Ross Burton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> A typical example is: If you want to install some package you heard >> about, type "aptitude install FOO" -- they _love_ that. > > Or point them at "Synaptic Package Manager" in the Applications menu, > and they get to point and click without having to remember the aptitude > keystrokes when they don't know what they want.
No, the point was that just invoking it from the terminal was in many cases _easier_ to explain than any of these "package managers" (synaptic, the last time I used it was particularly weird, but admittedly that was a long time ago). This is especially true when one is doing the explaining over the phone. > Personally I use the terminal all day in GNOME, but I feel that it > should be removed as people who don't know what a terminal is will be > very, very confused by it. Y'all keep saying "people will get _confused_", but nobody ever actually says what that means, or what the actual problem is. Even for people that are simply too dim/hidebound to ever learn to use a terminal, how exactly does having that button there confuse them, or make their life more difficult? If they click on it accidentally, it's ... a window -- they know about those. It has a close button -- they know about those too. It doesn't look particularly threatening. Clicking around without a mouse won't be all that useful, but neither is it harmful or frightening. Dollars to donuts that even this particularly skittish class of users will simply get bored after a while and close the window; gosh what a horrid blow to their user experience _that_ was! Having _lots_ of icons with obscure meanigns could be harmful, because they can obscure the icons are more obvious, but just _one_ is a quite different story. -Miles -- Is it true that nothing can be known? If so how do we know this? -Woody Allen
