the viewpoint of a single newbie

[Duston, Hal]

Eric Gilliland [mailto:jegilliland at hotmail.com] wrote:
> 
> I have been following the Win XP debate with interest.  
> I thought I'd throw in my two cents to present a view 
> from a complete Linux newbie who is NOT in IT.  I have 
> pretty much decided against upgrading to XP, for many 
> of the reasons elaborated on in the series of emails 
> over the last couple of days.  However, I wanted to 
> make a comment on what Thurmond said, quoted below.
> 
> I completely agree with his views on software 
> installation.  I want Linux to gain more marked share 
> as much as anyone.  However, this will NEVER happen 
> until software installation is greatly simplified, 
> IMHO.  For Linux to become popular, there will have 
> to be a simple, "a few mouse clicks" type of software 
> installation.  The RPM stuff is a good start, but 
> does not go far enough.

In some sense this is a chicken-and-egg problem.  I 
don't think there is quite enough desktop Linux usage
to have hit "critical mass" yet.  Linux is still on 
the shallow side of the growth curve here.  As the 
desktop growth continues slowly, and more people 
are continuing to start using Linux, there will be 
more of a market for companies to sell to.  

The "ease-of-use" nut is hard to crack, since it is 
actually quite difficult to even define what it _is_.
The are Windows applications that _I_ find difficult 
to use, since I have to go digging through menus to 
find the right dialog box that has the tab the 
contains the button that pops up the other 
dialog box that has the option I need to change.
Some of these are even applications written by 
Microsoft, so you can't exactly say I'm not using
"standard" Windows applications.  _I_ find the 
command line switches and options + text config files 
to have the highest "ease-of-use" for _myself_
since _everything_ I need to set or change is right 
there.  Basically it is a "flat" hierarchy of options.
 
> I expect some will scoff at this and say that Linux 
> should not be "dumbed down" but I repeat, Linux will 
> NEVER become popular as long as software installation 
> is so complex.  Perhaps the solution is some kind of 
> recommended vs. custom install, like in the mandrake 
> distro install.

This is the other issue that is difficult to solve.
Leaving access to all the complete functionality with
out intimidating the novice user.  Perhaps by providing 
"reasonable" defaults?  Again there is a problem there.
What is "reasonable"?  For different uses, there would 
be different values for "reasonable".  I expect that 
once Linux on the desktop hits some "magic" number that
companies will be able to sell enough copies that they
will be able to really pay people to better solve these
issues.  Assuming that they are in fact solvable at all.

> That said, I still intend to move away from windows 
> as much as possible after completing my thesis.
> 
> Just my ill considered and uninformed opinion,
> 
> Eric Gilliland
> 
> On Tue, Dec ,  at 03:26:47PM -0800, Patrick Thurmond wrote:
> >
> > I have read a lot of inf. on linux and when something 
> > that should be simple like a software install becomes 
> > a huge pain, you know something's wrong. And I not 
> > just talking one distro, I am talking Redhat, Debian, 
> > Mandrake, and Slackware.  My arguments aren't mindless 
> > or experienceless ones but come on, program installation 
> > shouldn't be so difficult. I don't mind using the 
> > console, but I have to type in huge strings to execute 
> > the commands, that includes triggers and switches and 
> > such.