Massive Linux handout set for French schools

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Newbies and Ease of Use

Ahhh,rich, you've never worked in a support role
have you? And you've never had to plunk down a
newbie in front of an OS, be it Windows, Mac or
Linux, and sit there and listen to the confusion,
watch the confusion on their faces and the
tentative, frightened approaches to the machine.

I have. Spent years at it.

And, no, most people do NOT know how to double
click IE to get it going much less do they know
how to type www.google.com in the appropriate
spot to search for something. At least most
people who were never exposed to a computer in
school.

Setting up an IP connection in Windows is a
massive pain in the butt if the Wizard can't get
it right the first time. My guess, based, again
on personal experience installing dial up and
ADSL, is that the Wizard screws up a third of the
time and I'm left with a service call to go out
and fix a perfectly functional ADSL service. XP
is only marginally better than previous versions
simply because MS hasn't bothered to fix their
messed up TCP/IP stack in forever.

And it must have been a while back when you tried
Linux. I suggest you try it again. KDE and
GNOME have improved tremendously from previous
incarnations in the past 12 months. The fonts
are better and cleaner and so is the rendering as
a whole.

Setting up an ASDL account in Linux is as easy as
giving it the server name during install or
setup, whatever gateways are needed (often none)
and clicking on DHCP.

I could put an icon on my desktop for
OpenOffice's wordprocessor but I tend to like my
desktop (computer) much cleaner than I do my
physical one (mega mess). For the Word centric
it even looks a lot like Word!

As for who they will blame if a Word file won't
open remember that old versions of Word often
have a hell of a time with new versions of Word
files.

You are right in that most people just want it to
work. How they're used to doing it is not often
an issue if it's close enough from what they came
from. And yes, most of them have had Windows
shoved down their throats, at least
metaphorically. Most don't grumble a lot about
BSD's or XP's habit of exchanging the BSD for an
unexplained reboot. They're used to it and they
accept it.

I started using Linux out of curiosity and over
the years have seen less and less reason to use
Windows. The fact that in my job, I end up
supporting legions of Windows users who are
tearing their hair out has done little or nothing
to change my mind about that decision.

Where you are right and where others are is that
Linux will not replace MS or even hurt it to any
significant extent any time in the forseeable
future. That doesn't mean it won't and isn't
becoming a player.

MS is in the unenviable position that they
literally own the vast majority of the desktop
out there and the vast majority of "Office" type
packages, not to mention other things. If you
"own" 98% if a market there's only one way to go
and it ain't up. It's down.

Will it be Linux, FreeBSD, OS-X or something that
hasn't even arrived on the scene yet? Who knows?

But the quality is certainly there with most
Linux distros now and the differences from one
GUI to another are minor and trivial at best.

After all, they all have a common ancestor --
Xerox Parc -- who largely set the rules for what
a GUI desktop does and doesn't do.

ttfn

John

PS -- Do try Mandrake/Mandriva again. I think
you'll find quite a difference. It may not
convert you but you will see how far things have
come.

Posted by: TtfnJohn   Posted on: 08/12/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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