On Monday, August 14, 2006 5:48 PM -0500, Katipo wrote: > Seth Goodman wrote: > > If that were true, the vast majority of us, who used to be Windows > users, wouldn't be here.
Right. I use Windows for most of my work projects, and before that, I used Unix for many years. I'm not a casual computer user, and I doubt you are either. I'd wager that most people here are not typical Windows users. Are you comfortable with the concepts of DHCP, DNS and file system partitions? If so, you're not a typical Windows user. _That's_ what we're dealing with. Pretending it were not so will not make it go away. > You can add your lone voice to the increasingly agitated Microsoft > endorsers, as you see fit - we're all for free speech here, but I > don't think it's going to slow the gradual migration percentage > away from Windows considerably. I have no idea where the sentiment you are criticizing came from, but it wasn't from anything that I posted. It is very helpful, and doesn't make one an "endorser", to look at what your worst enemy has done and recognize when they've done something useful. If you want to prevail over something, and it is my fondest hope that someone, _anyone_, prevails over this bunch of corporate thugs, you would do well to notice what they do that works, as well as their failures. I respectfully disagree that the lack of a reasonable installation and desktop experience for the non-technical user will not slow down the gradual migration away from Windows. It already has. Linux has established itself as the preferred choice for most server applications, and it has a good chance of dominating that market. The non-technical desktop user, who is not supported by an IT staff, is another matter and a place that we need a lot of improvement to even gain a foothold. What do you suppose would be the browser market share today for FireFox if it were released only on Linux? > Microsoft's present marketing-blurb overtures in the direction of > free/open source scream that they are aware of it also. > Even that will quieten down, when the effluent from the quagmire of > their own creation fills their mouths, as they go under for the > final time. Nothing would make me happier than if I believed this. Unfortunately, they continue to do one thing right where the non-commercial Linux distros have consistently failed, and this prevents the scenario that you suggest from happening. That is, they provide a platform that the non-technical user can install and maintain without a guru at their disposal. We're not there, and I don't see much motion in that direction. If you expect the Windows crowd to start reading Linux books and becoming computer-literate, that's not realistic. There will always be more people who don't read the books than those who do, and what _they_ choose will still drive the whole system. It doesn't matter how many times we tell them why we _know_ their machines are holier than a piece of Swiss cheese. They don't understand and it's just noise to them. As long as we insist on the current paradigm, Linux will continue to be the choice of professionals and largely unusable by the general public. There's no reason we can't make the product usable for the larger, computer-as-appliance group without diluting what it does for the software professional. -- Seth Goodman -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
