From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Dec 11 12:49:54 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mcqueen.wolfsburg.de (pns.wobline.de [212.68.68.5]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D45D637B417 for ; Tue, 11 Dec 2001 12:49:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from colt.ncptiddische.net (ppp-193.wobline.de [212.68.69.204]) by mcqueen.wolfsburg.de (8.11.3/8.11.3/tw-20010821) with ESMTP id fBBKnWA01132; Tue, 11 Dec 2001 21:49:32 +0100 Received: from tisys.org (poison.ncptiddische.net [192.168.0.5]) by colt.ncptiddische.net (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id fBBKojT02872; Tue, 11 Dec 2001 21:50:46 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from nils@tisys.org) Received: (from nils@localhost) by tisys.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) id fBBKnhP04574; Tue, 11 Dec 2001 21:49:43 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from nils) Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 21:49:43 +0100 From: Nils Holland To: Robert Hough Cc: Paul Robinson , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: EzBSD aint for me! Was: A breath of fresh air.. Message-ID: <20011211214943.A4489@tisys.org> Mail-Followup-To: Robert Hough , Paul Robinson , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG References: <0112071641320B.01380@stinky.akitanet.co.uk> <01121010202100.00345@stinky.akitanet.co.uk> <20011211144049.A14693@acidpit.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <20011211144049.A14693@acidpit.org>; from rch@acidpit.org on Tue, Dec 11, 2001 at 02:40:49PM -0500 X-Operating-System: FreeBSD poison.ncptiddische.net 4.4-STABLE FreeBSD 4.4-STABLE X-Machine-Uptime: 9:14PM up 9:36, 1 user, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Tue, Dec 11, 2001 at 02:40:49PM -0500, Robert Hough stood up and spoke: > > Since when is -CURRENT about making the OS easier to use? I don't want > FreeBSD to be "easier" to use. I want it to be secure, reliable, > responsive and robust. In my opinion, when you make things so easy to > use, that even the clueless can do -- you start attracting a whole lot > of clueless people. Well, I'd like to dig into this once again, but I have already done so before. Anyway, let me tell you that I believe that there is no such thing as "easy to use". I don't know who started wanting to make computers "easy to use", but these words are really not much more than marketting phrases. Generally, my long experience tells me that there are two kinds of systems: 1) Those that claim the most to be "easy to use". These are generally called Windows, but reach to a certain extend even into the UNIX field (KDE, Gnome). The isse is that these systems look good first - they claim that you only need to make sure your computer is connected to the mains, and instantly you can start working. There's no need to learn much - you do just have to point-and-click a little. The issue with these systems is that they get you up and running quickly, but you will outgrow them very fast. Right from the beginning everything that can be done with such a system is visible to you, and that is, most of the time, not too much. 2) Those systems that do not claim to be easy to use but probably are. This included FreeBSD. You will have to spend some time to get familiar with it, but this time couldn't be spent any better, because once you learnt about it, you know that you do indeed have a rather powerful tool at your disposal that is about unlimited. A tool of this category will actually work the way you want to (and doesn't make you work the way it wants to). A few examples, randomly chosen: Compare KDE to FVWM. With KDE, you instantly get a Windows-like desktop, which you can customize via a point-and-click interface. For FVWM, however, you'd first of all have to learn how to properly write a configuration file. Once you have done that, you will notice that FVWM is much more flexibe than KDE, and if you are really familiar with the configuration file syntax, it will allow you to make customizations much faster than KDE. So, in the end FVWM could well be "more effective to use": You need *more* time to get started, but you will probably take less time for your normal work, and that's probably what is more important in the end. Another real world example: The pine email software is supposed to be easy to use (that is the goal of the pine project). So, until recently I used pine, for historical reaons (it was the first ever UNIX MUA I used and I didn't bother to switch). However, telling pine to correctly filter my mail was a kind of hard. For this mailing list, for example, messages can be sent to freebsd-chat@freebsd.org or chat@freebsd.org. Furthermore, that address may appear either in the To: or CC: header field. In order not to any messages, I would probably have needed for separate filters. Now, with mutt and procmail (undoubtedly these are supposed to be harder to use), I simply put this short thing in my .procmailrc: :0: * ^TO*chat@freebsd.org freebsd-chat Now, what is easier, or more effective, to use? Of course, every idiot can set up a mail filter in pine without much learning. Procmail, on the other hand, is a little harder to learn. Once learnt, however, my work becomes much more effective and less time consuming than if I used pine. The morale of this story: As I said in the beginning, defining something as "easy to use" is entirely relative. Furthermore, I doubt that today's "Plug-And-Play" anticipation is worth much: There is software you don't have to learn, thus you save a few hours of learning it. But what if something that requires learning costs you 5 hours to learn, and then saves you 30 minutes a day? In the long run, this will probably be the better thing. My own experience furthermore tells me that people who come to FreeBSD are well aware of the learning they will have to do, and some (most?) even seem to enjoy it. As other systems get "easier to use" (you know why I put that into quotation marks), more and more people will come to look fomr something more flexible, powerful and - in the end - effective. I guess that's where the strength of FreeBSD is, for we can give them just what they are looking for. Greetings Nils -- Nils Holland Ti Systems - FreeBSD in Tiddische, Germany http://www.tisys.org * nils@tisys.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message