[xubuntu-users] Linux & Usability (was: Re: Update failure / disk full error)

[Ralf Mardorf]

To use Linux, especially when using user-friendly Ubuntu flavours,
doesn't require to become a power user, it only requires a bit of
self-responsibility and the willingness to learn a few basics. If an
issue appears, start learning, continue step by step! Even without much
learning, many users automatically become power users after a while.
Again, if you make a skateboard usable for those who need a wheel
worker, the skateboard would not be a skateboard anymore, so you never
could perform skateboard tricks using this skateboard. Apart from this,
the modified skateboard still wouldn't fit that good to somebody who
needs a wheel walker, than a real wheel walker. It's the same for
proprietary operating systems and Linux. Note, Ubuntu flavours provide
already that many user-friendly features, that many power users and
other experts migrated to non-user-friendly distros, because using the
advantages of Linux is much easier, if a distro doesn't assume some
averaged user's needs. My daily Linux is Arch Linux. For example, it
takes less time to enable the services I need, after installing Arch
Linux Packages, than to disable services that are counterproductive for
my needs, after installing Ubuntu packages. There are already different
Linux distros available, actually even the boot-partition-kernel-issue
for Ubuntu flavours is solved for new releases. At some point it's
simply easier to update to a newer Ubuntu release, than to backport. If
taking a look at Ubuntu Wiki and help pages is too much, to get rid of
a stuffed boot partition and release upgrades should be to complicated,
than at least the latter is an argument not to make the distro more
user-friendly, but for the user, to chose another distro. Ubuntu _is_ a
release model distro. Ubuntu _did/does_ fix issues, such as the
boot-partition-kernel-issue for new releases and soon or later even LTS
releases reach end of life.

To make Linux usable for people who are completely uninterested
in learning is bad. You can't have healthy eating, if you want potato
crisps and Cola. You can't perform skateboard tricks, if you replace
the skateboard with a wheel walker.