Jon maddog Hall wrote: > So the next Red Hat default desktop was "FVWM95".
You know... FVWM95 is a pretty good approximation of M$Windo$e.... >The difference between windows users and unix users is that unix users change >their environment to be what they want....because they can and they know how >(or will find out). > > I had a roommate not too long ago who was quite intelligent but not by any stretch, a computer guru. We had some long discussions about computers though, because I could use her as a guinea pig for usability testing. Not being an expert, she was the perfect test to see if the general public would take to something new. And you know what? She did not want to have a choice. Whenever I asked something like, "Which of these XYZ's do you think you'd like to use?" her answer was always "I don't want to choose anything. Just give me something that works" Now this mentality was completely foreign to me. I thoroughly enjoy my choices... and so I have my preferences, but know that others will have different preferences. Whether it be E vs KDE vs Gnome or vi vs emacs... *we* like our choices and *we* like one over another. But in the long run, when it comes to advocacy, we need to set defaults and stand behind them when preaching to the masses. Long time Linux users and other computer tinkerers and experts will know how to change the defaults, and I think it should be pretty easy to do. Getting new users on board though, we need to fix a standard set of defaults. We need to standardise across distros as much as we can, so a new user can see a disk marked "Linux" and not be shocked by yet another foreign environment or worse... a myriad of choices the user cares nothing about. I think a lot of distros have come close with KDE, and that's a great thing. The KDE folks have come a LONG way to making a one-stop-shop for your desktop needs. Gnome had the head start but it was too focused on... choices. Great for geeks... not for the common user. I no longer show my friends all the nifty desktop choices we have. When friends come over and ask to use a computer, I just fire it up into a KDE session and maximize Mozilla. When they're done checking their Yahoo mail or LJ or whatever, I ask if they had any trouble using it. They look at me strange... and then I let them know they just used Linux and it obviously wasn't as difficult as they may have thought. Brian _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
