[aclug-L] Re: Linux as an alternative to a Windows desktop

[Nate Bargmann <n0nb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

* Jonathan Hall <flimzy@xxxxxxxxxx> [2002 Dec 12 22:22 -0600]:
> 
> This week at work my Windows box died, so I decided I'd use the opporitunity
> to install Linux (most likely against company policy... but who cares,
> right?).

Right on!

> Aside from the fact that OpenOffice crashes 90% of the time when I open it
> (apparantly a known bug with OO.o + gnome, that may have been fixed in later
> releases--I'll see yet), I'm happy to say that Linux thus far seems much
> nicer than Windows on that hardware.

Hmmm, I'm running quite a bit of GNOME, or at least I have more of those
libraries installed than I bargained for AND I am running the GNMOE
aware version of IceWM, but my system doesn't look Gnomish at all.  Back
OT, I am running OO 1.0.1 here and it is very stable.  In fact I just
put the finishing touches on my ham radio QSL (contact acknowledgement
postcard) card in OO Impress.  No crashes here and I'm running Debian
Sarge (Testing).  Of course, a 1.33 GHz Athlon with 640 MiB of RAM
doesn't hurt either.  I just checked and with everything I've got going
with all this RAM I'm still 43 MiB into the swap partion.

> I still hold to my earlier statements that Windows is better on limited
> hardware, though. :)

Well...That's an interesting assessment.  I would like to load Debian on
a spare HD and try it on the company Compaq Armada 1750 (P III, 366 MHz,
64 MiB RAM) and see if it runs faster than WinNT 4.0 SP 6 currently
does (slower than molasses in January).  Perhaps with <= Win95 I could
agree with your statement.  I've never tried Win98 or WinME, so I can't
offer MO there.

> And I still think Windows is better for uneducated computer users.
                                                              
Training is still necessary.  My company still uses character terminals 
and mainframe access.  Many of the people that use that system are NOT 
savvy computer users yet they get the work done they need to and that 
they are trained to do.  I've seen a number of people go through a horrible
transition when our company adopted "Windows Everywhere" (or nearly so)
and a lot of people had to give up their dumb terminals.  For many of
them it took quite a bit of training just to navigate the Win UI so they
could start Attachmate and get back to the mainframe session.

My experience just hasn't borne out the conventional wisdom that just
because Windows is pretty and colorful that it's easy to use.  My
contention is that most any person (not us geeks) needs a substantial
amount of training to use any computer system effectively.  I would
include any GUI into this contention as there is a learning curve to
them all.

"The only intuitive interface is the nipple."

- Nate >>

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