what a good job you are doing

[Federico David Sacerdoti <dfs1 cec wustl edu>]

Hello,

I have just installed the Gnome 0.99.7 rpms on my machines, and I think
you guys (those involved in coding GNOME and GTK) are doing a phenominal
job. It is a really good system.

I have been using Linux since 96 and think its the best, and biggest pain
in the ass operating system in the world. I love it - its power,
flexibility, stability, usefullness; but I hate the fact that one
historically had to do so much work and understand so much about the
system to get little things done. Like how to get your Xsession and window
manager to open up the way you liked it. Or even how to get them to start
in a way that lets you get some work done.

I pounded through it, learned vi, emacs, about fstab, fvwm, rc files, init
runlevels. I studied C, C++, and Operating system theory at Washington
University. I found my way around Linux. 

But what is happening here is blowing my mind. Every week there is new
software available, and its so good! I just installed an E/GNOME 99.7
combo on an old Pentium 120Mhz and it is ripping things up. I just tried
out GMC's FTP feature and dragged a file from a remote FTP site to my home
directory and it didnt even hiccup. Amazing how it works so well. This is
the way Linux should run, and all other OSs will have to follow.

The drag and drop system is fantastic. I just get the feeling that its
solid. From the smoothness and responsiveness you get when doing it. From
the way that it feels "integrated" with the rest of the GNOME environment.
From the way that everything that accepts DnD accepts it completely. Like
how the control panel can display images (by using the Imlib libraries?),
and how the backround capplet will display a thumbnail of a picture. 

God, keep up the good work. What is being done here is so important, I
cannot even get the magnitude of it out in this letter. I am running NT on
another machine, and I can bring its blue screen of death with IE4 and an
active server web page. Its ridiculous, its a waste of time and I hate it
as much as anyone who has tried to get serious things done with it. Linux
is really better. 

Now I know Im blowing a bunch of sunshine everywhere, and this may not be
the appropriate place to do it, but I wanted to tell the people who are
coding the GNOME and GTK projects how much I appreciate their efforts.

Keep up the work and take care,
-Federico David Sacerdoti