OS X is likely on-par with some Linux distributions for kernel stability (my
install simply doesn't crash anymore (10.1.3) & waaaay ahead of them for
user-friendliness + it's got the services that are needed to run UNIX apps.
Now, if only Apple were running Intel then porting from Intel machines
wouldn't even be a challenge.
The one thing that concerns me a little is that YDL GNOME now looks and
behaves exactly like an install of GNOME I was playing with in 1998. To a
non-user it doesn't seem to have progressed much (please correct me if I'm
wrong -- this was 10 mins of playing 4 years ago).
GNOME has HUGE potential (I would love to see some of its behaviours ported
to OS X) but it's far too rough around the edges still.
If only I had the time to devote to learning C++ & to learning *nix
programming then I would -- I can see lots of holes in the GUI that need
fixing but I don't have the resources (time & money (since you need money to
allow yourself time)) to devote myself to such a project.
The OS is there. The user interface is too rough to allow non-technical folk
to access and confidently use the OS in their day-to-day lives.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Thu Mar 07 2002 - 21:42:34 MST