interesting article, for all those who think Ubuntu is already easy

[James "Doc" Livingston]

On Wed, 2006-05-24 at 19:06 +0200, Robert Spanjaard wrote:
> On Thu, 25 May 2006 01:13:38 +1000, James "Doc" Livingston wrote:
> > I can't think of a particularly useful tooltip besides "this option may
> > make your computer work better, or break it horribly. We can't figure
> > out which, so it's probably not a good idea to change it."
> 
> Does that mean you don't know how to explain the benefits/risks of
> enabling DMA to a user?

I don't know how to explain it in a way that is short and useful.
Tool-tips are supposed to be a sentence or maybe two short ones, not
cover up half the screen.


If the user doesn't know what DMA is, my above "this option may
make your computer work better, or break it horribly. We can't figure
out which" is about as useful as I can get. Or literally "more magic/less
magic".


If the user does know what DMA is, and knows the risks of turning it on
when it isn't supported, do they know whether it's likely to work? If
the software couldn't figure out whether it is safe, there is a fair
chance it isn't. While it may work in Windows (so the hardware supports
it), the drivers shipped with Dapper may not.


As others have said, this is just a band-aid fixing the symptom. The
real solution is to have it correctly detected, so people don't need to
fiddle with it.


Cheers,

James "Doc" Livingston
-- 
If at first you don't succeed, sky diving is not for you.