Things I already hate about Kubuntu - geekdom

[Peter Garrett]

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:07:28 -0500
Eric Dunbar <eric.dunbar at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/20/05, Terry North <terrencenorth at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> > Terry North <terrencenorth <at> yahoo.com.au> writes:
> >
> > I filed this originally as feedback.  Maybe it was the wrong place.
> 
> Fairly good spot. I'd recommend 'sounder' though.

[snip}

> >  it looks as though it's in
> > the hands of an elite who are content to exclude the great bulk of users and
> > resent anyone telling them there are better ways of doing things.  I'm
> > willing to work with it but I doubt that I'm typical.
> 
> I will disagree with you on 'it's in in the hands of the elite'.

Agreed - actually participation is open to anyone really. And they don't
need to be coders or experts.

 [snipped]

> It seems coupled with
> an elitism that if you want to use Linux, you should conform to Linux
> and not expect Linux conform to your needs or expectations (I like to
> flippantly summarise that as the "It's the way it's always been" or
> "My way, or the highway" crowd).
> 
> Don't let them deter you. Ignore them.

This is _kind_ of true, but perhaps a bit too simplified?

Just as a personal anecdote, I remember how intimidated I was by my first
experience of IRC. I tended to think that the people in the channel
( #knoppix at the time) were all-knowing Godlike creatures to whose level
I could never aspire ;) Amongst other things, the rapid-fire, terse
answers, consisting of commands, seemed elitist indeed. As I gradually
learnt some of those commands I began to see, first, that there was
limited time, the channel was busy,  and thus such answers were often the
best way to give someone a solution - and second, that such commands were
powerful and time-saving for me, too.

Thus my perception changed from feeling that I "should conform to Linux",
to realising that the stuff I was typing was telling Linux to conform to
*my* wishes.

So - yes, many Linux people fall into the trap of "My way, or the
highway" (one reason I haven't visited #debian on Freenode for a long
time, although I *did* learn a lot there). On the other hand, the gruff
hacker tradition can also encourage people to become more competent - and
ultimately those people will pass on their knowledge. It isn't black and
white.

> 
> It's getting there. Linux is getting there. Slowly, but surely.

I'd say my impression is that the process has accelerated.

> 
> There are still a _lot_ of rough edges but they're beeing smoothed
> over at a fairly impressive rate 

A comparison of any distro 3 years ago with the current ones is an
interesting exercise. The desktops and GUI generally are far more
sophisticated, and much more "Just Works"
> 
> Anyway, keep your eyes peeled. Even Ubuntu isn't for the faint of
> heart but it's leading the way. Consider that two or three years ago
> you'd probably have had to hit the command line a number of times to
> get your computer up-and-running with Linux. Now, it's such that you
> can install Linux, run a number of apps and even get on-line without
> too much trouble, 

Agreed again :)

> though, it's still very rigid in what it'll allow
> non-experts (i.e. people who don't use the CLUI) to do, 

You don't have to be an expert to use the terminal - to use it fluently,
yes, but not to use it for simple commands. I think it would be a pity if
the newer recruits to Linux missed out on the opportunity to learn the CLI,
and to be amazed by the power, say, of the "find" command, or "grep", or
any number of traditional tools. Have a look at what can be done with the
ImageMagick suite, for example - a collection of tools that would never be
seen if all we did was use the GUI.

I'm sticking with this .sig for a while :)  Not because I'm in favour of
difficulty, but because I'm in favour of "multiple small epiphanies"! By
all means let's have a great GUI. But let's not throw out the power of the
tools it is built on.

Peter

-- 
Unix is hard to learn. The process of learning it is one of multiple small
epiphanies. -- Neal Stephenson