🚀 go-pugleaf

In <40ne7k$861@tbd120.tbd.ford.com> rampson@ave050.ve.ford.com (Chris"Big-Kahuna"Rampson) writes:

>Brian Hoort (hoortbri@pilot.msu.edu) wrote:
>: Sounds like Linux to me.  Any features you don't find in Linux could be
>: implemented personally.  Source code included.  I'm reading news at this minute
>: with Netscape under Linux and X11R6.
>: Its' already here.
>
>I am of the opinion that the smaller the OS, the easier it is to understand.
>This makes Linux "harder" to understand. Now I'm talking about Joe Average,
>you know the blue-collar guy that wants a computer to do good things for
>him. Is this guy capable of debugging a very complicated multi-tasking
>system with hundreds of commands? 

Is this guy capable of debugging MS-Windows, which is considerably easier
to break than a properly installed Unix box?

>UNIX is a 2-edged sword - it is a
>wonderfull multi-tasking OS, that you can configure endlessly. It is also
>VERY complex, which is why it has never "caught-on" with the masses. An

It has never "caught-on" with the masses because it was never preloaded
on cheap PC's.  And this didn't happen because the early PC's couldn't
run it decently and there was no big market force behind it.  MS wasn't
particularly interested in promoting Xenix and preferred to sell it.

Today it's way too late, Windows has the market and MS has the marketing
force to keep the status quo.

>educated, intelligent, persistant person can use it quite well, but how
>about Mr. high-school diploma (GPA 2.1) and working on the "line" all day.
>Can he grasp the UNIX ideal? 

All he has to grasp is a dozen of simple commands or a GUI.  But where
are the cheap and easy-to-use applications, waiting for Joe User to buy
and use them?  When FrameMaker will cost about as much as Word and
something similar to Excel will be available, at a similar price, Unix
on the personal computer will stand a chance.  Until then, it will be
used only by people who need more than Word and Excel from their
computers (and who don't miss these "killer" applications :-)

>Yeah I know you can make a GUI slick install
>program that does it "all" for him, but what happens when errors start
>popping up?

What happens when errors start popping up on Windows or MacOS, which are
more error-prone than Unix?  Can Joe User fix them?

Dan
--
Dan Pop
CERN, CN Division
Email: Dan.Pop@mail.cern.ch 
Mail:  CERN - PPE, Bat. 31 R-004, CH-1211 Geneve 23, Switzerland