Re: tlug: diald (was: mouse fixed; now what about email)

["Jonathan Byrne" <jpmag@example.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Karl-Max Wagner <karlmax@example.com>

>that Linux is a helluva lot more sophisticated than
anything M$
>churns out. Like a Jeep compared with space shuttle.
Astonished
>that it is easier to operate a Jeep than a space shuttle ?

In some areas that is certainly true, but not all areas.
Don't get me started about the primitive, mainframe-era
printing system that gives you practically no control over
your printer.  The (!')'#! Ghostcript driver doesn't even
let you choose which print quality level you'd like, even if
your Deskjet has three different ones (mine does), nor does
the Unix printing system allow for setting your paper size
in the application, etc.  Even MS-DOS was never this bad in
those areas.  If that's sophisticated, a Trabant is a
Rolls-Royce.  I'd love to see that printing system step into
the twentieth century, but don't expect it to do so until
well into the twenty-first :-(

The GUI is a problem area too, in terms of being fragmented
with no real standard, in terms of widgets sets that start
at second-rate and go downhill from there towards butt-ugly,
and in terms of generally not providing a lot of the little
niceties and smoothness that you get from some other
platforms, and yes, I was very happy to see an article on
this in the May issue of Linux Journal.

>What is difficult with PPP ?

A great deal, on Linux and FreeBSD.  Lots of people have
lots of difficulty getting a connection established.  That's
why all those how-tos are out there, and in spite of them,
people still have problems.  MacOS and Windows95/NT 4 have
their problems, but they both are a lot easier to set up and
manage than Linux, especially if you want to have multiple
connections (yes, X-ISP apparently solves this problem for
Linux, but how many distributions have it?).

>Neither Mac OS nor Windows have been *designed* with
networking
>in mind. Linux has.

Linux is designed with networking through an Ethernet card
in mind, not dial-up stuff.  The configuration software for
dial-up networking could be better on Windows 95, and on the
Mac front Open Transport PPP is just awful (best thing to do
with it is rip it out and use FreePPP 2.6 instead), but they
are a lot easier to set up than what usually ships with
Linux.  Because I don't have a phone line or a modem to test
it with, I have not yet tried X-ISP (poor me only has
Ethernet connections to the Net :-)    ), but it appears
that it may solve these issues quite well and actually
present a better solution than what there is now on not only
Linux, but also on MacOS and Windows 95.

>Hmmm....and users have no fucking idea of init strings, DNS
etc.
>etc.....good luck.

But you shouldn't *have* to know, that's my point.  If the
interface of the software is *done right* (yes, I know how
rare that is), all you should have to do is type in the
information your ISP gives you for your DNS servers, userid,
password, etc., and hit the Connect button.  And you should
be able to type this in all on one screen, not scattered
around like in MacOS and Windows 95.  X-ISP seems to address
this problem.  Modem init string?  If you know what it is
and how to use, yes, it's good to know.  But more than a few
modem makers don't even put this in their documentation
anymore.  And it shouldn't be something you *have* to know;
the init string should be something that can be/is looked up
in your system's modem database, or provided by the driver
that comes with the modem.  Right now this is still
problematic for Linux because we aren't so big yet that
modem manufacturers will ship with drivers.  But it could
still be mostly worked around by assembling a modem database
like the one for video cards and monitors that now exists:
as long as your monitor is on the list and your video card
is on the list, it's really easy to set this up in
TurboLinux, and that's the way it ought to be.  Modems are
the next frontier in this area, I think.  I'd like to see
printers be the one after that, but I expect printer support
on alternative OSes to continue to stink for a long time to
come.  I'm just lucky that my home printer is sort of
supported under Linux (that is, it works, but most of its
capabilities are ignored by GS).

>Don't forget: TCP/IP networking is not child's play.
Networking
>in general IS complicated stuff and many problems are not
even

That's true, which is why this is an area where developers
need to really excel.  MacOS and Windows95 are most of the
way there on this.  A person with some experience should
never have a problem, but they still do tend to throw curves
for beginners.  Yes, I know that if people would just go to
the book store and buy one single $"')&='! book about how to
use their computer they would have 90% less trouble.  But
since we know a lot of people won't, we need to make
software that is as hard for them to screw up as possible.

