"Linux is just Red Hat"

[Neil Woolford]

At 08:10 17/12/04, Sean Miller wrote:

>Bah! Reply to sender strikes again... reply below (Sorry Bnonn -- you get 
>it twice, my mistake)
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hmm.  I've see Thom's elegant justification for reply to sender, in an 
earlier thread.  Great in theory, but in
practice it is a pain to most of us.


>Bnonn wrote:
>
>>Eric Dunbar wrote:
>>
>>>Magic. Magic, I tell you. Ideally the operating system ought to make
>>>functions appear as if they are magic. The user ought not need to know
>>>the first thing about security, cron jobs, python scripts or sudo.
>>>They should be able to sit down with a minimum of training or
>>>experience necessary to turn the computer into a tool -- and, given
>>>the ideal of "freedom" affiliated with OSS, one aspect of that
>>>"freedom" is to ensure that people aren't alienated because they lack
>>>the skills needed to use OSS.
>>
>>
>>
>>Right, just like people should be able to get into a car with a minimum 
>>of training, without knowing about steering, brakes, speed limits, or 
>>roadsigns...
>
>
>Little unfair.... a better comparison would be that people should be able 
>to get into a car without having to build their own internal combustion 
>engine, or understand how it works, should be able to brake with 
>confidence without having to take their wheels off every time they come to 
>a hill and tweak their discs and pads, and should be able to understand 
>roadsigns without having to consult a manual, or have taken a lengthly 
>course.... in other words roadsigns should say "Maximum speed: 30mph", not 
>"Change of speed limit: X1 (See Federal Manual, Paragraph 2)" or "Beware: 
>Buffalo Crossing" not "Government Advisory P2" :-)

Or to see an example close to home;  try entering the wrong password in the 
gui box before running an admin task:  you will get a message on the lines 
of "Failed to run users-admin as root.  Child terminated with 1 status."

That message is undoubtedly technically correct, but it is not informative 
about what went wrong.  An experienced user will probably guess that they 
got the password wrong, an inexperienced user may think the system is 
broken, or worse, that they've broken it.

Neil

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