-----Original Message----- From: fedora-list-bounces@redhat.com [mailto:fedora-list-bounces@redhat.com] On Behalf Of STYMA, ROBERT E (ROBERT) Sent: Monday, October 31, 2005 11:21 AM To: 'Robin.Laing@drdc-rddc.gc.ca'; 'For users of Fedora Core releases' Subject: RE: Linux killer!
If they are not supposed to be watching the videos on the school computers, then block them at the firewall as our business does. When they cannot watch them on Windows it won't make any difference.
I think the point is that if Linux is to make a bigger dent in the Windows desktop, more things have to "just work". In a similar experiment to the one which started this thread, I slowly converted a non-technical family with three computers from windows to Linux and recorded the issues which came up. (http://www.swlink.net/~styma/LinuxForTheMasses.shtml) The current distributions of Linux still need a technical person to get things working. The technical person would still have no clue as to how to get these things working. Many of them require a fair amount of research on the web. I understand the reasons mp3's and wmv's don't play right out of the box, but to get "Joe Sixpack" using Linux requires an update process simple enough for "Joe Sixpack" to use to get this functionality working.
If making Linux really simple is not working out, another model might be to have pay subscriptions to remote maintenance services. The FC3 and FC4 boxes I maintain for my friends I can access remotely via SSH and VNC. On a Windows box, if tech support cannot talk you through the problem, the user ends up taking the box in and paying big bucks. ssh, /etc/hosts.allow, and iptables could provide a very effective support mechanism. On my friends boxes, I am the only one with the root password, not that they would understand what root was anyway.
Just my 2 cents worth. My point is that Linux needs to be simple in addition to being better.
Bob Styma
Hi
I think the point is that if Linux is to make a bigger dent in the Windows desktop, more things have to "just work". In a similar experiment to the one which started this thread, I slowly converted a non-technical family with three computers from windows to Linux and recorded the issues which came up. (http://www.swlink.net/~styma/LinuxForTheMasses.shtml)
That case study makes up for nice reading but all of the technical enhancement requests should go into Fedora bugzilla for it to reach the appropriate developers. If there are licensing conflicts there might be other good solutions. For example, mp3 is well supported by Real Player or the Fluendo pack. If there is a no way to produce a open source solution that fits your needs you might need to get a commercial product.
regards Rahul
Timothy A. Holmes schrieb:
I think the point is that if Linux is to make a bigger dent in the Windows desktop, more things have to "just work".
Depends what you want. I surely can live without DRM provided by the entertainment industrie, and if I want it, I still can use some Windows somewhere. But on the boxes which I use for work or non entertainment internet connection, I'd prefer a malware and DRM free environment like the one Linux distributions are providing at the moment.
Regards Markus Huber
On Mon, Oct 31, 2005 at 11:42:15AM -0500, Timothy A. Holmes wrote:
I think the point is that if Linux is to make a bigger dent in the Windows desktop, more things have to "just work". In a similar experiment to the one which started this thread, I slowly converted a non-technical family with three computers from windows to Linux and recorded the issues which came up. (http://www.swlink.net/~styma/LinuxForTheMasses.shtml)
Nice work.
I believe a lot of the associations could be solved quite easily. Has Mozilla decided to look at /etc/mime.types (and/or users' own .mime.types files)? IIRC there was a time when it did not, but I thought that was supposed to be fixed. If so (or even if not), you're right, the distribution could easily provide better defaults for that stuff, a frustration I had for a long time... I decided to get around it by ignoring the whole issue, as I rarely have a real need to view most media types. Usually I just ignore them. It works, but it's far from an ideal solution. ;-)
To be honest, I dislike acrobat. I only use it when I absolutely must view a PDF file, and gpdf won't do it, which to date has never happened that I can recall. I used to have a hard time with xpdf opening PDFs made with recent versions of adobe acrobat, but that was quite a while ago. Have you tried gpdf? It should come pre-installed, and I think the interface is much nicer than Acrobat for Linux.
How did you install Java? I'd agree that the symlinks should be created for you by the installer... you shouldn't have to do that manually. Also some of the plugins' installers want to install in version-specific plugins directories, when it would be MUCH easier for the machine's maintainer (specifically avoiding using the term "sysadmin" here) if they would install them in the version-generic plugins directory (e.g. /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins instead of /usr/local/mozilla-x.x.x/plugins). Then when you upgrade your browser, you don't need to reinstall/copy/link/etc. the plugins all over again. Very annoying, and so easy to fix.
This was a nice read, and I agree with a lot of your conclusions.
On Mon, 2005-10-31 at 11:42 -0500, Timothy A. Holmes wrote:
Right now, there is no way that I would consider taking our school to linux for front end applications (stuffs not available for linux, and wine DOES NOT WORK (that's a whole other story but the time total on that one was about 20 hours before I gave up)
I think that all depends on what you need to do.
Earlier it was discussed how to do something that the school did not want to happen. For some reason, not being able to flout that rule was seen as a bad point.
If a school needed a system where students can research on the internet (browse and e-mail) but not play silly games, and use a word processor to type up their work, another program to mess with artwork, edit audio files for music studies, etc. Then it can do it. It is a good workhorse.
To me, it's the ideal thing to advocate to parents who wanted a PC so their child could do their homework, but not waste time and money on toys, games, and have to cope with an abundance of spyware, malware, etc.
It does the work. The user has to learn useful information to be able to mess around with games, and that's far more educational than just installing a game on Windows. But if they can't be bothered to learn about computing, then it's a tool that does the job mum and dad got it for.
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Derek Martin -
Markus Huber -
Rahul Sundaram -
Tim -
Timothy A. Holmes