Re: Linux ease of use

On Tue, 2003-08-19 at 10:52, Daniel C. von Asmuth wrote:
> Thus quoth Peter Flynn on Mon, Aug 18, 2003 at 10:42:50PM +0100:
> > On Mon, 2003-08-18 at 00:17, Alex Netherton wrote:
> > 
> > > My question; why can't the developers of Linux (and I know there are
> > > millions of them) develop some way that you can download a file, or
> > > find a file on CD, click it and it installs itself?
> 
> Linux does not have a command named 'click'; maybe you mean 'clock'?

Command? Who mentioned anything about commands? A click is an action.
You do it with a mouse in an X window on an icon or hotspot. Normal
users (repeat: not developers, not experts) see files as icons in a
directory window, not as lines in a terminal. The windowing paradigm
is for actions to be accomplished via mouseclicks. I think some
developers may not have gotten this far yet.

> Often, Linux gets as simple as just that... But Linux is very flexible
> and easy to tweak, so installation needs a bit of manual work. 

Absolutely. No problem for the expert.

*BIG* problem for the end-user, who expects it to just work.

> The Linux File System Hierarchy standard tells you what goes where.

Right. Which is why IBM's Java installs in /opt...

///Peter