Boring Thursday! Here's a link



  • @Cassidy said:

    Utter rubbish. The window manager is a graphical system dropped on top of the OS, and there are considerably more than the three you listed there.

    Blakey, stick to talking about Windows stuff. You only embarrass yourself when you start to dip your toe into areas outside of your knowledge levels.

    You guys read stuff way too literaly.

     



  • @Cassidy said:

    Utter rubbish. The window manager is a graphical system dropped on top of the OS, and there are considerably more than the three you listed there.
     

    As fas as the user cares, it is correct.



  • @Cassidy said:

    Utter rubbish. The window manager is a graphical system dropped on top of the OS,

    Yes but it's the only part the user interacts with, therefore the only part that really matters.

    @Cassidy said:

    and there are considerably more than the three you listed there.

    Well herp derp I'm not a fucking retard. Somehow miraculously despite my being slightly technically inaccurate, you somehow miraculously knew what I fucking meant. You pedantic dickweed.



  • @dhromed said:

    As fas as the user cares, it is correct.
     

    I am a user of my servers, and as far as I care, that statement is incorrect to me.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Yes but it's the only part the user interacts with, therefore the only part that really matters.

    See above statement, unless you want to call my browser/mail client/putty session a "window manager" that "the user sees 100% of the time and interacts with 100% of the time."

    @blakeyrat said:

    Somehow miraculously despite my being slightly technically inaccurate, you somehow miraculously knew what I fucking meant

    No, I didn't. When it comes to Things Linux, it's difficult to distinguish between your piss-taking and being completely inaccurate.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    One of the problems with the Linux community are they they think all these stupid pointless implementation details actually matter. They don't.






    The thing is these implementation details actually do matter. Nowadays open source development is largely the result of money changing hands. If someone is prepared to pay for something then it obviously is not useless from their perspective.



    So you have all these interested parties paying for the creation of these implementation details to solve problems they have. How do you determine which of these implementations gets blessed as the "official" ones? That is a hard question to answer but not an uncommon situation. It's a problem that occurs whenever you develop something openly.

    Since this problem is one that is common to openly developed projects you can compare linux against them other projects and see the results different approaches have.



    As openly developed projects go linux is very successful, one of if not the most successful. So I think it is reasonable to argue it is doing something right, at least compared to everybody else. I mean really how else could they manage it? and still get the participation which is key to their success?



  • @Cassidy said:

    @MiffTheFox said:

    First off, compiling is the only way to install something on "Linux".

    Rubbish, as you even mention in the next sentence:

    @MiffTheFox said:

    Ubuntu and Debian use debs, Fedora uses rpms, and several lesser-known distros have their own installer formats.

    Compiling is the only way to transform source code into executable binary code. Package managers (including Windows add/remove programs and InstallShield stuff) take precompiled binaries along with associated dependencies (libraries) and place them in specific locations, optionally updating a database to maintain a record of what is installed and where.

    I stand by what I say. Compiling is the only way to install something on Linux. And by Linux, I mean any operating system with the Linux kernel, not just Ubuntu. Granted, there are other ways for specific distros, but not any ways that work 100% reliably across any and all distros.

    Consider I asked you how to install Eclipse on Linux? Would your answer be apt-get install eclipse? Surprise! It's Fedora Core, no apt, just yum. Would you say to search in the package manager gui? Surprise! It's Arch, which doesn't have a first-party package manager gui.

    The FSF was right with their GNU/Linux thing, only they didn't go far enough. Unity/GTK+/X/APT/dpkg/bash/GNU/Linux seems more fitting. Or you can just call it Ubuntu for short.



  • Manni_reloaded:

    @Manni_reloaded said:

    A) Don't do the line-by-line quote/answer. It's offensive on the eyes, it comes across as condescending, and it's the absolute minimal effort one can put into a thoughtful response. Quick blurbs and one-word answers are a nice trick to undermine the one you're responding to. And simply proving the opposition wrong does not make you right.

    It isn't intended to be condescending. I'm sorry if it reads that way. This is a public forum, context is important. And really, telling me "don't do this, it's offensive, and unthoughtful" is quite a bit more condescending, isn't it? I only had one 1-word answer and I believe it was in response to a yes-or-no question. You made some assertions, I countered some of them. If I proved them wrong (debatable?) then I'm right, by definition.

