RE: Are we in this for ourselves? (fwd)

["Orn E. Hansen" <oe.hansen@isholf.is>]

  In my personal opinion, the Unix community is too much behind.  There
are still Network Administrators out there who are running 7 bit systems,
and basically deny upgrading.  Majority of Unix people, don't "want" to
make real programs, because they claim that using scripting and "scheme"
type programming is more semantically correct.

  Many of the users, who we are trying to target, don't know anything
about The Theory of Computation, and the only idea they'd get if you'd
mention Alan Turing, would be a program for making travel arrangements.
So, expecting that these people learn all the commands and syntax of a
unix system to get something done, is a dream that won't come true.  They
will be looking for a visual basic programming tool to their handy work,
even if you can do the same thing by cat'ing the text and piping it through
sed, using a small awk on the output throwing the result into lpr for
printing :-)

  And, more to the point... if you give these users a panel program, with
something that even basically looks like a start button.  They'll see it
as a cheap copy of Windows 95, and systems like SGI, SUN and HP are moving
towards a higher user end... These systems will play the same role tomorrow,
as Mainframes did yesterday... the PC, will be a typewriter on steroids (as
George so aptly put it :-), and a standalone terminals for office use.

  Our only hope, is to make Linux more user friendly...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Orn Einar Hansen                         oe.hansen@oehansen.pp.se
                                          oehansen@daimi.aau.dk
                                        voice+fax; +46 035 217194
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