Re: Win32 port

["Anthony E. Greene" <agreene pobox com>]

At 12:19 2000-06-06 -0500, Cory Watson wrote:
>Because regardless of how pretty and advanced GNOME is, Linux is still way 
>too difficult, and too 'big' for the average person.  My mom (bless her 
>heart) has no use for 70% of the stuff that you and I use daily and take 
>for granted in Linux.  They only need the stuff that Windows gives them.

So they don't see it and it does not affect them. In a RH workstation
install, a lot of things are even installed. In a Corel default install,
there's even less. It's not like these things are sitting on the desktop,
cluttering things up. In the desktop-style installs, there's a minimum of
services running, and everything stays out of the way. the user is simply
not aware of any of this stuff. I really don't see a problem as the user's
interface is simple.

I run a machine at home that has all kinds of development stuff installed
and services running. But when my wife logs in, she does not see any of
that. Her environment is not complicated. She has icons for the things that
she uses. She uses them and then logs out. For her, there is no functional
difference from when she used Win95.

Most computer users just need an appliance that does the one or two things
they need without a lot of fuss. Linux can easily do that while hiding the
complexities. There is no need to come up with a special distro that
reduces the power of the system. It's just a matter of configuring the end
user's environment.

If the end user likes to tinker, then the last thing you want to do is give
them a crippled system. Give them all the parts and let them use what they
like and ignore the rest. Sooner or later they will grow into the system,
but not if it's missing so much that there is no room to grow.


 Tony
 --
 Anthony E. Greene <agreene@pobox.com>
 PGP Key: 0x6C94239D/7B3D BD7D 7D91 1B44 BA26  C484 A42A 60DD 6C94 239D
 Linux: The choice of a GNU Generation.