Re: GNOME Usability Improvements - Fix the window manager!

[Warren Young <tangent cyberport com>]

"James M. Cape" wrote:
> 
> "jack wallen, jr" wrote:
> >
> > no matter how close and dear Linux is to those using it - you gotta make
> > it simple if you want to entise new users.  and there is absolutely
> > nothing wrong with that philosophy.
> 
> Only Root Should Set Up PPP.
> 
> Breaking multi-user Unix to satisfy some debatable single-user
> "ease-of-use" grail is *not* an option.

As this thread veers further and further off-topic, I'd like to give it
one last push into the hinterland: How will Microsoft deal with these
issues in the "consumer" version of Windows 2003 (to guess at the
product's name)?

I don't mean to imply that we should copy Them slavishly, but rather to
point out that They are likely to either adopt similar policies to Unix,
or they will introduce a broken, single-user version of NT.  I suspect
that they won't break NT, but will simply fake it by making the first
user a member of the Administrators group, and perhaps even doing away
with the default login dialog.

Let's examine that option briefly: the equivalent under Linux would be
to have single-user machines set up with the UID of the only user be 0. 
(We don't want to force the user name "root" on them, after all.)  

We could even hack login(1) to detect this situation by looking at a
file accessible only by root, containing options like "skip the login
prompt".  (Aside: System V R4 login programs have this, in
/etc/default/login, where they have other interesting options, so
there's partial precedent for it.)

Is that really terribly desirable?

It occurs to me that the root problem (ahem) is that Linux is a
multiuser system.  Thus, it doesn't conform to Joe Sixpack's idea of how
a single-user box should work.  Is the mission, then, to fix the
computer or to fix Joe's notions?  Normally I'm all for making the
computer conform to its humans' desires, but in this case we're up
against a truly fundamental design decision.  

Let's not redesign the fundamentals just to fix a UI issue.  If you want
a Windows box, you know where to get one.
-- 
= Warren 
= ICBM Address: 36.8274040 N, 108.0204086 W, alt. 1714m