Re: My first impression and goodbye

[Markus Stumpf <maex-lists-gnome-list Space Net>]

On Wed, Mar 10, 1999 at 11:07:33AM +0000, James M. Cape wrote:
> I answered "rudely" (tersely, perhaps) because his message wasn't
> helpful. It wasn't:
> 
> "I'm having some trouble in these areas, what should I do to fix them?"
> 
> or:
> 
> "I'm getting a crash with Gmc on Linux 2.0.36 w/ Glibc 2.0.7 & Gcc 2.7.2
> when I try to double click an icon, gdb says..."
> 
> it was:
> 
> "Great. It doesn't work. The file manager core dumps. There aren't any
> icons. I'm not going to even try Gnome again until 2.0."

I think the problem is the point of view.

Linux and *BSD gave Joe User the opportunity to run a Unix system on
his/her computer at home.
With most installations they don't have to know much. Just choose
a "default" installation from the CD ROM, wait for a while and bingo
it's up and running.
The next thing is they manage to get their email program and netscape
to run and they're happy. They "surf" the internet, subscribe to a few
mailing lists (which they never manage to get off again) but overall
they have a usable system about which they know NOTHING.

Then they read the announcement that there is a REALLY COOL new desktop
called GNOME which makes it even more easier to work with their unix
system. GNOME has a COOL lookalike and has some COOL applications
(like gnumeric, ...) they've missed so far.

Then they go ahead and download and install the RPMs. Still no big
deal. They do as much RTFM as to find out the address of this list
and they know how to handle their mail program so they subscribe.

Then they try to start GNOME and it doesn't work. They try again
and it still doesn't work. They don't have the slightest idea what's
going on. They have no icons. GMC pops up and on the first click
it's gone again. All they see are some strange files named anything.core.

They remember the list, they are frustrated, they post.
Expecting more than "I can't see any icons" or "GNOME doesn't work"
is expecting too much, IMHO.

I predict that this list will be hit with much higher percentage of this
type of problem reports the next few weeks. The wider GNOME gets known
the more we'll see.

Just my 2 Pfennige.

	\Maex

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