    @Manni_reloaded said:

    B) You omitted a few things I pointed out (like which of the dozen distros should I use or the lack of immediate availability of popular software and drivers)

    If I left it out, it's because I don't disagree, or I didn't have anything to say. I only care about countering things I think are incorrect.

     @Manni_reloaded said:

    while purposely misinterpreted others (yes it makes sense to add "-dev", but how is that intuitive to a new user?)

    Like I asked, what do you think would be intuitive? And are -dev packages something that new users should be worrying about 99% of the time?

    @Manni_reloaded said:

    Are you saying you never have to use the command line?


    Yes. Many Linux users never have to open a command line. My ex-roommate, my parents, and another of my friends are all Linux users who literally have never opened the command line. And no, I don't do it on their systems either. All they do is web / email / pictures kind of stuff.

    Re: Portal 2 -- I agree. That is a problem. More games ported to Linux would be awesome. If it is really important to you, then don't use Linux. On the other hand, I run Steam on Wine (with no special configuration) and about 50% of the games I've tried run fine. When not, I go to Windows.

    @Manni_reloaded said:

    Do you honestly think a Windows user can have the same experience on a Linux system?

    No. And I  didn't say that. But for many people, that's a good thing. For most people I've met, the Windows experience is lots of viruses, malware, and an unusable PC, and a difficult reinstall process that involves phoning India. Some people  just can't keep themselves from installing malware.

     @Manni_reloaded said:

    C) I was asked what my issues were with it, and I stand by that. I clearly stated that my opinions were not based on (recent) experience,

    That's all fine. Do you take issue with me offering my differing, possibly more recent experience? I don't get the problem.

    I'm not telling you to use Linux. It seems like most of your response assumes I am.

    There ARE things that DO need to be fixed on Linux. It is a disservice to me and other Linux users when the discussion is diluted with misperceptions and non-problems. So I try to speak up when I can. It's not personal.

     



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    I stand by what I say. Compiling is the only way to install something on Linux.
     

    And yet for some years now I have successfully managed to install software on Linux without compiling it.

    And it seems I'm not the only one.

    @MiffTheFox said:

    Consider I asked you how to install Eclipse on Linux? Would your answer be apt-get install eclipse? Surprise! It's Fedora Core, no apt, just yum. Would you say to search in the package manager gui? Surprise! It's Arch, which doesn't have a first-party package manager gui.

    I still don't know what you're trying to prove with this statement. Is the fact that some applications don't exist in repos, or that some distributions don't have package managers, mean that because you'll need to compile from pure source mean that compiling is the only method that exists?

    To turn your argument around: if someone using Fedora asked how to install Firefox, would you get them to fire up the GUI package management tool that will run YUM in the background, or perhaps use "yum install firefox" - or would you tell them to download, extract and compile a tarball because that's the "only way"?

    I'm going to theorise something's hitting a language barrier here. If your statement was "compiling always works when it comes to installing something on Linux" then I won't disagree. The point of package managers was to address the issue that Linux users aren't necessarily developers, and needed an easier way to add/remove products without deep technical knowledge. rpm/yum/apt/dpkg et al all go quite some way to solving that problem; I know it doesn't work in 100% of all cases, but it's been pretty effective for most Linux users I know.

     



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    I stand by what I say. Compiling is the only way to install something on Linux. And by Linux, I mean any operating system with the Linux kernel, not just Ubuntu. Granted, there are other ways for specific distros, but not any ways that work 100% reliably across any and all distros.
     

    Yes, but in reality, 99.99% of Linux software is not installed from source, so it is still misrepresentative to say that.



  • @Cassidy said:

    I'm going to theorise something's hitting a language barrier here. If your statement was "compiling always works when it comes to installing something on Linux" then I won't disagree.

    Yeah, it's you missing out on the sentence you didn't quote.

    @MiffTheFox said:
    And by Linux, I mean any operating system with the Linux kernel, not just Ubuntu.

    My statement is compiling is the only way to install something on any Linux kernel-based operating system.

    If someone wanted help installing something on Fedora or Ubuntu or Arch or Gentoo or any other specific distro, I'd point them toward that distro's recommended method. It doesn't change the fast that A) there's no other way to deploy the same across every distro; B) most third party software is available only in source form, occasionally you'll see a deb but that's about it; and C) most people nowadays use "Linux" to refer to Ubuntu, Debian, and sometimes Fedora and not "operating systems with the Linux kernel".



