On Monday 15 December 2003 01:02 pm, Anne Wilson wrote: > Bryan, I always respect your views, but I'm not entirely happy with > parts of your reply. It seems to me that his line was generally that > there are still many things that make linux newbie-unfriendly, and I > have to agree.
Well, I have a personal peeve about people complaining because Linux doesn't do something that Windows does or especially the way that windows does. I can be disagreeable when I think that someone is suggesting that Linux should conform to the expectation of Window's users especially because I feel that those expectations are impossible to meet, having been corrupted under the marketing lies of MS for too many years. I will try to mollify my postings in the future but I can't promise to be completely inoffensive, so perhaps someone else on the list can simply rap me on the knuckles when I start to channel Joe Hill. ;-} > I tried linux several times before discovering Mandrake, and, most > importantly, the support that I could get here. I am, though, rather > geek-minded, and refuse to let any darned box get the better of me. > That is not so for many people who, quite rightly, prefer to see > their box as a tool for getting things done. As several people have > pointed out, you have to invest a huge amount of time to learning, > and that's not always possible. Again, I view that as part of the price that you pay instead of money. There are ways to get what you need that don't involve the time but they will invariably cost money. I don't see any shortcuts here, either the user invests the time or someone else has to and in many cases, the problems themselves are individual enough that no one is going to do it for them, at least not for free. That may not always be the case, and I will be the first one to recommend a solution if I know of one. But, again, complaining because free software didn't work without some effort is probably always going to yank my chain a bit. > Good for you. But there are acknowledged gaps in what is available. > I would suggest that a graphics app that supports cymk separation, a > dtp app with properly ordered booklet printing, and an easy-to-use > front end for small but multitable database usage - not on the scale > of mysqul - as examples. Many of us reluctantly find we cannot > entirely ditch windows - yet. There are some very good php front-ends for MySql that may serve the purposes as an interface. I have found few small database app front-ends that were not available in one form or another, including software catalogs, movie catalogs, etc. If you have a specific need, you might want to mention it as I might be able to suggest a solution. As for the others, I am not currently doing anything with graphics so I am not even familiar with those terms, but I would be happy to look into it if you want to take the trouble to explain your needs to me. As I mentioned, posting to the list a request for instruction on how to do something that you need to do will probably go over much better with a lot of people than a complaint that Linux is deficient because you can't do something that you want to do. I still think that is accurate. And I am not even close to as nasty as some of the replies on places like Slashdot, LinuxQuestions.org, etc. But I will TRY to improve. -- Bryan Phinney Software Test Engineer
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