Dear Wussboy, I am a total newcomer to the open source community, I am here as a person who grew up with Microsoft Windows, as a person who still admires Windows ( I have not used Mac ) for its ease of use features. With this background, WITH ADMIRATION FOR THE EASE OF USE OF FEATURES OF WINDOWS, I have been working on introducing desktop and notebook computers with Sun Solaris, initially for the professionals and eventually for the home users. http://www.isolatednetworks.com (The product line is still not announced in my website, but I have an interesting line of desktop computers and notebook computers soon to be introduced, built "around" the Sun Solaris operating system.)
When I have talked about taking solaris home, I have been encouraged by those technical executives who have the vision, and I have found a few others skeptical. I am so forceful in my belief that the tasks ahead along the road to home are simple, very simple tasks. Windows is like a public park, appears manicured, pleasant and easy and comfortable for anyone to walk into (not said of Windows with cynicism, I am not a person who is anti-microsoft). Unix is like a Government Fortress, elaborately architectured, well engineered and secure. For someone to get into that building there are rules to be followed, routes to be learnt, guards to be encountered. It is difficult to make the Public Park secure like a fortress, but it is not so difficult to make a Government office appear friendlier. Take me as a convert. I am allergic to command prompts, I called Sun's ISV support to figure out how to power on a Sun Server when I got one, abandoned the idea of installing Solaris four year ago (probably because I was trying to install a Sparc O/S version on X 86 ?) and four years later took six weeks to complete my first installation, and six months more to fix little issues. I am that non-technical. I had never seen, read, never seen Solaris before, didn't know what Solaris looked like, never had my hands on Linux before, am someone who grew up with Windows, but as a user found the Java Desktop easy to switch to. Solaris 10 with Star Office across the Java Desktop interface posed NO DIFFICULTY for me, and I have been at ease right from day 1. I am not the mp3, webcam, mpeg type, so I did not find the features lacking in any way. Star office read word documents and excel sheets, mozilla accesses the internet, evolution fetches my mail, what else do i need ? In this public forum I am not going into details such as the marketing strategies that I have thought of to reach Solaris to the common man, because I am kind of a Proprietory person, still reluctant to disclose my innermost ideas, but let me simply say that there are millions out there who would find Solaris amazing for various reasons, some for Price, some for Security, some for its Openness and some for wrong reasons as hatred for Microsoft. What stops Solaris from reaching home ? Let me put on the shoes of a demanding home user. I get on to the net, Oh, yes, there is mozilla 1.7 , and now Firefox 2.0. I want to access email and I see Evolution as also the email client built into the browser. Wait a minute, I bought a webcam which does not work. And the DVD from my library does not play. Hey, I can't download the yahoo messenger. My MP3 player and my PDA does not synchronize. Solaris is useless. Good, you have games, a few games, but I wonder if i can play the games that come in DVDs ??? If my questions stopped the Linux community, had it been addressed to the Linux community, I wouldn't be surprised. But Solaris comes from Sun that 'owns' Java, which is an impossible platform independent software. If James Gosling et all could develop a platform independent language, why not a Universal Serial Device Driver, or some kind of a Platform Independent Device Driver Language ? (Dear Jonathan Schwartz, find an island in the Caribbean, name it the Green Island, but do make sure that it has a Oak tree ....) On this, Sun can think that it can. In the meantime, all that Open Solaris and Solaris has to do is to identify a few more printers, a few more PDA phones, a few digital camera brands, work with the manufacturer and develop drivers for Solaris. There are small companies out there on the Internet that offer media players that play diverse file formats. May be Open Solaris and Solaris can work with them to make their products more stable, get them to port their software on Solaris. Java can cause magic for Solaris. I left a few posts on Java and its potential in my weblog weblogs.java.net/blog/isolatednetworks to ask what prevents Java from becoming the trendiest desktop in the world, the answer was that there was so little java in the java desktop. Leverage on your Java strengths to make Solaris easier. Again, as a user, what would do I have to say ? Hide your technical prowess from me. I go to the file browser and find a lot of "nonsense" (I do not intend to be disrespectful to technical people, nor do I intend to be insensitive to the amount of work that must have gone into making this Operating System and the value and importance of all the directories that I refer to "nonsense". I choose to use this term in a user's shoes as these files and folders do not make any sense to me as a user) I am not going to access them, these files do not open any way, but why do you show them to me ? Why do I need to see them? Why can't you hide them or move them to a different path called System Administrator's file path ? And why do I need to hear terms such as Xterm and GUI ? KDE ? CDE ? You judge me by what you know, not by what I know. I ain't know nothin'. Speak to me in a language that I understand. What are "Applications" ? Do you mean software ? Hire some Linguistic and semantic experts to rephrase some of the terms that bug me on your GUI . Simple tasks. Very simple tasks, ahead of the path to home. For a start, assemble a team of Ease of Use and Ergonomics and begin by buying them each a notebook with a Mac and a notebook with Vista with compelling instructions to admire the operating systems to be surpassed by Solaris. And Wussboy, did you say 40% ? You are not dreaming alone. This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
