Adieu, Fedora

[Tim]

On Sun, 2011-06-12 at 20:04 -0700, James McKenzie wrote:
> Yes.  To grow the desktop, we need to start embracing the common user.
> There are a limited number of geeks and they cannot sustain Linux.
> Not at a financially viable level...

Hmm, well, you really *need* to be a geek to sustain Windows.  What with
all the security flaws, and it continually shooting itself in the foot..
The un-geek just doesn't understand how to use it, nor know how to deal
with its problems.  That's why the world is chock-o-block full of
Windows viruses, trojans, and other nefarious malware.

> I would love to see the folks in Redmond squirm.  Windows has so many 
> problems that it should be banned from anywhere where reliability is 
> key.  Go to your local hospital and see what they are running.  It 
> scares me that they are running WindowsXP/Vista/Seven on the front end
> and WindowsServer on the back.  I would, from a security viewpoint,
> love to see this replaced with Linux and running a secure UI program.
> This is easier on Linux than Windows...

And this is an entirely different kettle of fish.  A commercial
installation can be anything, it doesn't have to be an OS that the users
are already familiar with.  And it's almost guaranteed that applications
that employees use will be specialised, there will only be a limited
number of different applications installed, and they'll be different
from what they're used to, so training would be required.

Go to a bank, and you may find that they're using ordinary PCs at the
teller stations.  But what they're running is a telnet client, or remote
GUI, for their special application.  So while booting up a machine may
seem familiar, actually using it for the job isn't standard Windows
territory.  The operator just needs to know how to fill in their form.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

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