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    You downloaded the wrong version. You shouldn't do C++ development in Eclipse You shouldn't do desktop development in VS Express for Windows 8. You want Visual Studio Express for Windows Desktop.
     

    OK so I got that instead, and another license and whatnot. I went to File->New Project and found a C++ sample that looks good, so I open that....... and it says "This project is incompatible with the current edition of Visual Studio"

    (I had to retype that as the text is not copiable.)

    It doesn't indicate what other (libraries? Visual Studios?) I need to install. The other samples do the same thing.



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    If someone wanted help installing something on Fedora or Ubuntu or Arch or Gentoo or any other specific distro, I'd point them toward that distro's recommended method.
     

    Yup, agree there.

    @MiffTheFox said:

    C) most people nowadays use "Linux" to refer to Ubuntu, Debian, and sometimes Fedora and not "operating systems with the Linux kernel".

    Okay, so perhaps if statements were revised to state "software needs to be compiled to be installed on an OS containing a Linux kernel. Commonly-used Linux distros provide some package management system to perform the installation with precompiled binaries" then that'd be a bit clearer.

    Case in point: a friend used Gentoo, which I avoided because of the compilation required - until he showed me that he didn't actually do any compiling. He issued the "emerge" command and source was downloaded then compiled for him. He could argue that he'd compiled all his software to install it - but I strongly suspect that "proper" programmers would sneer at the steps he deemed "compiling". (I know I did, and I don't really class myself a developer).

    @superjer said:

    Yes, but in reality, 99.99% of Linux software is not installed from source, so it is still misrepresentative to say that.

    That was my feeling; I now understand what Miff was trying to say.



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    compilation voodoo

    ./configure&&make install

    Boy, that was hard. I'm all out of breath!



  • @Ben L. said:

    @MiffTheFox said:
    compilation voodoo

    ./configure&&make install

    Boy, that was hard. I'm all out of breath!

    ./configure && make && sudo make install

    You shouldn't build as root, but make install (last I used Linux) failed if you weren't root.

    And if configure wants your attention because a library's missing or out of date, which, if you're going against the repos with newer software, is highly likely. Then you have to figure out what it wants, download and install that, then try again. God forbid configure fail with some cryptic error message that's resistant to Google.

    I'm not out of breath because I caught it while waiting for mono to download so I can compile libssl so I can compile Pidgin.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    The window manager is the thing the user sees 100% of the time and interacts with 100% of the time. If Ubuntu ran on the WinNT kernel instead of Linux kernel, would anybody notice or care?

    Well, I certainly would, so define "anybody". In fact, I think everybody would notice pretty quickly since, you know, they couldn't install software the way they're used to anymore. But whatever.

    But if this is your belief (which you're entitled to), why don't you stop bitching about "Linux" and start bitching about KDE or Gnome or Unity instead? I mean, really.

    @blakeyrat said:

    One of the problems with the Linux community are they they think all these stupid pointless implementation details actually matter. They don't. Even the fucking KERNEL is an implementation detail-- it only matters that it has enough flexibility to write drivers for any piece of hardware you can imagine and has a filesystem that doesn't crash every 8 hours. Well, both Windows and Linux has that, so what does it matter which you use? Nothing. (Well, except WinNT has a better permissions system and better memory management. But generally speaking, both kernels are well above the minimum required.)

    Yeah, I bet nobody at Microsoft or Apple ever has a discussion about these kinds of things, they just take a stab in the dark and hope for the best. (Actually, for Microsoft that wouldn't even really surprise me, a lot of design choices they make are just... bewildering to me.)

    I'm not going into the permissions and memory management stuff since they're debatable. You're entitled to your OPINION on this.

    @blakeyrat said:

    @Monomelodies said:
    Anyway, good luck on running all your embedded systems using a "window manager"....

    What are you talking about? No wait. Don't answer that. I don't care.

     

    You claim to "don't care", but to avoid the risk of having this discussion AGAIN in the near future: your average desktop is NOT the only thing that runs an operating system, by far. They're the exception. The vast majority of devices running "an OS" don't have a bleeding Window Manager. I know you know this and you're just being your obnoxious little self, but anyway.

     



  • Shamus is clearly one of those change-fearing Luddites I keep hearing about.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @MiffTheFox said:

    @MiffTheFox said:
    And by Linux, I mean any operating system with the Linux kernel, not just Ubuntu.

