linux for the masses [was Installfest was great]

["Schlough, Mark" <Mark.Schlough@nmb.norwest.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Schoenhofen, Kelly [SMTP:KSchoenhofen@Carlson.com]
> Sent:	Tuesday, October 05, 1999 1:08 PM
> To:	'tclug-list@mn-linux.org'
> Subject:	RE: [TCLUG:8945] Installfest was great
> 
	---snip 8< ---
> IMO, we were not put upon this world to teach others what they want, or
> what
> they should be using. If someone wants Linux, they will get it. If someone
> needs help, they will find it. If they can't find any help, then they
> didn't
> really want it to begin with. Cynical? Not really. Ninety-nine out of a
> hundred new users of a alternative OS are led to installing it by the
> worst
> kind of hype that can exist - the hype that lures users to a product for a
> capability that they will never see or use. So now you have Joe Schmoe
> saying to his friends "What a POS... it was impossible to do anything and
> it
> didn't run anything I use.". 
> 
> IBM's big mistake with OS/2 was pushing its Windows compatibility so hard,
> as a reason to switch to OS/2 from Windows. Boy, what a mistake. You can't
> beat one product by offering the emulation of said product as your primary
> feature. Take the stability claims of Linux. People love blathering on
> about
> this. Let's put this to the Joe Schmoe test.
> Joe Schmoe gets home from work and turns on his home PC running Windows
> version X. He uses it until dinner. Watches a little TV. Balances the
> checkbook before bed. Shuts it off. Now, contrast that with a Linux
> solution. "Hey Joe. Now you can leave it on all day and night, so when
> you're at work your three year old can f*ck everything up!". What does Joe
> care? What does the extra stability of Linux do for him?
	I know that appreciate not having to be paranoid about saving my
document before printing it under Linux. Also, I have witnessed numerous
people who have corrupted files as a direct result of the instability of
windoze.  This instability is something that people just assume is just a
part of computing, when they discover it is not necessarily the case, their
attention span is extended, if only for a brief moment.


	assuming a three year-old is able to log in.  If the three-year-old
could, I'd be pretty impressed.  I suppose before too long the
three-year-old would be teaching the owner how to run the system.

> Here's some of the other big claims about Linux vs. the Windows World (by
> quite a few web sites, linux.com, linux.org, etc. etc.)
> 
> Linux truely multitasks.
> Oh yeah. Joe really can tell a big difference when he's switching from
> QuickBooks to IE 5.0 as soon as the wifey walks out of the room, so he can
> browse www.thehun.net in peace. Linux can do that _so_ much better.
> Linux has TCP/IP networking. 
> Err, wow. Both can dial up into his ISP so he can check out www.thehun.net
> every night. And one of them is about eighty times harder to setup your
> dialup connection than the other. You guess which one.
> 
	assuming the modem is decent. If you have a sh*tty modem, some
modems appear to work and then don't.  One says, "your modem is not
supported because it sucks"  Winmodem == lostmodem.  I have worked on a few
winmodems and I vowed last time that I would do no more of them.  They are
evil....especially in a packard bell.


> Linux has freely available source code.
> 
	Well in the US I don't think this is as important as it is in other
countries, like developing countries or Iceland or S. Korea.  

	For the average user the advantage is more a question of trust,
rather than direct ability to go in and modify it.  If something is freely
available, like the number pi for example.  It can be used freely without
restriction.  Let's assume pi were owned by the People's Republic of China's
Bureau of Weights and Measures, and people just blindly used their
calculation for all usages of pi.  If the calculation were incorrect--like
the spacecraft orbiting Mars' incorrect convertion from English to
Metric--and there was a mistake, would China be to blame?  If so would there
be any recourse? Does this put me at risk?  If not now, in the future?.....

	I know this question is academic, but if a person understood this
principle, they would appreciate the fact that a flaw could be fixed without
restriction and it could be rigorously tested.

	I do agree with you that people should not be taught what to think,
but I do think that people that are ignorant need to be taught how to think.
I question like this provokes thought.  Which hopefully will lead to an
enlightened decision, rather than a lemming mentality.

> I'm sure Mr. Schmoe is going to tear himself away from www.thehun.net long
> enough to troubleshoot intermittent segmentation faults in the source code
> of his browser. He can't troubleshoot too long though - his Kenmore
> Appliance delivery job starts pretty early in the morning. 
> 
> Linux in the world of Joe Schmoe = big whoopy ding-dong. 
> 
> It just seems to me we're cheapening a product we believe in when we have
> to
> practically beg someone to let us install it on their system.
> 
>