I agree with you that coming from a Windows background, it is easy to have the
misunderstanding that Linux = Winodws so certain items, such as KDE/X/etc ARE
Linux and there is no distinction made. However, I think your assertion is
wrong. Linux is ONLY a kernel. It is not any of the GNU tools that are
commonly installed in most distributions. As a result, to truly do what you
recommend would require an installation procedure such as "Linux from
Scratch" -- definitely not user friendly.
Ultimately it is up to the distributions to determine who their target market
is and what is considered acceptable for those users. I believe the larger
issue is the simple fact that the majority of open source development is
geared toward the user base. As of right now, a significant amount of the
user base are administrators, programmers and other technical users. It has
been my experitence that these users always have a terminal open on their
desktop and are doing most of the file management via the shell. As a result,
these areas get the eyeballs and the bugs get fixed faster.
I think as Linux distributions start attracting more non-technical users, you
will see many of these rough edges smoothed out and odd crashes corrected. I
can easily see when companies start rolling out Linux boxes w/KDE to the
desktop, any issue that arrises would be correctable by the companies IT
staff (open source) and the patch rolled back to the main developers.
This is very much how Linux, Apache and other back-end systems have ended up
becoming very good at what they do. This brings up another point -- if the
software is designed by the people for the people, then I would imagine that
if the people who use the software found issues with the ease of use, then
perhaps they would decide that the solution needed to be improved either
through a fork of the code, patches to the existing system or an entire new
piece of software for that particular task.
You are attempting to make an argument that Windows is easier to use. However,
isn't it true that those same people in your example ONLY know Windows? Isn't
it true that their entire concept of computing was shaped by using Windows? I
think the issue is not so much that Linux is necessarily harder (infact, I
find it more consistent, more predictable and therefore, easier to use) but
the fact that people expect that Linux is a replacement for Windows and as a
result, expect it to work the same.
For example, when I started using Linux, I was shaped by a decade of Windows
and DOS usage. Files were files, devices hid behind complex drivers and APIs,
Windows shortcuts were absolute crap (they didn't link to files inside
applications, attaching a link to an email gave the link not the file .. who
wants the link??), DOS (command line) was dead and cumbersome, one user could
use the system at a time, applications all used their own file formats,
viruses/malware/etc was just "how computing is".
Going to Linux, I am presented with the shell. After learing that dir was ls,
copy was cp, etc, I thought to myself that this is a "dead system". Infact,
after toying with it for not more than a few days, I DID go back to Windows
for several years until the need arose to find a solution to a horribly
unstable WinNT server. At that time, there was a lot of buzz around Linux and
I thought it was best to know it. I ended up reading several books on Linux
and open source (Ie the Cathedral and the Bazaar) and was slowly started to
start thinking in the *nix mindset -- everything is a file, programs are
small and can be linked together, the shell is very powerful for automating
virtually everything, links (shortcuts) work, multiuser, use of client/server
setups, configuration files as text makes sense, etc.
It did take a while, but after I was truly able to distinguish between the
Windows mindset and *nix mindset, Linux finally made sense. Infact, it
started to become quite easy and (dare I say it..) fun to use.
The issue is that commitment to immerse oneself into the mindset. People are
resistent to change and *nix is a big mindset change from Windows. Is this a
bad thing? I don't think so. The *nix unifying ideas (everything is a file,
pipe metaphor, etc..) has survived through over 3 1/2 decades. The fact it is
still being used and relavent today says a LOT about the foundation in which
it was built. Compare this to the poor, conflicting ideas in Windows (Which
the company every few years feels the need to scrap and "bet the company" on
the latest incarnation (dos, win3, win95, winNT, winXP..)) and one has to
step back and thing "I'm relearning how to do things every few years in
Windows. With the *nix variants, they all share the same unifying ideas and
have for decades .. learn once and expand on those ideas.."
Just something to think about ... :) I have been reading "The Art of Unix
Programming" by ESR (
http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/) -- the first section of
the book talks about the philosophy, culture, and history of Unix. It also
compares operating systems. Needless to say, I have (so far) found it quite
interesting.
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