Re: Re: Ok. Heh, is there still an smtp-based list out here:D

Hi,

> But for pretty much all "normal" usage, and even for many specialized
> usage needs, Linux is perfectly adequate.

I agree with this, generally speaking. In fact, for most of what I do, Linux is
*better* than Windows, and it all has to do with having an extremely powerful
shell that hooks natively into the system, without having to deal with
Cygwin/Windows running in parallel.


> You probably will need to learn a thing or two, not least because it's
> *not the same* as Windows, but once upon a time, you (generic "you")
> didn't know how to use Windows either. Most people have forgotten how
> difficult that was, so they say that learning Linux is "harder".

This statement I disagree with because Windows can be used by poking around with
mouse clicks whereas Linux cannot (without a GUI, see below). And when something
goes wrong on Linux, you have to drop into an arcane series of commands that
make no sense until you know them. I think that the converse of what you are
saying is that many people who use Linux all the time are so comfortable with
the CLI that they have forgotten how strange it all seemed at first.


> No, you're probably not going to get some seamless "everything done for
> you with one click of the mouse" environment-- since that assumes you
> use a mouse at all, and that you have a GUI in the first place.
> 
> Stunned? (What could she mean, no GUI??!!) You can actually do pretty
> much all your basic, workaday tasks (surf the web, read and write email,
> read and write text, listen to music, watch a movie, convert a movie
> from a dvd to an AVI or vice-versa and add subtitles to it to boot,
> manage your files, burn data backups to disk and quite a bit more)-- all
> without ever starting an X server to provide you a GUI to "pretty it up".

Umm, yeah, well, that's true for a lot, but I note that e.g. you posted your
email from Thunderbird. Yes, you *can* surf the web from the console, but IME
the experience is often painful and slower, especially given how few websites
are text-friendly. Email is probably much easier to do from the CLI than
surfing, but the GUI is simply convenient for a lot -- that you used it yourself
I think it very interesting while making these points about how the GUI isn't
really needed.

But yes, I agree that you can do an awful lot using only the CLI, and the
ability to chain together CLI commands using simple scripts is very powerful.
It's one of the things that helps me in what I do.


> But yes, everything you most likely need is probably somewhere in your
> package manager, and on your distro's repository (and if it isn't, it's
> because you're using Slackware, and under Slack you can just compile it
> without problem, so... no problem).

The vast amount of open source software available for Linux is a very positive
side, I agree. Still, compiling things can be a pain in the neck, especially
when it doesn't quite work due to an obscure problem that you have to spend one
or two or ten hours debugging.


> Anyway, please don't make such sweeping generalizations, as they are
> generally never true, 

Well, ... :-)


> and in this case, while I agree that for some
> users, Linux is indeed not ready to be the user's primary OS, for most
> users, the issue tends more to be that the user is not ready, rather
> than that the OS is itself not ready.

If the user isn't ready for the OS then perhaps that's precisely because the OS
isn't ready for the user. I think that argument can go both ways. The main
problem I see with Linux and the "normal user" is any kind of system
maintenance. For most normal use (email, office, web, chat) Linux is just fine
-- depending, of course, on the distribution you choose to use. I might not
recommend Gentoo or straight Debian for complete Linux beginners, for instance.

(As an interesting anecdote, I know several people who find e.g. Gnome to be
more intuitive and easier to use than OS X. These people are the kind who only
care about things like email, office apps, browsers and so forth.)

Cheers,
- David

-- 
David C. Haley
http://david.the-haleys.org

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