Wah, wahing

[Smoot Carl-Mitchell]

On Sat, 2008-08-02 at 13:38 -0400, Michael "TheZorch" Haney wrote:
> Ok, I don't check my email in a while and this shit happens.  What 
> started all of this anyway?  Can't find the originating message.
> 
> It does irk me when people at Digg.com bitch & moan about the Linux 
> terminal or compiling programs to install them.  I grew up using the 
> command line starting with the Apple IIe all the way up to Unix and 
> final version of straight MS/PC-DOS before Win95 made ever young 
> computer users since then a spoiled brat.  Yes, the GUI has made people 
> spoiled, and I admit I'm a bit spoiled by it too but I don't bitch & 
> moan when I need to open a terminal window or compile a piece of source 
> code.  Yes, you can do just about everything from the GUI in Windows, 

Amen, brother!  I have always thought that GUIs were to sell software to
managers. :-)  In all seriousness, a good GUI desktop is useful and
makes the system more accessible to novice users. However, the
underlying CLI is very powerful and it is useful to know it is there and
how it can be used. I also do not think you need to have a system to do
everything in the GUI.  For little used functionality it is acceptable
to drop to the CLI.  I have been such a long time Unix/Linux user and
administrator that doing this is second nature to me.  I can see how it
can be daunting to those not familiar with the Unix computing paradigm
and we should make every effort to make the system as simple as possible
to us for the most common tasks.

I think the desktop managers (Gnome and KDE) have come a long way in
usability and functionality over many years of development and I applaud
the developers for their diligence.  We do need to realize that
GNU/Linux is not going to satisfy all users, but I think it is important
that there be a choice in desktop computing.  I am happy to see Apple
doing well with OSX and that desktop use of GNU/Linux is growing.
Having a monoculture on the desktop is a bad thing for computing as a
whole.


-- 
Smoot Carl-Mitchell
System/Network Architect
smoot at tic.com
+1 480 922 7313
cell: +1 602 421 9005