Linux and Free Software :: Should the Lnx Community support 98 and ME users?

DSL is not your Windows replacement. Try SimplyMepis, or Ubuntu, or Mandriva, or some other multi-CD or DVD sized distribution.

The problem that has already presented itself, that I tried to address in the other thread, is that Microsoft has defined what is "easy to use" (and in fact they based that on what Apple's original idea was for a GUI and mouse, that they stole from Xerox). People are so accustomed to that model, that they expect Linux to become just like it. (This same argument goes on all the time between Mac users and Windows users.) Some Linux distros even have become very Windows-like (e.g. SimplyMepis and Kubuntu). I personally hope it never does become exactly the same because I want an alternative, not a replacement. Most distros of Linux today are easy to use, but have a learning curve for ex-Windows users because it is different. That is a good thing, not a bad thing. All of the information you need to learn is readily available. You just need to get off your couch, or you can even use your couch, doesn't matter, but put your brain in gear and learn. My personal solution was to build my own little computer ot run DSL. I'm not a techie, I'm and artist, and DSL has provided some great diversion.

Maybe I've become a little cynical because I do quite a bit of tech support for my Windows using friends. Sometimes I think they should require a license to use a computer. NO matter how easy it is, people often just do the wrong thing when they use it.

You don't need hundreds of hours to make Linux - even DSL- work well. You just need, to borrow a phrase, to think differently.

Also, You seem to be forgetting the hours it took for you to first setup and learn Windows, and all of the hours it takes you to maintain a working system in Windows because you need a spyware checker and a virus checker and a firewall and a defragmenter, and a cache cleaner and a registry cleaner, etc... All stuff that's not, at least not at this point in time, necessary with Linux. And Windows, even 98, will work great forever if you keep doing all that stuff.

The Linux Is Not Windows article brings up many points that new Linux users often either ignore or just don't understand. I'm a Windows-to-Linux convert myself, and I admit that I had some troubles when I first started with Linux. However, after a few weeks of occasionally booting up Linux things began to make sense. I continued using Windows primarily, but one day i just decided to try the immersion technique and removed Windows. Within days i began to lose my desire for Windows, without any serious withdrawal symptoms, and now I've been Windows-free for nearly 2 1/2 years (sounds like a WA* meeting...).

Anyway...the point....
Linux is different than Windows...that in no way says that it is not as good, or not better. In some cases the new Linux user might just have to get over his crutches and become accustomed to new ways of doing things. In other cases, there are distros and desktop environments available that make the transition from Win to Lin almost painless (DSL is not one of those, by the way). If distros such as Suse or Mandriva are not as easy to use as Windows for the new user, it's my belief that the problems are not the fault of Linux. They are either the result of the user becoming too easily confused by a slightly different gui and filesystem, or, more commonly, problems resulting from hardware manufacturers that focus mainly (or entirely) on Windows. If the manufacturer does not release specs for its products, there is no way for Linux developers to support that hardware, short of doing a lot of guesswork about how the hardware works. With hardware that fully supports Linux, these distros i mentioned would, for the most part, work right out of the box.

One other large difference between Linux and Windows, which some people like and others seem to either dislike or have no opinion of, is that Windows no longer has an interactive shell under the GUI. The GUI is the Windows system. What this means to me is that Linux is more flexible, and more powerful. The graphical system in Linux is just another application that can be controlled like any other. What this also means is that if you want to really harness the power and flexibility of Linux, you must learn things that you would never need to know in Windows. Sure it's theoretically possible to build graphical interfaces for every part of a Linux system, but you are trading off when you do that. The easier-to-use an application becomes, the more difficult it is to program, and the more likely there are to be bugs (that's not 100% accurate, but i believe it's a logical conclusion)...hence greater instability. There is a trade-off of flexibility and reliability anytime you put more focus on clickability, in my opinion.

Back to DSL, I don't think DSL is a very good example of Windows-to-Linux transition system. The 50mb size limit pretty much dictates that not everything will be available as a windows-user-friendly interface, so you are sometimes left with practicing the ancient art of Learning Something New**.

I can't speak much about the people who claim they want a system that "just works" so that they can get on with their work with no hassles. I've heard this argument from several people, and I can see the logic in it. However, I'm not one of these people, and never have been. While I consider myself a hard worker, I'm not productive or efficient in the business/marketing sense of the words...I take my time, and usually only do well with things that interest me. And I like to tinker with stuff. So this concept of simply getting on with the task at hand is foreign to me, and I can't justify a debate against it. This concept, as far as I can see, may be the number one issue against using Linux. Perhaps if you don't like to dig into your system, maybe Linux is not for you, and maybe it will be many more years (or never) before it has any enormous presence on the desktop. I really couldn't say, and personally don't care one way or another. What I do know is that I like Linux, and there are enough other people who do that it makes it worthwhile to come to places like this to share ideas and knowledge. Beyond that, I have no interest in promoting Linux or seeing it become a major competitor. If it does, fine....good for Linus.

