RE: RH recommends using Windows? plus a Question!

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Finally I have a question... with the amount of Open Source developers
on the planet, why has there not been a desktop Linux distro developed
yet that equals or even surpasses Mac OS X in user friendliness,
hardware support and software compatibility. I am sure that it is not
due to a lack of developers. Sure, Apple has lots of developers that are
being paid full-time, but I am sure that there are many times those
developers working part-time on Linux. So even if Apple has 10,000 (just
a guess) full time paid developers working on OS X, if there are 100,000
(again just a guess) part-time hobby developers working on Linux... why
hasn't Linux equaled or surpassed Mac OS X yet?
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I consider myself fairly new to Linux and what I have found already is an
almost zealous religious need in the Linux community to keep as much command
line based as possible.  Because people with technical expertise find it
faster to work direct from the command line they have trouble putting
themselves back into the end user mindset.  Desktop software like Windows XP
and MAC OS X are designed with end user desktop users in mind.  Look at Win
XP Home edition as a good example, it takes Win XP Pro and removes all the
admin features that you would use in a business environment.  I have Win XP
Pro dual booting with RH9, my Win XP is streamlined, all the stupid graphic
crap is turned off and it looks like Win NT or Win 2K desktop.  I use it
because it fixed a lot of the stupid bugs in Win 2K with hardware
compatibility.  Plus it plays games better.  I like having all the admin
business related features in my OS, but for most home users they want the
flashy graphic thing with the nice little pictures for each user.

Another reason Linux is so hard for beginners is archaic documentation and
in some cases archaic commands.  I am going to use an example from Emacs
documentation.  In the Emacs documentation they talk about keystroke
commands and using the META key.  Even though a person would be sorely
pressed to even find a computer that has a key labelled META, they don't
update the documentation to say ALT.  They just put an addendum at the
beginning mentioning that META is the same as ALT.  For a new computer user
this is totally confusing and they will never use Emacs because of it.  New
users like their documentation to be clear and concise throughout, not to
have a short explanation at the beginning explaining the inconsistencies you
will find in the rest of the documentation.  This is a problem with a lot of
documentation in Linux, it assumes you already know certain things.  When
you create documentation for new users you have to assume they no nothing
and that you have to be very clear with ever explanation.

You find inconsistencies like this all through Linux documentation, a desire
to not simplify documentation, or to make it make sense for the new user.
The reason for this is that even to this day the people who use Linux are
still the more technically knowledgeable members of the computer community.
You will never find a new computer user that will just jump into Linux
without ever having used a computer before.  There are still things in Linux
that are not user friendly and the transition to user-friendly is a very
slow process.

The fact that Red Hat just came out in the press and said that a new
computer user or novice computer user should stick to Windows XP or MAC OS X
goes a long way to show you where the mindset is.  At this time if you are
an intermediate or advanced computer user then Linux can be a viable
alternative to you on the personal desktop.  If you are a Beginner or Novice
user then Windows XP or MAC OS X is the place for you.

The server level doesn't count, the server level doesn't need to be user
friendly, it just has to be efficient, stable, reliable, and effective.
Unix, Novel, Linux, Windows Server, they are all focussed on these items,
user-friendly is a secondary concern at the server level.

In the end that is what the Fedora project is about, developing new tools,
and documentation that may or may not end up in Enterprise Red Hat.  Fedora
is the test distro phase which will help Red Hat determine what works and
does not before it hits the production distribution.

If you have a novice computer user friend, don't push them into Linux, for
people who just want to turn their computer on and have a friendly easy to
use graphic interface they are better off with Win XP and MAC OS X.  If you
have a friend who has already been using Win XP or MAC OS X and they are
looking for something that will give them more power and control over their
OS then obviously Linux is a great suggestion for them.

Since Novel just bought Suse you are going to see a tremendous change in the
Linux landscape now.  Novel is about to throw all they have at making Suse a
viable alternative to Red Hat and to Microsoft Windows products.  This can
only benefit us all, competition between Red Hat and Suse means more money
into R&D, more improved products.  Competition with Windows means a strong
determination to create a Linux distro that can penetrate the desktop
market.  As the Red Hat manager said, give Linux a few more years to mature
and it will start producing versions that are just as user-friendly as
Windows XP and MAC OS X.

By the way, I have always found Mandrake to be a truly user friendly version
of Linux, if you have a new user interested in Linux it is a good distro to
recommend to them.

Sincerely,
Gerald Thompson


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