Mystery of chroot

Tim ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au
Tue Jul 24 06:07:48 UTC 2007


On Mon, 2007-07-23 at 01:02 -0700, David Boles wrote:
> The problem(s) with Windows (version/etc goes here) is that
> the user do *not* know the system. Nor do they care to know the
> system. They want it to 'just work'[ like the TV does.

Or a few other OSs.  They're pushed to the general public, when it's
really not suitable for it.  It's not a good idea.  I liken it to
helping incompetent people to drive *too* much.  There's a threshold
where that's a very bad idea.  Windows has stepped way over that line.

I don't think any OS is really suitable for the clueless.  The closest,
in my opinion, is the Mac.  It's more geared towards working, or not,
as-is; but not for you to fiddle around and try to make it work.

> It is the admin/user that breaks 'stuff' really.

Mostly, though I've seen Windows shoot itself in the foot plenty of
times.  It can be just sitting there, doing nothing, then Explorer would
crash (that was Win95, and it wasn't due to some timed action, like a
screen saver, suddenly starting up).

It doesn't help that Windows doesn't give you any meaningful start up
and shutdown messaging.  Even if the user doesn't understand what
they're seeing, they can tell their tech that it got stuck on starting
NTP, and start the repairs off in the right direction.  And for the
tech, they've currently got no obvious clue as to why their box jams
while starting up or shutting down.  You're staring at, essentially, a
blank screen just waiting for it to do something.

Faced with that, it's no wonder that users just hit the power button, or
aimlessly fiddle with all sorts of things.

-- 
[tim at bigblack ~]$ uname -ipr
2.6.22.1-27.fc7 i686 i386

Using FC 4, 5, 6 & 7, plus CentOS 5.  Today, it's FC7.

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
I read messages from the public lists.






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