Re: replacing XMMS

[Aaron Bennett <aaron bennett olin edu>]

Robert Dumas wrote:

> After all, if people *really* want to use other players, they can get
> them, right? I mean, lots of Windows users are smart enough to go online
> and get Winamp instead of just using Windows Media Player (*insert
> barfing noises here*), so there's no reason to assume Fedora users
> couldn't do the same.

My users' greatest frustration with Linux is exactly that.  Under 
windows, if you want to install a new MP3 player, you go to download.com 
or somewhere, find one that looks cool, download it, save it on your 
desktop, double-click it and click next,next,next and it's installed.  
Try doing that with Linux.  It's impossible for a ton of reasons -- many 
of them very good.  I've talked to many of my users about this... and 
they are smart people -- engineering students.  What happens to them 
with Linux is usually something like this...

They have a class assignment that they need to write some python code 
for, so they reboot their laptop into Linux.  They log on, start writing 
their code, and think "Boy, Linux is really pretty cool.  I'd like to 
use it more but I hate this mp3 player. "  They open up google and query 
on "Linux MP3 Players," follow the links, download a few programs.  
These are usually either rpms or source tarballs.  They download the 
rpms to their desktop, and then click them.  It doesn't work.  They 
click the tars and it extracts them.  They keep clicking.  No amount of 
mouse driven clicking will get that program installed.

The more adventurous of them manage to stumble onto some documentation 
about the rpm command -- maybe someone told them about man pages, or 
they look online.  So they type rpm --instal <rpmfile>.  What they get 
back is "Foo-2.4.5 depends on bar-2.5.61." 

Usually at that point they say "screw this" , finish their homework , 
and reboot into Windows as fast as possible.

--
Aaron Bennett
UNIX Administrator
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering