On Wed, Nov 05, 2003 at 05:27:11PM -0700, Monique Y. Herman wrote: > > See my post in another thread. Different people have different visions > for the future of linux. Not all of us care whether or not it becomes a > desktop leader. Not all of us want it to be easy enough to use that our > moms are comfortable -- not if that means sacrificing security, > stability, or our beloved command line and text configuration files.
That's a very good point.
I'd like to add that Linux can already be easy enough to _use_ to make
Mom comfortable (plunk your average end-user down with pre-installed
KDE3, OO.o and Mozilla; I expect she'll be perfectly happy) , it's just
not that easy to _administer_.
I wonder if there's a future of full-time freelance sysadmins keeping
whole neighborhoods worth of end-users' home systems up-to-date
remotely. Like plumbers, but for your PC...
(well, you can't un-clog a toilet over ssh, but you see what I mean)
Seems to me that if an end-user (like Mom, for example) wants an easy,
secure, stable experience with a Linux box, she needs someone (friend,
family, paid help) to do the sysadmin maintenance stuff for her.
Of course, if she wants an equally good experience with a Windows
machine, she needs the same 'someone' to format it, install a working
OS, and *then* do the sysadmin maintenance stuff.
We're all here because we know that Windows achieves "easy" at the
expense of being hopelessly insecure and often broken. Maybe it's time
to start offering another choice to people who are fed up with Windows
but not ready to install/configure/admin a *nix machine.
Paying the occasional "sysadmin bill" might well come out to less than
what these people spend on the software itself now.
Cheers!
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