Ubuntu 8.04 Is Ready to Take On Windows

[Leo Cacciari]

Il giorno mar, 29/04/2008 alle 13.44 -0700, michael wilson ha scritto:
> And, since none of this is explained during installation, newbie users
> will crash and burn.  All I am saying is that this sort of thing needs
> to be fixed before linux can really take on windows, which would be a
> good and interesting thing.
Well, in every operating system the system administrator may act stupid
and crash his or her system. As for warnings... when you access your
system folder on a windog machine, you are warned that messing with
those files can seriously damage your system. But once you acknowledge
the warning, the folder is open to you for doing as you please. Compare
this with the fact that you can not remove system file using your file
manager. As for removing packages so as to rend the system unusable, I
really can not immagine which basic package you could remove, rending
the system unusable, without getting full flagged warnings. The only
thing I can think of is you having removed the graphic interface. But
then the simply amazing list of "packages needing to be removed" should
alert you that something is wrong. In doubt, do not act and ask. This is
not true for ubuntu alone, but seems to me to be pure common sense. 

Sure, you could have a message saying that "beware! you are removing the
graphic user interface, you'll not be able to access a graphic login
anymore". But, I for one will found such a message annoying and somehow
insulting. I'll tend to reply in the vein "Do I look such a moron? If I
remove the GUI, is exactly for having no more graphic login!". 
You have a message, just when it asks for your password, saying
something like "allows you to modify essential components of the
system" (My localisation is not English, so I'm not sure about the text,
but this is the meaning). Again, it stands to common sense that if you
modify an "essential component" of your system you should know what you
do or accept the risk. 

Again you could argue that, before you do something stupid, there should
be a warning. But, believe me, too much messages are annoying for
someone who knows what he or she is doing, and no amount of messages
could prevent an user from doing just the one thing the programmer
thought "well, nobody will try to do that...". Should be some corollary
of Murphy's law...

And I'm still asking me what the hell you removed...

Enjoy

-- 
Leo 'TheHobbit' Cacciari

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