    My statement is compiling is the only way to install something on any Linux kernel-based operating system.

    And excessive mouth breathing is the only way to post something so banal.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @MiffTheFox said:
    @MiffTheFox said:
    And by Linux, I mean any operating system with the Linux kernel, not just Ubuntu.

    My statement is compiling is the only way to install something on any Linux kernel-based operating system.

    And excessive mouth breathing is the only way to post something so banal.

    Is that so? Name another way to distribute software across every Linux-based operating system efficiently.

    If I'm wrong, then nobody's apparently been right so far.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @powerlord said:

    @FrostCat said:

    @Manni_reloaded said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    Y'all know he might be mocking the writer's biased inability to learn a technology, right? Or maybe that went over everyone's head. Big shocker.

     

    That's how I read it. Sounds like this dude is used to Visual Studio on his Windows computer, and decides to jump feet first into a vastly different system. Most tech-savvy people understand that Linux is not an OS where you say "I'll just install some stuff and see if everything works".

    And then they wonder why people coming from the Windows world gripe. When I read about the ridiculous lengths you have to go to compile a plain old C program these days, I was surprised. I mean, really, invoking a separate program twice just to build command-line arguments to gcc? Maybe that's the best way to do it, I dunno. But when I used to use Linux it wasn't that complex.

     

    You know, the people who don't use Linux won't get that joke.

     

    I can't help it if they don't follow links.

    I understand WHY pkg-config exists, and I acknowledge it's probably how you need to do things, but I object to the need for it.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    @_gaffer said:

    Shamus tries linux, doesn't know first thing about development libraries, has trouble with C/C++.

    SHOCKER!

    He had no problem building a quite complex C++ program on Windows. What's Linux's problem?

    The pedantic non-dickweed answer is that Shamus' rant is at least partly a joke, of course.

    It would be nice if there was a more-easily-discoverable way of learning this, rather than posting a plaintive rant and hoping people who know what they're talking about will rescue you.



  • @FrostCat said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    @_gaffer said:

    Shamus tries linux, doesn't know first thing about development libraries, has trouble with C/C++.

    SHOCKER!

    He had no problem building a quite complex C++ program on Windows. What's Linux's problem?

    The pedantic non-dickweed answer is that Shamus' rant is at least partly a joke, of course.

    It would be nice if there was a more-easily-discoverable way of learning this, rather than posting a plaintive rant and hoping people who know what they're talking about will rescue you.

    The traditional way of making it easy to discover that something's a joke is to make it funny. Shamus could perhaps try that in future if you're right about his intentions.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @_gaffer said:

    The traditional way of making it easy to discover that something's a joke is to make it funny. Shamus could perhaps try that in future if you're right about his intentions.

    Ranting is his schtick. See [url=http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1636]his video card review[/url], for example.



  • @FrostCat said:

    @_gaffer said:
    The traditional way of making it easy to discover that something's a joke is to make it funny. Shamus could perhaps try that in future if you're right about his intentions.

    Ranting is his schtick. See his video card review, for example.

    Ah, it's that difficult grey area between shitty comedy and ignorant ranting.

    Now I have NO idea why this was posted in the first place. Oh wait, maybe I do… is it shitheads? Is that how this got here?


  • BINNED

    @_gaffer said:

    Ah, it's that difficult grey area between shitty comedy and ignorant ranting.

    Now I have NO idea why this was posted in the first place. Oh wait, maybe I do… is it shitheads? Is that how this got here?

    I take it you weren't around for Blakeyrat's Linux adventures. Like the guy in the video, Blakeyrat tried to use Linux without learning anything about it under the assumption that it should work just like Windows, but took it a step further and did system administration instead of programming. He had an easily-predictable bad experience as a result and came here to complain about it, but stubbornly opposed any suggestions that his experience would be better if he were to take the drastic step of actually learning something.

    Does that answer your question?




  • BINNED

    I haven't seen any evidence that your position on Linux is anything other than: "It should just work like Windows." The attitude that you shouldn't have to learn anything simply follows from that position.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    You've totally mis-represented my position on that Linux thread. I was criticizing the usability of Linux. When talking about usability the point isn't for one person to "learn the system", the point is to discuss how the entire system could be made easier to use for everybody.