EDIT: One more point....if you think Those last couple of sentences are me being "elitist", you are mistaken. When I say things like "maybe you should just stick with windows" I mean only that you're probably too focused on making your system behave like Windows, so why not just use Windows? Ok...that really didn't explain it any better, did it....
Anyway, I like Linux, and I don't care what happens with it as long as it remains open and flexible.

* Windows-users Anonymous
** The practice of gaining knowledge of an unfamiliar topic.

I understand your points
(BTW I did go to the linux is not Windows article and read it completely).

RE: elitism
I have not had any sense of elitism in the DSL forum. That is really cool. Generally it seems to be that Linux guys are very friendly and ...well...open.

I do understand how much fun linux can be. It's like going down the road less travelled.

So where does that put me in this picture? My path has taken me to wanting to protect and extend freedom of speech. I believe OPEN SOFTWARE IS A FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENT FOR THE CYBERSPACE EQUIVALENT TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Closed software closes minds. Closed software is analogous to puting a restriction on who can use english, german, chinese, latin or any other language. Closed software makes it much easier to controll individual freedom. It can chain people to a small area of cyberspace without them realising it is happening. That's the danger of closed software. It holds people still so they are easy targets for exploitation. Microsoft and AOL are good examples. (no need to explain further I'm sure)

So at the very least we need to maximise the alternatives to windows and thereby keep an escape route open. I do what I can and that is sometimes not very much.

One thing I want to do is get kids to be familiar with linux. I'm going to try to set up some nearly free computer labs for schools. This means using two generations back hardware such as the PII-450 system I'm using right now. The OS will have to be something light like DSL. Maybe by the time I learn enough to go forward, the hardware and memory prices will be down enough to use Knoppix or Ubuntu.

MyDSL is a bright star in the way programs/extensions are added. The MyDSL process and modularity is in fact brilliant! Exact simple and manageable.

My whining about how the file system interface works is justified though. Curently I'm trying to learn how to customize boot pendrives. The forum gurus are being very kind and responsive to me in response to questions I post. ... I'm suffering from not knowing the history or file systems and hardware devices. For example: I ve been told that I can save a directory that will live on the pen drive after reboot by copying it to /CDROM but if I save it on /sda1 it will disappear after reboot? Surely this must be a spinoff from the days there were no pendrives and now the code relating to CDROMs has been edxtended to work with pendrives. It seems that filesystems management could be much less arcane though.....

BTW thanks again for being so active in this forum.

Quote (JohnH @ Mar. 10 2006,14:39)

I'm suffering from not knowing the history or file systems and hardware devices. For example: I ve been told that I can save a directory that will live on the pen drive after reboot by copying it to /CDROM but if I save it on /sda1 it will disappear after reboot? Surely this must be a spinoff from the days there were no pendrives and now the code relating to CDROMs has been edxtended to work with pendrives. It seems that filesystems management could be much less arcane though.....

BTW thanks again for being so active in this forum.

Actually, that's not the reason for that. I dont' remember exactly why Robert made it that way, but a few versions back he had it set up a little differently.
[edit] OK, I guess Robert answered that question, in a way, in your other thread.

Quote (JohnH @ Mar. 10 2006,14:39)

So where does that put me in this picture? My path has taken me to wanting to protect and extend freedom of speech. I believe OPEN SOFTWARE IS A FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENT FOR THE CYBERSPACE EQUIVALENT TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Closed software closes minds. Closed software is analogous to puting a restriction on who can use english, german, chinese, latin or any other language. Closed software makes it much easier to controll individual freedom. It can chain people to a small area of cyberspace without them realising it is happening. That's the danger of closed software. It holds people still so they are easy targets for exploitation. Microsoft and AOL are good examples. (no need to explain further I'm sure)

So at the very least we need to maximise the alternatives to windows and thereby keep an escape route open. I do what I can and that is sometimes not very much.

That's a good point...one that i haven't seriously thought about. Maybe I should begin to reconsider my indifference about the popularity of Linux. I hear a lot about "market share" or "competition" and tend to just ignore it, since it sounds like capitalist cow plop to me. I am, however, very interested in personal freedoms. The possibility of open source and GPL being one day outlawed is not such a ridiculous one, particularly in the US. All it takes is a little well-placed propaganda and a few powerful corporations.
Fortunately so far some of the largest IT companies support Linux, at least to a point.

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