[Techtalk] Quirks of RH8 (was: Re: RH8--no gcc??)

[Alvin Goats]

> 
> On Sun, 2002-10-20 at 21:05, Nils Philippsen wrote:
> > On Sun, 2002-10-20 at 07:53, lain iwakura wrote:
> > > I suppose RH is assuming that most people who install in
> > > Personal Desktop are not into development and therefore are just going to
> > > use .rpms to install most programs.  
> > 
> > Exactly. That's the difference between a workstation and a desktop --
> > this installation mode is geared towards all those users outside who are
> > intimidated if the see you compiling stuff and would be frankly scared
> > if they should do it by themselves. 
> 
> And, quite frankly, they're _RIGHT_.
> 
> Dancer is currently in the process of converting the place he works to a
> mostly-Linux environment. Lots and lots of people there who don't know
> much about computers other than what they need to get the job done, and
> don't WANT to know. And really, why should they?
> 
> Dancer doesn't know, and doesn't want to know, how to do the clerical
> work, or run the payroll, or keep the customers happy. They don't want
> to know how to do his job. They depend on each other, and it works.
> 
> And that's the sort of person that RedHat's 'dumbed down' desktops are
> aimed at. And it -works- for what Dancer's doing. 
> 
> So long as RedHat also has a system that _I_ would be happy with .. I
> don't see a problem. :) Different strokes for different folks.
> 
> 


I've often caught flack from both Linux and Unix user groups whenever I
suggest using fvwm95 for the window manager. Most users are coming from
Windows and aren't familiar with the power and diversity of unix. This
immediately intimidates them, whereas the 'look and feel' of a windows
environment makes the transition easier. 

I have StarOffice 5.1 and the 'look and feel' issue of it is radically
different to MS-Office. ApplixWare is much more familiar and thus I
would recommend it to people being weaned off of MS. I have and use
both.

Something a lot of people are not aware of is that the learning curve to
learn most any of the new distributions of Linux (Debian, Mandrake,
SuSE, Red Hat, Slackware, ...) is almost the same as going from
Windows3.11 to Win95; Win95 to Win2k, Win2k to WinXP....and as for
Office; well it was quite a shock going from Office 4.2 to Office95
(menus changed, actions of some of the functions changed, names of some
of the programs changed, utilities in one doesn't exist in the other; I
could rant for an hour on this issue). 

If we welcome new users on board and give them a desktop that looks
familiar and friendly, regardless of any notion of 'caving to the
monopoly', we will have more converts and happy users. Red Hat appears
to be a front runner with a basic "plug and play" system for home and
office users who know nothing about computers and programming and would
be dangerous having compiling tools available. 

That means the rest of us should be looking at "workstation"
installations and not "desktop". 

FYI, QCadd is free and a 2D .dxf file format Computer Aided Drafting and
Design package. It reads and writes the Autocad .dxf file format for the
major part, DOES NOT support 3D, but covers over 90% of what cadd users
do in the first place. This helps get some of the cadd users off of
windows as well. 

I'm still looking for an easy to use 3D cadd package (I have blender,
moonlight and brl-cad). I need to set dimensions like QCadd, but in 3
dimensions. Brl-cad is extremely powerful and absolutely user
UNfriendly, blender allows freeform manipulation but doesn't seen to be
able to take a dimension from the keyboard. And the big boys in 3D cadd
so far haven't been interested in porting to linux (I've hassled them at
all the engineering trade shows: Autodesk, SolidWorks, SolidEdge).

Alvin