Date: 02 Nov 2001 12:25:01 -0800 From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Nils Holland <nils@tisys.org> Cc: <chat@FreeBSD.ORG>, <advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: NatWest? no thanks Message-ID: <x8k7x8dioy.7x8@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <20011102163728.F588-100000@howie.ncptiddische.net> References: <20011102163728.F588-100000@howie.ncptiddische.net>
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Nils Holland <nils@tisys.org> writes: > Hmm, forcing computer manufacturers to install their system is what made > them successful - not very much more. That was part of it - but there WAS very much more. Mostly, that they offered software that users preferred to buy more than the few available alternatives. (My gripe has been with both the users who didn't insist on something better instead of just accepting the best of a very bad lot and with M$ for devoting themselves only to the bottom line and market domination and for being such a technological foot-dragger wasting their enormous R & D budget (and of course, their dispicable business practices).) But one must admit that when users had the choice of M$DOS or CP/M or Mac or IBM or legions of Unix OSes, few could afford to choose one of the technically better OSes. Don't fool yourself that people don't use FreeBSD (or Linux, etc) because they don't know about it. Few care that it is powerful. And it's a new world, now. With negligible exceptions, WinXP and Win2000 are as powerful and flexible and "good" as any Unix OS, roughly speaking, of course. People use FreeBSD mostly because it is best in it's niche as a low-cost server OS or, not to be forgotten, because they appreciate the FreeBSD philsophy (and license) or community. Nils, don't compare FreeBSD to M$ Windows, especially one without a command line installed. (Do you know that you can get a largely- complete Unix shell enviroment for Windows?) Compare it with Mac OS X running on a Intel/AMD CPU which comes with a fully functional Unix shell. Compare it with something better than that. Imagine a system that is both easy to use and powerful/flexible. Imagine software that does the grunt work so you can do creative things. Consider users like me who've known the benefits of Unix for over twenty years and haven't needed to read "The Unix-Hater's Handbook" (though I have read it) to know that Unix has severe problems who's continued existance is a result of nothing more than cultural momentum and inability to coordinate changes in a largely anarchic community. It was fine when I was young and eager to exercise the power and flexibilty and had a full-time Unix system administrator to do the grunt work, but even if I enjoyed doing the grunt work (which I no longer do), I find myself spending most of my available time doing grunt work and have little time left to do more creative things or to learn about more than poorly-documented system and network software. Few people who know these usability problems well or discover them shortly after trying a Unix-like OS, are going to use such an OS by choice. Few care about the philosphies or ethics of the OS producer and will use the OS that lets them do non-OS things faster than the other OSes. Unless you're satisfied going after small niche markets like HTML servers or free software philosophers (and even if that's all, as I explained yesterday) you need to work on making your OS more efficient of user time, more than any other single thing. Yes, efficiency of user time is vital to the future of an OS. Your measure of OS performance and powerfulness should weigh that more than speed of IP transfers or a thousand other low-level features. And flexibility is only important to the extent that it reduces the time it takes for a user to do something (including the learning process to do it). Now, we will agree that a dumb GUI is actually less efficient than use of a dumb config file. But we should be past all that by now. GUIs should be smart. They can even be made to look exactly like a dumb config file, but in fact be a kind of smart config file. Good GUIs think for you. They check for typos and conflicts and dependancies. They offer you choices so you don't have to remember them. They make info and help available to you. Developers of other OSes and their applications are putting lots of effort into putting smarts into user interfaces so that users can use their time to be smart about other things. You will not compete with them if you only put your effort into the non-user-interface parts of OSes and their applications. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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