Subject: Re: Ease Of Use and Hardware Support (WAS: Linux Laptops)
From: Eric D. (liriodendron@mac.com)
Date: Thu Mar 07 2002 - 21:49:24 MST
on 7/3/02 23:21, John Nelson at john@computation.com wrote:
> Also, one should not confuse "ease of use" with "unfamilar way of doing
> things". I find Linux with KDE very easy to use. I find the Linux
<chuckle> People argued DOS was EASY to use when it was at its hey-day. The
problem with a CLUI is, has always been, and always will be, that it's only
accessible to those who learn the syntax. SYNTAX. SYNTAX. SYNTAX. Without
having all that stuff memorised you're staring at a line that will accept
text but won't provide any guidance.
Unfamiliar would be a GUI which does things in a novel way (KDE... which
reminds me, when I was talking about GNOME earlier, I meant KDE). Ease of
use is having the UI GUIDE you through the process (sorry guys & gals but a
man page simply doesn't count as a guide. If I have to read a Help file it
means either I'm trying to do something wickedly complicated or the
programmer didn't do their job on the interface).
> shells easy to use because they are predictable and employ a terse
> language. If you have a problem with Linux because "it isn't Windows"
> then that's your problem. Linux is plenty easy to use, you just have to
> learn how to use and maintain it, and the best way to do this is consult
> the many (free) sources of online documentation.
Doing genetic engineering is plenty easy to do provided you learnt your
biology, chemistry, mathematics and quite a few other disciplines along the
way.
Documentation is the hall-mark of either a poorly written program, or an
extremely complicated program. Changing a screen resolution is NOT a
complicated process. Early versions of Microsoft's Windows products (and
most 3rd party Windows apps of that era) had gobs of documentation but were
tough to approach. More recent ones don't require the user to read a line of
text but are much easier to approach.
> As for Linux being a "hobbiest" operating system made for hobbiests,
> there are many corporate and academic enterprises that will dissagree
> with you because they use Linux (and Unix) to do serious work. They
> don't use Windows because Windows can't be trusted to scale up to large
> real-world problems (without spitting out a Blue Screen Of Death).
Well, for the most part I have to agree with him. To run Linux on your own
computer you have to be a hobbyist. To be the master of a Linux install in a
corporate/academic environment you are also likely the kind of personality
that "tinkers".
Anyway, I doubt I'll ever be on-side with these arguments but I may someday
be a primarily Linux user. My computer is a tool. If I have to spend a lot
of time getting my tool to do what I want, when something else can do it
faster, it's ineffective. Right now Linux is a really good tool for raw data
manipulation but it falls down for simplicity when it comes to more complex
tasks (copying/pasting/graphics (although, to be fair, that's cause Gimp is
still very primitive beside a PhotoSlop + GraphicConverter combo)).
L8r
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