Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 08:36:00 -0700 From: "Gregory A. Gilliss" <ggilliss@netpublishing.com> To: advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Look what a mess I made (was Brilliant and very useful...) Message-ID: <20030407153600.GA51613@netpublishing.com>
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Happy Monday.
I've lurked a while in the hope that my initial topic would come around
again...finally. The following excerpt makes my point for me:
> I somewhat disagree - most people use computers as a tool, and don't
> care to learn all the ins and outs of the os. Now, I personally want to
> know what is going on in the os, but my (for instance and example again)
> wife doesn't care. She doesn't care how it got to the point it is at,
> just as long as she can get what she needs to done.
Thanx to Eric Andersen who "got it".
My initial post (the article being debated) was *not* about the following:
Desktops
GUIs or X or window managers
Anything else other than - good tools require no instruction
How many posters actually *read* the article? Or did I just start yet
another *BSD flame war? No *wonder* this best-of-breed product languishes
while (bleh) Linux increases market share (and PR share - FreeBSD PR sucks,
compared to M$ and - bleh - Linux). Here's the link (in case it got lost):
http://www.linuxworld.com/2003/0401.tsu.html
The point - the reason that I thought that this article has value -
is that the FreeBSD community doesn't - dare I say it - pander - to
the user community. We act like the intelligencia of *NIX -
AND IT IS COSTING US THE USER BASE.
Good tools require no instruction. That was the point, not the rest of
this didactic cruft.
Who among you ever read the instructions for a phone (not a cordless multi-
frequency-answering-machine-GPS-breathalyzer phone, but the unbox-it-plug-
it-in-listen-for-dial-tone phone? Or a hammer? When FreeBSD can, out of
the box, be a tool that clueless newbies (and we were *all* clueless newbies
once) can install and configure on their own (just like - bleh - Windows),
then we can all sit back and be arrogant (again - but not until then).
G
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