On 28-Apr-08, at 5:03 PM, Ken Jackson wrote: > This article and many like it are very Windows-centric. That is, > they assume Windows is the standard to be compared against.
Actually I'd beg to disagree on this point here. > It's true that most non-technical people have some knowledge and > skill using Windows and none with any other OS, but that fact only > makes the skew easier to miss. The point we're debating here is around usability of an operating system and not operating systems themselves. I'd agree that linux and solaris are far better at stability, reliability etc. But to most end users usability is what matters most. This particular blog post makes mention of usability with an one of the most usable linux out there. However, I couldn't resist to notice the fact that the blogger is not really cribbing about the OS, but actually comes with some substance to back his observations when things lack, and comes up with arguments to make things even better. > It would be hard to find many non-technical people who have only > used Linux (or Solaris), but if you could find some and run a test > like this in reverse, I'll bet you would have similar results or > worse. I sure know I feel frustrated when I have to use Windows. > And I used to use it all the time. I'm not sure if that's what we really want. As a FOSS enthusiast, I'd rather be happy with making my favourite OS more usable, than comparing what happens to us geeks when we move to a non *nix environment -- my bet is that the *nix geek will just move back to *nix so would my mom and dad. Sad but true. Cheers, Ketan Padegaonkar I blog... therefore I am... http://ketan.padegaonkar.name http://swtbot.org/ - a functional testing tool for SWT/Eclipse