    And yet, your arguments were a lot like someone starting a thread about what a nightmare it was to come to Windows and try to...I dunno...videotape a BSOD message.

    @blakeyrat said:

    You'll recall I made several suggestions in that thread to make the software install process easier.

    Yes. But you don't recall that several of them already exist.



  • @PedanticCurmudgeon said:

    I haven't seen any evidence that your position on Linux is anything other than: "It should just work like Windows." The attitude that you shouldn't have to learn anything simply follows from that position.

    No; the attitude is that you (meaning the general "you", meaning everybody) shouldn't have to learn anything at all to use any computer at all. Or, alternatively, anything they have to learn to use the computer it taught by the computer itself.

    Of course anybody who uses Linux won't get that because the thought is so fucking foreign to them.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    No; the attitude is that you (meaning the general "you", meaning everybody) shouldn't have to learn anything at all to use any computer at all. Or, alternatively, anything they have to learn to use the computer it taught by the computer itself.

    Of course anybody who uses Linux won't get that because the thought is so fucking foreign to them.

     

    No.

     When I first used a computer it was a Commodore 64, and I had to learn how to program it in BASIC to get it to do anything interesting.

    When I first used a computer with a GUI it was a Windows 3.11 machine, and I had to learn how to use that.

    When Windows 95 came out it was alien in a lot of respects and I had to relearn how to use it.

    When I moved over to using Linux I had to learn how that worked before I could use it was well as I could Windows.

    The point is, all of these are different systems and require learning on the part of the user to get it to do stuff. How much learning depends on the stuff you want the computer to do. Saying Linux should behave more similarly to Windows is akin to saying Windows 95 should have behaved more closely to Windows 3.11. 

    I find it laughable that you think people shouldn't have to learn anything to use a computer. The whole process of using a computer, no matter what the OS, is that the more you put in (learn) the more you get out.

     



  • @Wiki said:

    ISO defines usability as "The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use." The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process. Usability consultant Jakob Nielsen and computer science professor Ben Shneiderman have written (separately) about a framework of system acceptability, where usability is a part of "usefulness" and is composed of:<font size="2">[4]</font>

    • Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
    • Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
    • Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they re establish proficiency?
    • Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
    • Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

    I find it laughable what you think usability is.  Blakey's "you shouldn't have to learn anything" is a bit over the top, but the point is that it should be easy to learn.


  • BINNED

    @blakeyrat said:

    No; the attitude is that you (meaning the general "you", meaning everybody) shouldn't have to learn anything at all to use any computer at all. Or, alternatively, anything they have to learn to use the computer it taught by the computer itself.

    The idea that a general purpose machine should be as easy to use as a specialized appliance like a toaster is almost too laughable to bother arguing with, but it's not half as laughable as the idea that the computer can teach its users how to do system administration and programming.



  • @Sutherlands said:

    I find it laughable what you think usability is.  Blakey's "you shouldn't have to learn anything" is a bit over the top, but the point is that it should be easy to learn.
    My view of usability is pretty much in-line I'd say with the typical view. You agree with my point though, blakeys view is, as usual, not exactly in-line with typical.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Sutherlands said:

    I find it laughable what you think usability is.  Blakey's "you shouldn't have to learn anything" is a bit over the top, but the point is that it should be easy to learn.

    You didn't quote anything, and ASheridan's post didn't give a lot of detail about usability (other than that some effort to learn was required). I can't see that you've contradicted anything he said (maybe something earlier?). Obviously, blakey puts a lot more weight on Learnability (similar/same as discoverability?) than I think most people do, even though he generally dismisses the lack of it with respect to systems he's familiar with.



  • @ASheridan2 said:

    You agree with my point though, blakeys view is, as usual, not exactly in-line with typical.

    It's called an "ideal". Look it up.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @blakeyrat said:

    @ASheridan2 said:
    You agree with my point though, blakeys view is, as usual, not exactly in-line with typical.

    It's called an "ideal". Look it up.

     

    {looks at other thread, where Blakey went into tear-a-new-one mode because someone told him to look something up}

    {looks back at this thread}

    {other thread-- this thread-- other thread-- this thread}

    Yup, I'm off to play Guitar Hero. Bye!



  • @blakeyrat said:

    No; the attitude is that you (meaning the general "you", meaning everybody) shouldn't have to learn anything at all to use any computer at all.
     

