Re: [tlug] Corona and schools in Japan

["Daniel A. Ramaley" <daniel.ramaley@example.com>]

On 4/30/20 12:51 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
>  > So strange that it was released with such obvious faults.
> 
> Could it be a GNOME vs. KDE kind of thing?  X vs. Wayland?

Maybe? I use a pretty basic environment. AfterStep window manager on
X.org with no "desktop environment". My environment tends to be
compatible with everything.

> Aside from the usual M$FT-bashing, I think it's a good sign that Linux
> on the desktop has become a factor they can't ignore.  I wouldn't be
> surprised if the developers are running Linux in a Windows-hosted VM
> or just using the POSIX API, too, rather than running it on native
> Linux distros with no Windows support.

I've been impressed with the direction MS is going. They are doing a lot
better than the Ballmer days when Linux was a "virus".

Intriguing idea that maybe they develop in a half-baked environment. I
hadn't thought of that but it would not surprise me.

> The "no dependencies" thing seems weird, too.  I guess that's because
> they have some kind of Windows emulation API built into the application.

It's an "electron" app. I'm not real familiar with what that means, but
some cursory research tells me it is Chromium bundled up with custom
JavaScript and other stuff to make a web page act more like an
application. I'm guessing the Chromium bundled in it is compiled static.
That's one easy way to avoid dependencies i suppose. Don't a lot of
Android apps work similarly, where the app is just a bundled web page?

> I think it's a cultural difference.  They're used to the unnecessary
> complexity of Windows UIs.  And after all, mastery of complexity is
> satisfying, even if objectively speaking the complexity is
> unnecessary.  I feel that way about LaTeX and HTML, for example,
> although for almost all of my day-to-day purposes Markdown[1] is plenty. :-)

I tell the Windows users i work with that i'm not bright enough to use a
GUI. They are too hard and i need the simplicity of the command line. I
get some strange looks when i tell people that. :) I do use a GUI e-mail
client and web browser, but other than that mostly use X just as an easy
way to have multiple terminals on the screen at the same time.

__
Daniel Ramaley
Server Engineer 2, Information Technology Services
Drake University

T: +1-515-271-4540
W: https://www.drake.edu/its