Quoting Siddhesh:
On 6/20/06, Rony ronbillypop@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
files. After I installed linux in his system, surprisingly he practically stopped calling. The only 2 times I have had to go to his
That's quite interesting. I noticed a similar behaviour with my mother in case of her quite successful) migration to GNU/Linux. The main reason for that seems to be buttons and dialogs actually explaining what it wants them to do. Anything kicks "OK/Cancel"'s a$$ ;-)
I just suffered a major Mac OSX crash...some hw problem that I haven't yet pinned down. But practically all my data is back now, thanks to third party proprietary software tools and loads of help from Mac users. Similarly, when I have problems with my RH9 installation, I get help from this and other users.
But in comparison, although there were some sneers here (I thought) about Mac's Unix framework, the level of help and ease of fixing a serious problem was a different grade. I am sure a command line recovery would have worked pretty effectively, but would have presented me with a steeper learning curve, instead of which I got a clear and simple graphic utility which allowed me to see my destroyed files and save them back to my remote hdd with a series of clicks.
I used to be a fairly neat hand at Windows, but can't even imagine wasting my time fixing its problems when they arise, and with the level of weaknesses and attacks commonplace today, that is just too often for my comfort.
Looking back on the last 15-16 years of Windows development, I just think that Gates lost control, and perhaps was seduced by the incredible success and money. Yes, you can fool most of the poeople most of the time, but for someone else to do it better takes a fresh approach - Apple had nothing to lose and so could gamble on Next's experience, but the Linux world does not seem to be quite grasped of the urgency of the opportunity - at least not in India.
I have seen some attempts from India to do creative things, but on the whole depressingly little - certainly too little for the kind of interest levels and keenness one sees on this and other lists. I don't know what the issue is, but instead of moaning about Gates' failures, we should look a little inward and evolve a way to bring out something better for ourselves.
Vickram
On Thursday 22 June 2006 05:20 pm, vvcrishna@radiophony.com wrote:
I have seen some attempts from India to do creative things, but on the whole depressingly little - certainly too little for the kind of interest levels and keenness one sees on this and other lists. I don't know what the issue is, but instead of moaning about Gates' failures, we should look a little inward and evolve a way to bring out something better for ourselves.
Depends on ur definition of "better". In the case of migrating businesses, one presumes a minimal infrastructure and tech saviness within the business (if not FIRRRST get this in place). In such cases migration is relatively very easy, and wasting time writing code for user stupidness is a thorough waste. But in the case of single user desktops no assumptions can be made. In this case it is not commecially viable to migrate to anything. Swicth from 98 to XP (with multiple user accounts and no admin access - typical setup for security) and u will have umpteen calls about any number of things. The number of calls is the same for Sarge with firefox (in addition to explaining why WMA is a problem). The time it takes to walk the user thru a problem is the same. However in linux remotely administering is a breeze. Just forget about anything remote under M$. In the 1st case GNU/ Linux shops settle down and within a few months calls are about sundry network and hardware problems (AND FIGHTING M$isms while interacting with external idiots). In the second case both systems would actually be very expensive, with Gnu/Linux having it's usual advantages (and allowing u to take home all the money). GNU/Linux is aeons ahead of M$ on almost all fronts, exceptions being corner cases of proprietory specs. If someone finds M$ "compatibility" so very important write code - which imo is like the stupid schemes we had in the past of making better bullock carts. We are better off concentrating on the future of computing - remote desktops, file systems, security, application development frameworks, voip, video streaming, wireless networks, encryption, routing etc., rather than thinking of sleeping with a diseased organistion which has no morals, vision, capability or leadership..
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jtd -
vvcrishna＠radiophony.com