[KLUG Advocacy] A user leaves....

[Adam Williams]

>I have used Linux off and on since the early 90's.  It was not until
>RedHat 7.x that I felt there was a really good replacement for me to
>use Linux as my primary desktop (well also Mandrake 7.x).  A lot of
>what he says makes a lot of sense in the time frame that he was
>talking about.  

I assumed that since the site was just linked to on a couple of geek
news sites that it was current.  I'd agree that, unless one was already
familiar with UNIX,  Linux was a tough sell on the desktop until the
RedHat 7.x series.

>Also, some of the stuff still is not fixed.  For
>Linux to invade the home market a fair number of things do need to
>change.  
>GUI cd burning tools still suck big time compared to Nero.  I love
>Nero and yearn for it to this day.  Some of them are getting closer
>but have a ways to go yet.  The command line is nice for ripping cd
>to iso files or for burning iso images to cd but if I am creating a
>cd from my file system then give me a nice (really nice) gui to use. 
>Gnome toaster is getting quite close now.

I've never used Nero,  but I agree.  The only box with a CD burner in
our square of cubicles it a Win9x box, and we just the adobe CD creator
thing that came with the burner.  It is very simple and brainless, 
setting up to create a CD takes all of 10 seconds.  Nothing I've seen in
X compares,  which is odd, because it doesn't look like such a complex
process.

>As far as tweaking source code, I am not a programmer and would not
>have a clue what to do or do I even want to!!!  I agree that software
>needs to be available as a binary or at least an rpm.  

Agreed,  most users have no direct use for the code.  I'm a moderately
proficient PHP programmer, and a lousy C programmer.  I can read C
code,  but usually don't get to far when I try to write it.  But this
doesn't mean the code is of no use to the end user.  He can **pay**
someone to make modifications he needs,  because the code is available. 
Lots of people dismiss this,  but how much do they pay in licensing for
commercial software every year?  They could have EXACTLY what they
want.  Users can also go in together and pay a developer to add
something to a project,  and this does happen.

>Red carpet has
>brought that a long way but it is not perfect yet, close but still
>awkward for a home user.

What specifically do you find awkward?

>I think Linux is deffinately to the point to be rolled out in schools
>and in corporate world en masse but the home user is a ways away yet.
> I am sure that I am going to get flamed for some of this but I
>really agree with the guy in a fair number of points.  

Nah, this is a flame free list.