On Thu, 22 Mar 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I believe the whole argument is pointless, since the mentioned pieces of
> software compete for totally different types of users. I really don't
> think that a mid-aged lady who wants to print out a birthday greeting
> would find much use in vi, or ed for that sake .. and so a programmer
> looking for an IDE wouldn't find Word very useful.
But I find it odd that this mid-aged lady will use a bloated word
processor for that purpose.
I would like to see people use more special-purpose programs, and I would
like to see word processors that are only word processors, and don't
function as greeting-card producer, mailer, etc. (with an added value of a
virii repository). I would like that word processor that is oriented for
writing letters and longer texts, and will allow to to focus on writing.
Current word processors want to be fancy text producers, and therefore
their user interface is oriented around visualization of the output. I
would like a word processor that will allow me to produce quality text,
and spend less time on formatting of the text.
(I can't get yet lyx to work properly on windows, hence the whining)
Actually one of the good things of linux distros is that you get all of
those smaller programs. I hope people really use them, and avoid (ab)using
star-office for things it is not meant to do.
[Nadav mentioned Redhat as "full". Mandrake, Suse (complete versions), and
mostly Debain are even more "bloated" in that sense)
> The differences comes down to the design philosophy of the discussed OS,
> where Linux is appreciated and loved for it's stability, configurability
> and trancparancy, and is somewhat of an 'intellectual elite' OS, while
> Windows design philosophy mainly comes out of marketing goals, which is
> top-level simplicity and ease of use,
I don't fully accept the term "ease of use". Some porgrams may be easier
to start with, but not easier to use.
For instance, a file manager that does not have decent keyboard bindings
is not considered easy to use IMHO (I never tried nautilus, but I heard
such things about it).
In other words, I don't like design that is meant for the non-users, and
leaves out the users.
> even if it would result in programs
> being inefficient and crawling and the OS being extremely buggy.
> It's a rule of thumb that there are more people who are in some state of
> technophobia than there are techie gurus who have all the time in the
> world to top-notch configure their beloved shrine of optimized
> compilation.
As for configuration: the default config of many programs on my linux
dstro is far better than the one I got in my unix accout at work. A local
guru (e.g.: the next-door kid, or the local sysadmin) can further help
much.
Another point: keep in mind the hardware manufacturers. They sure like
bloated programs (like ms-office, win2k, kde, gnome and mozilla) which
don't allow people to make the most out of older hardware.
> Sure, the borders aren't as clear as they used to be with all those KDE's
> and GNOMEs floating around and with the big money coming into this niche
> to market software and make it more "dumb user friendly" ..
> But still, I believe that comparison can be made simply from a subjective
> point of view.
--
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir
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