Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
rbw wrote:
Help? They don't use help, they just stick the install disk in and
select the defaults...
Training? Never been to any...
WRONG! And *this* is the key battle.
They have been to training. Every single person has been to Windows
training. Generally this brainwa^Wtraining has been at school or college.
Also, everybody who asks for help at work is getting ambient Windows
training. Everybody who has to use Windows at work is getting Windows
training.
Point well taken in the ambient sense of
training... But even that can be leveraged. Back
in @1988-1995 time period every single secretary
knew what a drive was (floppy), knew that it was
the "A:\" or "B:\" drive and could use the dir
command, look at a file list and find their
files and appropriately name their files. Ask a
Windows user about anything that doesn't come in
a desktop icon with the prefix "My" on it and
you are probably in for a totally useless
conversation... But... WE could be giving them
that same experience with a properly presented
distro too. Stupid is generally easy to satisfy
if engineered correctly. As a matter of fact I
think that plays a large part in explaining the
success of Windows in the first place. They
assume and engineer for stupidity. Look, I just
used the dictionary word for a real thing and
everyone knows I don't mean the real thing. I
think there could be a Potemkin village Linux
distro built for those that need it...
There is a reason any class I teach from now on is going to be using
Linux, dammit.
Windows "Just Works!"
Well, unfortunately, that's partially true.
I recently gave a big, honking workstation to a friend's daughter so
that she could do some graphic arts stuff. AMD64, 3GHz processor, big
mem, huge drive, running Linux.
Gimp, fine. Inkscape, fine. IM, fine.
Web video -- problem.
I've had problems with this too but recently
MPlayer has been working very well to stream
(and capture) content of any type. What
specifically was needed that wasn't available?
Viewing? Creating?
Now all that being said it did take an
inordinate amount of effort to get things right
but it was much easier that a year or two ago
when all the effort still ended up in only
partial success.
rbw
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