Linux killer!

[Tim]

Unattributed authors wrote:
 
>> If they are not supposed to be watching the videos on the school 
>> computers, then block them at the firewall as our business 
>> does.  When they cannot watch them on Windows it won't make any
>> difference.
 

STYMA, ROBERT E (ROBERT):

> I think the point is that if Linux is to make a bigger dent in the
> Windows desktop, more things have to "just work".

Though there are cases, and this seems like one of them, where this is
next to impossible.  Not because Linux can't do the task, but because
the server deliberately excludes clients.  There's any number of
internet services which are deliberately designed to only work with
Windows, for no good reason.  Not *just* because they can't figure out
how to support everyone, but sometimes because they want to be
deliberately obstructive.

Having said that, yes it's better if things work.  The computer should
be doing all of the if/then/else grunt work of making things work.  The
users shouldn't have to be configuring things to the nitty gritty
detail, if they're not writing their own programs.  Though this seems to
be a problem with most personal computers, whatever OS is on them.

I'm not so sure that Linux even wants to be a direct replacement for
Windows, just a viable alternative for those who want it.  For those who
want Windows, there is Windows.

> In a similar experiment to the one which started this thread, I slowly
> converted a non-technical family with three computers from windows to
> Linux and recorded the issues which came up.
> (http://www.swlink.net/~styma/LinuxForTheMasses.shtml)
> The current distributions of Linux still need a technical person
> to get things working.  The technical person would still have no clue
> as to how to get these things working.  Many of them require a fair
> amount of research on the web.

I think this applies to Windows, too.  There's an awful lot of really
weird stuff that needs doing to keep Windows running.  It takes someone
quite techy to keep either system running smoothly, even more so to
resolve some fault.  But they're both usable, when working, by those who
don't really know much about their computer.

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