[Ubuntu-be] Console or Graphical?

[Jan Claeys]

Op dinsdag 26-02-2008 om 00:49 uur [tijdzone +0100], schreef Stijn
Verslycken:
> A shell-centric approach has some negative aspects too, though:
> - Many people who're not really familiar with unix-like systems get
> lost: sh (and derivatives) is not DOS, it has a lot of powerful
> commands but it's cluttered at the same time, especially for those who
> don't know anything about it (yet),...

"Not yet" is why I gave some sort of demo about basic shell commands &
tools at the recent "linuxbabbel", and apparently many people liked it
(some even asked for more of this).

> - Learning to use all these command line tools isn't that easy: many
> people, in fact most "ordinary people", won't be interested to learn
> them at all.

That's true.

> - GUIs were not invented to be thrown away: many applications require
> a decent GUI.

And that's also true...  :-)


> ==> We don't want to turn our watches back for over 20 years,

I think you mean over 30 years?  ;-)

This was the UI of the Xerox Alto, anno 1973-75:
<http://www.britannica.com/eb/art-19724/The-first-graphical-user-interface-The-Xerox-Alto-was-the>
<http://boxinasuitcase.com/media/blogs/box/xerox_alto_screenshot.jpg>
<http://boxinasuitcase.com/media/blogs/box/xerox_parc_rainbow.jpg>
<http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog-images/alto.jpg>

And yes, this thing did have a 3-button mouse, ethernet, etc.  :)


> Personally I don't really like a too minimalistic approach on this, so
> I prefer environments like KDE or Gnome (or XFCE). But other people
> prefer snappier (but uglier?) desktops. I think they all have their
> qualities and down sides: once again, you have the freedom to choose!

Right.

> As a commercial example you could take a look at Apple: they've even
> eliminated the command line more or less and provide a very good
> looking user interface on top of a unix-like system without truly
> showing the latter (unless you start digging). This should be the goal
> of one noob-friendly Linux desktop, to make Linux even more appealing
> to novice users. 

One of the first things I did on the Mac OS X system I got (thanks
Mark!) is to install a decent terminal emulator, because some important
things are lacking from their GUI...  :-p

And software installation management on Mac OS X is actually much worse
than on Windows, which means Ubuntu is like a lightyear ahead.

> Ordinary computer users should be able to do anything they desire
> intuitively, without the use of a terminal. Even system/server
> management! For that reason I'm quite a fan of tools like Suse's YaST.

Unfortunately, SuSE & YaST have other issues...  ;-)

But a graphical (even if remote) admin for an Ubuntu server would be
useful, especially to compete with Windows SBS...


-- 
Jan Claeys