Shall we support the autorun feature?

[Brice Carpentier]

> 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.
> 
the fact is, it's still way to hard for the average user, that does not 
want to learn.

> 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 ..."
> 
true...and false (imho)
it is actually a complicated tool. But it's still a tool, and thus 
should be adapted to the user, not the other way around.

> 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.
>
Yeah, I was quite surprised when I saw that my father, which is far from 
being a computer scientist, was used to browsing the doc of his browser, 
namely AOL (shame).
Thus I think that end-user documentation is indeed a must-have.

>
> 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.
> 
I think you're dreaming.
A user is intended to USE the system, not to develop or improve it. And 
he's not gonna adapt it to his needs.

Regards,

-- 
Brice Carpentier aka Br|ce