Re: Tools

["Andrei de A. Formiga" <ktulu@free.elogica.com.br>]

On 6 Jan 00, at 20:54, Erik wrote:


> part of me says yeah, and part of me feels like that would be bad. If you make
> things easier, people will learn less, the average users ability will lessen,
> and the software will become... windowsy. (that's my speculation)

	Well, I say yeah... I like the command line, I like to edit 
configuration files manually, to write scripts and all these things, 
and I like GUIs too, but I'm a kind of enthusiast for computers 
(geek, if you wish) and I have a craving to know better what's 
happening with my machine. But let's switch the subject to cars... I 
learned to drive and it's very useful. However, I'm almost 100% 
ignorant of the inner workings of a car; well, I think I ended up 
knowing more than most people because of my formation as an 
engineer, but still I am not interested very much in cars. In fact I 
don't care very much how does a car work, I want to get in, push 
the ignition and go out driving, and that's it. If my car has a 
problem, I send it to repair. That's completely different of what I do 
with computers: I've had seven or eight computers in the last five 
years, and I've never sent any of them for repair, repairing them 
myself. 
	I think most users want to work with computers as I drive cars: 
turn on the damn thing, push a button a have his work done. This is 
most legitimate, in my opinion; just because we love computers 
and like to go deep in its intricacies it doesn't mean we must force 
everyone who needs to do his work to do it as ourselves. Many 
linux developers seem to forget that their ultimate goal is to support 
and help the end user. And the user should not need to learn 
ANYTHING about the internals of the computer to get his work 
done. I would hate to have to learn much about car mechanics just 
to drive to my girlfriend's house.
	And easier don't have to mean worse. The windows interface is 
easy, and it's good IMHO. I'll not say or believe it's bad just 
because it's from Redmond and all this microsoft paranoia. But the 
system doesn't work well, it crashes, and it don't give power to the 
users who want it. With linux I use XWindows most of the time 
(WindowMaker rocks!:) but with a lot of xterms open, for me this is 
the right mix of power and speed. 

---
[]s, Andrei de A. Formiga         Sign the Linux Driver Petition
andrei@elogica.com.br             http://www.libranet.com/petition.html
andrei@dee.ufpb.br
ktulu@free.elogica.com.br