[sf-lug] what "consistency", not near the user - we don't got no consistency!

[Paul Ward]

On Jul 30, 2008, at 12:05 PM, Rick Moen wrote:

> Um, I didn't write most of that.  Maybe you should use a mail service
> that does competent quoting.  I'm not even going to try to untangle  
> that
> unholy mess.

Sorry that gmail doesn't meet your lofty quoting standards. Some of us  
have things to do in the day that might interfere with admining out  
personal mailservers.

Anyway, your (Rick Moen's) responses are quoted:


> You see a problem; I see something merely being itself.  Ain't
> perspectives grand?

Its a problem insofar as getting people to switch wholesale from  
windows to linux. I had no problem setting my grandfather up with  
Kubuntu, since he has virtually no experience with computers (and was  
mostly interested in the hardware), but I can imagine the problems he  
would have if I had given him the choice to run gnome instead, or  
another distro.

> Oddly enough, the big reason why I prefer to run Xubuntu rather than  
> OS
> X on my Macs is that OS X's implementation of Unix sucks at nearly  
> every
> level.  (I've used nearly every MacOS version going back to 1984, by  
> the
> way.)

OS X's unix works just fine for what I need it to do (perspective,  
right?). And I've used every version of the Mac OS as well. I even  
have my dad's original Mac, minus the boot disks, of course. I just  
couldn't bring myself to spend good money on the horror of OS 8-9, aka  
System 7.7

> Funny thing:  Just about every time someone says Linux "has to" do
> something or other, he or she turns out to be factually mistaken.   
> What
> you appear to mean is:  You would personally prefer that a vast
> community of people whose paycheques you do not sign _change_ what  
> they're
> doing at a very fundamental level, to do things in the way that you
> imagine is best, probably (I would speculate) while having an at best
> uncertain understanding of the details of what they do.
>
> I hope that works for you, but I've honestly never seen it work for
> anyone else, in the entire history of software.

Not at all. I thought we were talking about issues that end users have  
with various inconsistencies with the Linux experience and how to deal  
with that. I don't personally have any problems with the way that  
Linux is produced, although I do take issue with some of FSF's  
philosophical positions. I like trying out new distros and new desktop  
environments. I'm not afraid of poking around /etc to see what happens  
(although I tend to only do that in VMs now). From my experience, I am  
very much in the minority. That's why when I introduce someone to  
linux, I always give them a Kubuntu disk and don't even mention that  
there are other choices. To them, that's Linux.

Paul Ward
dssstrkl at gmail.com



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