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greed (was)

Mike Meyer mwm at mired.org
Wed Feb 5 12:02:20 EST 2003 
"Brandon Van Every" <vanevery at 3DProgrammer.com> writes:
> Geoff Gerrietts wrote:
> > if Linux gets too
> > much more user-friendly, it will no longer be expert-friendly.
> That's false.

Some linux distributions are already so user-friendly they are no
longer expert-friendly. At least one did all the evil things that
Windows does on install - installing a windowing environment I didn't
want, refusing to complete the install until X was configured (never
mind that I wasn't going to ever run an X server on that platform),
and overwriting the boot blocks with something that ignored the
previously installed OSes.

Other linux distributions are quite expert-friendly.

> There's a parametric range (t) from 0.0 to 1.0 of how user-friendly
> an OS is.  Linux can certainly afford to be slid forwards on the
> scale, and can certainly do so for quite a bit before losing
> expert-friendly stuff.

Linux is just a kernel. It can't really do anything about being more
user-friendly. The software bundled by the distributers can get more
user-friendly. They can probably do it without creating something as
friable as the registry, and remaining expert-friendly.

> It's only at the extreme end of the scale that it starts getting too
> dumbed down.  Unwillingness to solve ease-of-use problems is just
> engineer laziness / lack of motivation.  Sure it takes more energy
> to solve power user + newbie user design problems simultaneously.
> That's called innovation.  The payoff is greater industrial
> productivity.

The Open Source community is the only one that's trying to solve power
user + newbie design problems simultaneously. At least, parts of it
are. Other parts are trying to provide other things.

> > Already, many apps are building crappy-assed GUI configuration tools,
> > and using them as an excuse to leave the majority of the system's
> > configuration undocumented. It didn't used to be that way.
> There is a price to pay for industrial scaleup.  To become a mainstream OS,
> you have to deal with large-scale ease-of-use issues.

True. But you don't have to neglect power users to do it. But that's
the fastest way to get new features in.

        <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.
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