Shall we support the autorun feature?

[Karl Hegbloom]

On Tue, 2005-01-04 at 14:37 +0000, Martin Alderson wrote:
>
> It also improves the user experience by miles. Look at how hard it is
> for the average user to install a game. On Windows it's insert the CD
> and click next. On Linux it's open terminal, goto root, type some
> cryptic command with symbols that users do not use normally, and hope
> it works. This is not acceptable.

They can insert the CD, get an icon on the desktop of a CD-ROM disc, and
either an automatic or double-click to get a Nautilus view of it.  They
can then double-click the 'setup' program icon.  Inserting the CD,
typing 'pmount cdrom', then running the setup program from the command
line with /media/cdrom/setup is really not that difficult either.

IMO it's not acceptable to not teach users how to communicate with their
computers.  Face reality --- a computer is a complicated tool, and will
never really be an "appliance".  It is only truly useful when you have
some training.  People cannot even use a web browser without at least
_some_ training.  "Teach a man to fish ..."

So, rather than spending a lot of time on trying to hide that reality
from the user, why not spend a little time educating the user?  It is
important to make documentation readily available.  I think that the
default install ought to include a lightweight web server, like 'boa',
and the 'doc-central' (http://localhost/dc/) interface.  There should be
a fair amount of documentation available, and the Firefox bookmarks
should point to that, out of the box.


I would also recommend, to all new users, that they learn to design
programs, using http://www.htdp.org/ and then go on from there to learn
some shell scripting and python.

 Preface: http://www.htdp.org/2003-09-26/Book/curriculum-Z-H-2.html