[Cumbria] The guy has a point...

[Schwuk]

Michael Saunders said:
> Slightly OT here and not really arguing that guy's point, but the
> shell prompt gets much flak when it's often far easier than doing
> things the graphical way. In my experience (through writing
> tutorials), telling someone to type in a single line is immensely
> simpler than faffing around with dialog boxes, switches and menus.

Absolutely. Even on windows I spend most of my time at command prompts (with
the GNU tools and Cygwin installed of course!), but the shell isn't the most
friendly of systems, especially for newbies... Why can't the gui's be more
intuitive? Look at OS X. Most people ('normal' users) just want it to work -
no faffing about. Why should they go to a shell prompt (as root even) just
to burn a CD - Windows can manage it with just a few clicks...

> That's a bit optimistic though -- the barrier for Linux adoption is the
> 95% (or so) usage of Win32 on the desktop, with all the apps and mags
> and games and support that go with it. Coupled with an overly
> aggressive business controlling it, the dominance of Office and the
> upcoming DRM shenanigans, the behaviour of the community is a trivial
> side-issue. All that home users know is Microsoft; most businesses feel
> happiest with MS too.

Yes, but the people who are interested can be and are put off by the
zealotry and the 'l33t'.

Actually, I think the 'DRM shenanigans' will bring more people over to linux
and bsd (via OS X).
-- 
Schwuk