On Wednesday 08 August 2007, Mike wrote: > On Wednesday 08 August 2007 19:03, Tero Pesonen wrote: > > On Wednesday 08 August 2007, Patrick Shanahan wrote: > > > Kind of like using 2nd Graders to research in nuclear > > > fission/fusion. > > > > You mean that the people who would begin using Linux, should it ever > > grow popular on desktop, would not behave like that? Have you ever > > spoken to a non-geek in your life? Have you watched a non-geek use a > > computer? > > Yep, sure have. Took a disk over to a friends house because he was > complaining about getting all the malware. Installed linux, showed him > where everything was and he was a happy camper. It does everything he > needs the computer for. His wife even likes it better than windows. > > It's even more fun to take my laptop to work, and show off a bit. I've > got an entire building of non-geeks. They are amazed at how nice it > looks. So far I've gotten about 5 or 6 to switch at home.
Sounds great. > > Seriously, check your attitude. There's a world out there. And that > > world is not populated by Linux professionals. And no, these people > > are not 2nd graders. They are.. err.. computer users? > > No, it isn't. And by working in a school, I know what the second > graders are capable of. Nuclear fission? Naa. Screwing up a computer? > Yep.. Been there done that. > > > Anyway, Linux desktop is too difficult for them. So fear not, they're > > not coming. So no need to experiment/research on them. > > Not at all. If someone asks, I'll be glad to show them how it works. I'd be too. But when the person asks me why they need to run alsaconf as root after each reboot to get sound, I tell them I have no idea, as I need to do it myself too. Or why they need to run k3b as root to burn something. When they ask why this or that peripheral does not work, or how to have it work, I say I do not know. Linux desktop, to me, is already almost too difficult to administer. I'm happy to have my own PC running more or less trouble-free. I cannot provide help to others; I lack the expertise. Last week my system crashed pretty hard. It happened while I was viewing a Youtube video. OK, things happen. Only when I hard-rebooted, Grub would not load any more. I had to use SUSE install CD to initialise system check and have all partitions checked and then Grub rewritten to the disk. All was fine again after that, and luckily nothing had been caused to the file systems. I just don't know what my mother would have done in that situation. I'm sure she would not have known anything about boot loaders, or that a flash player, Firefox and SUSE always seem to have issues working together. I had issues with flash videos on my old SUSE 9.3 too, and remember seeing Flash take the whole system down there as well. I don't feel comfortable recommending Linux desktop to others. Because when they will need help, I probably won't be able to help. And they should not need help from me with basic issues such as burning disks or having some proprietary video formats play back. Tero > I'm not going to force it on anyone. It's not difficult at all. If it > was my wife wouldn't be sitting down right now working with it.. > > Mike > > -- > Powered by SuSE 10.0 Kernel 2.6.13 X86_64 KDE 3.4 Kmail 1.8 > 9:20pm up 10 days 11:36, 4 users, load average: 2.15, 2.30, 2.26 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