    And yet helpdesks are continuously plagued by users struggling to use unfamiliar technology without learning any fundamentals that equip them with necessary skills and knowledge to acheive their objective.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Of course anybody who uses Linux won't get that because the thought is so fucking foreign to them.

    It's also a very foriegn thought to non-IT kit also. I don't know of very many items that people can expect to use just solely by picking it up and finding they're magically imbued with skills and knowledge to use them.

    You can guess I don't share the Great Aunt Ethel viewpoint of computing. Like ASheridan, I grew up with different types of computer and in each situation I accepted the fact that I would be expected to put in some effort to understand what I was using at my fingertips in order to gain maximum benefit from it. I really think that a lot of discoverability techniques have conditioned people into believing they can become fluent users with as little effort as possible, and blame the system when it doesn't do what they want it to (but does exactly as they wrongly asked).

    I'm not saying this is an ideal situation, but I'd hate to think of the effort required by designers and programmers to cater for the "don't need to learn it, I just want it to work" crowd.


  • BINNED

    @Cassidy said:

    I really think that a lot of discoverability techniques have conditioned people into believing they can become fluent users with as little effort as possible, and blame the system when it doesn't do what they want it to (but does exactly as they wrongly asked).

    I've been saying that for years to anyone who'd listen.



  • Yes. Going to the graphical package manager and checking off the two packages labeled “more drivers” and “additional drivers” or whatever they were (and why are there two?), follwoing the reboot prompt, and being presented with a completely blank screen after logging in again, is not usability. I managed to get the window manager reinstalled, but wasn’t sure what else had gotten removed and how important it was, so I just gave up and installed Windows. (This was Kubuntu about 4 months ago.)



  • Well if you followed the reply to, it obviously went to the one I was replying to! DUH!  But anyway, whenever blakey is going on about linux, or really any other software, 9 times out of 10 it's not about how he didn't get it, or couldn't work around it, it's that it wasn't usable.  As said right above this, having different commands for each flavor of linux, having to know how to get the man page, etc, is much harder than putting a CD in, starting the computer, and having a step-by-step wizard help you install an OS.  And it's not too much easier the second time.



  • @Sutherlands said:

    If you at least do an empty quote then your post would be more usable as people wouldn't need to use the 'in reply to' link.  Just saying.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Sutherlands said:

    Well if you followed the reply to, it obviously went to the one I was replying to! DUH!

    I did! But still, your reply didn't make sense as a reply to what you were replying to, since you were replying to something that didn't lay out a Theory of Usability, even though your reply said you disagreed with his idea of usability.

    @Sutherlands said:

    As said right above this, having different commands for each flavor of linux, having to know how to get the man page, etc, is much harder than putting a CD in, starting the computer, and having a step-by-step wizard help you install an OS.

    Uh. What? Last time I installed Linux, it was almost exactly as you describe, except it was a DVD instead of a CD. Did you have a point, or just conversing with the shoulder aliens here? Familiarizing yourself with the distro's package manager is a lot easier than figuring out where an application should write its application specific files, for instance.



  • I think the problem is that people are confusing end-user usability and developer usability. I was talking to someone last night who was complaining that Windows doesn't have init.d scripts (look into services) and doesn't have GNU make (!?).

    I'm sure Linux is perfectly usable if you take one of the more popular distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian) and install it from DVD using the default installer, then only use it for things that typical end users will want to do, internet, email documents, IM, etc.. If you want to do dev or admin, you have to learn the system first.



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    snip

    If you want to do dev or admin, you have to learn the system first.


    FTFY



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    I think the problem is that people are confusing end-user usability and developer usability.

    There's no difference.

    @MiffTheFox said:

    I'm sure Linux is perfectly usable if you take one of the more popular distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian) and install it from DVD using the default installer, then only use it for things that typical end users will want to do, internet, email documents, IM, etc..

    And use it on one of the vanishingly rare sets of hardware it supports fully.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @MiffTheFox said:
    I think the problem is that people are confusing end-user usability and developer usability.

    There's no difference.

    @MiffTheFox said:

    I'm sure Linux is perfectly usable if you take one of the more popular distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian) and install it from DVD using the default installer, then only use it for things that typical end users will want to do, internet, email documents, IM, etc..

    And use it on one of the vanishingly rare sets of hardware it supports fully.

