Linux killer!

[Craig White]

On Mon, 2005-10-31 at 10:21 -0600, STYMA, ROBERT E (ROBERT) 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.
> > 
> I think the point is that if Linux is to make a bigger dent in the
> Windows desktop, more things have to "just work".  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 understand the reasons mp3's and
> wmv's don't play right out of the box, but to get "Joe Sixpack" using
> Linux requires an update process simple enough for "Joe Sixpack" to
> use to get this functionality working.
> 
> If making Linux really simple is not working out, another model might
> be to have pay subscriptions to remote maintenance services.  The FC3
> and FC4 boxes I maintain for my friends I can access remotely via
> SSH and VNC.  On a Windows box, if tech support cannot talk you through
> the problem, the user ends up taking the box in and paying big bucks.
> ssh, /etc/hosts.allow, and iptables could provide a very effective support
> mechanism.  On my friends boxes, I am the only one with the root password,
> not that they would understand what root was anyway.
> 
> Just my 2 cents worth.  My point is that Linux needs to be simple in
> addition to being better.
----
Anticipation that a Linux Desktop is a easy swap replacement for Windows
Desktop is simply a matter of expectations. It is what it is and where
it is any given place in time. Railing here on this list is the
equivalent to pissing in the wind.

The thread began with issues relating to proprietary software using
proprietary codecs and if more people were using Linux, there would be
more pressure to adopt codecs that Linux users could utilize without
doing technical tango.

Then there are the issues with things like udev which changed with 2.6
kernel and now have changed again but things are getting worse in the
effort to make them better but there is a lot of effort targeted towards
users ability to load devices and I have faith that it will all come
around.

Craig


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