Re: From: "Christopher Taylor" <[email protected]>

You have basicly asked that Linux be Windows. That Linux look and work
like Windows, and do nothing different. If this is what you want, then
why not just buy Windows? It best matches your stated requirements. (PS.
My requirements do not include anywhere that Linux displace all Windows)

Linux is based on a different model to Windows of old, and even MS
admit in places that the "File Sharing" and "Network Neighbourhood"
models don't really scale and are not really ideal ways of thinking.

Traditional UNIX is a centrally managed multi-user system. You don't need
to share drives in such an environment, all your storage is visible in
the filesystem tree and you work in project shared directories, or allow
others access to bits of your home directory. A nice thing on UNIX I
remember is the special directory, ~/public_html, where you could
publish to the web as http://hostname/~user/. 

As a user, you don't care how the storage physically manifests itself. Oh,
and having all home directories and therefore user data in one place
really makes backup far simpler to manage than on Windows of old. Good
to see Microsoft seeing the light there and reimplementing /home in
modern Windows.

I can see an unfortunate possible situation where Microsoft take all the
good ideas from Linux/UNIX, and Linux tries so much to be like Windows
of old, and not at all scary to Windows converts, that it loses all
these good things. Another possible future, if the network connectivity
improves enough, is that we all move to centrally managed systems with
only thin terminals at home and work - then it won't matter and we get
all the remote access, backup, maintenance and security benefits of
having a (hopefuly) good network admin without each of us having to be
a network admin.

As for wanting setup.exe like install. Its a lot more complex than that.
Linux is designed to take advantage of code sharing, shared libraries,
reuse of programatic code between applications. This has been solved by
using a dependency based package system. It may have its difficulties.
I've found that by sticking to Debian and using Apt I have no problems at
all. Want to do some Java Server development, I just ask for tomcat, and
everything else I need is installed alongside. Ask it to remove tomcat,
and any otherwise auto-installed dependencies are uninstalled too.

Lots of people are trying to solve the install problem. Setup.exe is not
without its troubles - notable "DLL Hell". Mircosoft are experimenting
with their new .Net installer. Linux is developing too. We look forward
to finding the solution one day to the complex and often subtle problems
of software install, and as an aside we hope that they don't get patented!

 - Richard

-- 
   _/_/_/  _/_/_/  _/_/_/ Richard dot Corfield    at    ntlworld dot com
  _/  _/    _/    _/      Fortune Cookie: Any given program will expand
 _/_/      _/    _/       to fill available memory.
_/  _/  _/_/    _/_/_/