    Neither of your statements make se-- oh wait, you're blakeyrat



  • @blakeyrat said:

    And use it on one of the vanishingly rare sets of hardware it supports fully.

    Unfortunately, [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvcJqcUlYTo]your riddle has no answer[/url].



  • @Sutherlands said:

    is much harder than putting a CD in, starting the computer, and having a step-by-step wizard help you install an OS. 
     Linux distros pretty much are like that though. You put in a disc, go through a few graphical prompts (there are some exceptions, but these are a minority in terms of the number of major distros out there) and things just work. I think you would have had a better experience if you'd have tried something that wasn't Kubuntu (which isn't regarded well by people who know Linux). @Sutherlands said:
    whenever blakey is going on about linux, or really any other software, 9 times out of 10 it's not about how he didn't get it, or couldn't work around it, it's that it wasn't usable
    Not really, it's usually about how it's not usable for him, which goes back to what a lot of people have been saying in that he seems to refuse to want to learn even a little bit about how it works, and the differences to Windows. It's like going from an automatic to a manual gearbox (transmission) car and complaining about the stupid clutch and how your car makes a grinding noise when you miss the change.

     @Sutherlands said:

    As said right above this, having different commands for each flavor of linux, having to know how to get the man page, etc,
    The man pages for commands can always be found with "man command" in a console. And finding a console should be pretty discoverable, there are several included with every distro I've ever used. As for different commands? What? The only major difference in commands between distros is the install process (unless compiling from source). Given the ratio of time installing stuff and time spent actually using that installed software, I'd say it's a pretty crap argument.

     

     



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    If you want to do dev or admin, you have to learn the system first.
     

    That's common across ALL operating systems, irrespective of vendor.

    Stuff down at the basic end of the scale (generally frequently-used end-user activities) are fairly well discoverable and not too tricky to navigate, so fall into the inexperienced user/joe public area.

    Stuff up at the dev/admin/configuration end tends to be more complex, and requires a knowledge of the system's capabilities and how to access them, and usually falls within the remit of a power user/experienced admin.

    Where that dividing line falls between the two differs per person and per system.  Microsoft have tried to push the line further towards the admin end, making the more complex stuff accessible to the end user, and in many cases it's been quite successful.  Unfortunately this has created a culture in which inexperienced and unknowledgeable people believe themselves to be more skilled than they actually are, and flounder desperately out of their depth when faced with a task that doesn't follow their familiar operational patterns.  The flipside is that a large amount of Windows XP users became quite adept at how their OS functioned that Vista seemed a backwards step to them - they were used to a level of control and disliked how functionality was wrestled from them.

    The *nix community definitely have the line further down to the user end. Advances in graphical desktops, open-source applications common to several platforms (FireFox, Thunderbird, etc) have greater discoverability than command-line stuff and opened this terse techy platform to inexperienced users. But this has created another set of problems: people finding the learning curve jumps vertically when having to perform operations outside of the normal pointy-clicky graphical measures, people finding that some applications work the same in Windows and then expect the underlying OS to work in much the same way, etc.

    Even if the line was drawn in the same position for a Microsoft OS and a *nix-based OS there will still be users that find it in the wrong place, according to their needs. You can't please all of the people all of the time: you can only aim for the majority group and hope that others will find it within themselves to take necessary steps for inclusion, which could mean someone having to learn a new and unfamiliar process, or learn a different way of doing things to achieve their objective.



  • @Sutherlands said:

    As said right above this, having different commands for each flavor of linux
     

    But peculiarly, many of the commands are actually identical. If you drew a venn diagram covering all commands found in two different distros,you'd find that a good 80% of them are common to both.  In a similar fashion, a good 80% of packages are common to different releases of Windows. They may be called something slightly different (mspaint.exe, Paint.net etc) but largely the functionality is there.

    @Sutherlands said:

    having to know how to get the man page, etc

    This is similar to "hit F1 to bring up help" - nobody's born with that knowledge, people find it out by being formally taught how to use their systems or stumbling across it in some way.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @MiffTheFox said:
    I think the problem is that people are confusing end-user usability and developer usability.

    There's no difference.

     

    Rubbish. Different roles with different requirements and different skillsets. What is usable for a developer may be over-complex for an end-user; what is usable for an end-user could frustrate a developer with its limitations.

    I don't subscribe to the notion that a developer is approaching the system in the same way that an end-user would.


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