Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 22:55:10 +1030 (CST) From: Kris Kennaway <kkennawa@physics.adelaide.edu.au> To: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: desktop stupidity Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.4.05.9902022210490.2461-100000@bragg> In-Reply-To: <19990202185713.43112@welearn.com.au>
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On Tue, 2 Feb 1999, Sue Blake wrote: > Now wait a minute! Most of you people don't know what newbies need, you > haven't asked them, won't listen or believe or sit down with them to > help them work it out for themselves, you're so set with your > comfortable little stereotypes that you really think you know the Great > Truth and have all the solutions and nobody can tell you different, > least of all a loathsome newbie. You think you can just dish something > up and they'll love it. What if you're wrong? Oh, yes, newbies fault. [SNIP] How about you write some of that documentation - you seem to have a good handle on what is needed. Not everyone remembers the kinds of questions and problems they had when they were learning UNIX. If you do, then more power to you - get typing and get some useful stuff out. Complaining that other people should be writing newbie documentation instead of working on other projects isn't likely to win any recruits. I think people need to get some perspective in this debate. We are talking about a WINDOW MANAGER here, for pete's sake - not FreeBSD 2000, the all-singing, all-dancing new UNIX which ships with no xterms or console drivers, manages your entire system through a spiffy Wizard interface, and is chock-full of nice, friendly, nonthreatening error messages. I'm pretty sure most people out there running X use a WM of some description - many even use KDE. What then is the problem in giving people the option of installing a nicely customized, engineered-to-hopefully-not-be-gratuituosly-confusing WM when they install FreeBSD? Given the choice of twm or KDE, which is less hostile? Nobody is claiming that we can just throw a nice glossy KDE package at the hordes of slavering newbies and they'll go away forever happy, leaving us to hack in peace. KDE is, however, a good starting point for people who are "computer-literate" (*ahem*, Microsoft-literate), who are not afraid to learn new things, but who aren't drop-in compatible with the standard UNIX way of frobbing configuration files, passing esoteric command-line options, learning arcane pathnames, and tweaking environment variables. In short, the millions of curious Win '95ers who have heard about this "new thing called UNIX", who actually have half a brain in their head, and who want to give it a go. If all they see is a 1980-era console and some scary-looking minimalist thing called twm then they'll go right back where they came from and write it off as a bad idea. I know a lot of people who are in this situation. If people want to do all the trickier UNIX things, they still can - KDE scales somewhat with user experience (which is why many experienced UNIX folks use it). Now, some other points: * Good documentation and a nice window environment are not mutually exclusive. I fail to understand why the fact that one group of people is working on the former means no-one can work on the latter. If you think the former goal is a waste of time, don't participate and do the latter instead. * This proposal was intended to provide *a possibility* for *people who want to use it*. If you don't fall in that category, don't tick the box and keep doing what you've always been doing. If you're a newbie and don't want to be "hand-held" (to whatever extent using a customized-but-standard WM is "hand-holding"), then don't tick the box and get twm like everyone else. * No-one is ever going to agree on which WM is "best". People who are slightly fanatical about their particular WM are always going to try and fight to get theirs "chosen" above the "competition". Most of the objections raised so far to this debate have been of the form "KDE sucks, it doesn't do what I want, but MegaWM is really cool, so we should use that." * This being the case: this is Free Software. If you think MegaWM is a perfect environment for people who are new to FreeBSD, then get off yer butt and build the necessary framework so people can drop it in at install-time. At this stage it's hardly like there's any competition - if it came down to it and there were 2 or 3 available "desktop environments" packaged up, then I'm sure they'd be considered on their merits. If the people currently espousing KDE never bother to get anywhere, and the only "package" option is for MegaWM (providing of course it's actually a decent job), then congratulations, you've won! Kris (wondering why the mere mention of the two letters "WM" is enough to make normally rational people suddenly become incandescent). ----- (ASP) Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) announced today that the release of its productivity suite, Office 2000, will be delayed until the first quarter of 1901. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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