Directory structures in the future and other things I want.

[Les Mikesell]

Casey Dahlin wrote:
>
>> This kind of misses the point that with the advent of the personal 
>> computer the user became his own administrator.
>>
> 
> For simple administrative tasks we create guis. Theres little reason for 
> the user to be messing around with the rest of the file system even in 
> more extraordinary circumstances.

But the guis are incomplete and inconsistent.  We could continue this 
discussion when there is _no_ reason for the command line in a unix-like 
OS, but I don't really expect that to ever happen.

>> If you turn the OS into a black box appliance with no user-serviceable 
>> parts inside you can do that.  Or, just expose unix's inherent 
>> simplicity and let people use it.
>>
>>
> There's nothing wrong with a black box as long as its easy to open.

No, a black box is suitable only when it is already perfect for it's job 
and never needs to be opened.  You can build some appliances like that 
for some operations but not a general-purpose OS.

> Joe 
> user doesn't want to know how his computer works. He gets offended when 
> you try to teach him and blames Linux for forcing him to acknowledge the 
> physical realities of his machine. 

You don't know Joe.

> That's part of what's kept Fedora 
> from pursuing Joe user for so long.

No, the fast-changing interfaces have just made it impossible for anyone 
to learn. In spite of the underlying simplicity all anyone sees is 
special-case exceptions.

 > However, we are now at the point
> where we don't have to compromise the system for power users to keep Joe 
> user safe from his computer. We can have both, we just have to abstract 
> the system rather than alter it.

No, that's the problem, not the solution.  You need to expose the 
consistent parts of the system, not hide it behind a million 
abstractions that keep anyone from ever knowing what it is doing and how 
to take advantage of it.  And just get rid of the parts that aren't 
consistent.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com