Linux has made/is making one of its life-cycle transitions,
from the hacker phase to the mainstream developer/other
computer professional/power user phase, and is also entering
the business/enterprise phase.  As it penetrates into that
area further and further, there is going to be more and more
demand for the kinds of tools that I'm talking about, and
companies that make them are going to make money (PHT and
Red Hat seem to know this very well).

Right now in the business/enterprise phase Linux is
primarily being used as a server platform, and is slowly
making progress toward becoming a business workstation, but
is still hindered by the relative lack of business apps
and - importantly - the inability of those apps to exchange
files with popular offices suites for other platforms.  But
this situation too will change/is changing now, and as Linux
begins to get looked at by companies as an alternative for
desktop use, there will be a lot of demand for things to
make it very usable for end users.

One point that seems lost on most of the current Linux
community is that hacking on shell scripts, recompiling
kernels, and the various other things that a lot of Linux
users take for granted as a daily activity is *not* using
your computer, unless doing those things happens to be your
job and you use your computer to develop those things.  For
everyone else, it is in reality something you have to do to
your computer to make it so that you can actually *use* it.
A computer is a tool.  A business tool.  An academic tool.
A tool for killing lots of monsters and blowing up
everything in sight :-)  If  auto mechanics had to spend a
large amount of his time working on their tools to make them
function instead of actually using their tools to fix cars,
they would be unhappy.  When they were working on their
tools instead of working on cars, they wouldn't be making
any money.

A computer is no different.  It needs to be low/no user
maintenance to the greatest extent possible, so that the
user can spend time *using it*, not fixing it.  IS staff
will say the same thing about it: they want to be able to
maintain and update it easily, with minimal fuss.  This is
an area where Linux is in good shape already, especially
TurboLinux.  Updating packages with TurboPackage is the
easiest thing in the world.  Neither Microsoft nor Apple
have anything like it (note to Scott: a future version of
TurboDesk should allow a network administrator to force-feed
updates to all the Linux boxes on the office LAN,
simultaneously.  Show MS what Zero Administration really
means :-)    ).

The fact that NT and Windows 95 provide a lot more of this
end-user ease of use stuff and still have a much shorter
learning curve is a big reason (other than the clout that MS
carries, of course) why NT is doing very well in business
these days as an alternative to the low end of the
workstation market, despite the fact that a Linux
workstation can actually be put together for less money,
because a Linux CD is a lot cheaper than NT, you only have
to buy one to set up all your workstations, and its greater
efficiency and optimization mean you need to spend less on
hardware to make it run well.  But Linux is doing well.
It's doing a great job of overcoming the credibility gap,
and some distributions are working hard to provide the kind
of professional administration tools and user ease of use
that business demands.  Those that don't are going to become
bit players.  Those who are going full speed ahead toward
that market will do great.  NT 5.0 probably won't hit the
streets for a year, and Linux is really going to squeeze NT
during that time, and even after 5.0 comes out, since Linux
tools are going to be so good by then.

Linux really can have the stability, the superiority, *and*
the ease of use.  The idea that "of course a computer is
supposed to be hard to use" is strongly rooted in the UNIX
community, and Linux is no exception.  Indeed, because of
its hacker background, Linux might be even worse :-)  As an
ex-mainframer, I've been there and done that, too.  I still
have a soft spot in my heart for a big honking IBM 3090 :-)
But I also fell in love with the PC way back.  The computer
as a tool usable by everybody is where the future is at.
Apple saw that, and the Mac was a huge success despite
Apple's common incompetence in business.  People really want
a computer like that.  Linux can be a computer like that.
Best of all, underneath all the nice tools, the config files
are all still there, and like you said, you hack on
TurboLinux that way yourself.  That's a best-of-both-worlds
situation that neither MS nor Apple offer, but Linux can do:
super tools for the person who doesn't want to get under the
hood, but complete access for the person who does.  That's
why I think Linux has a great future and why I really like
being a part of Linux: not so much for where we are today,
but for "where we wanna go tomorrow" :-)

Right now Linux is still an OS that I wouldn't recommend to
anyone who isn't an advanced user, or at least somewhat
knowledgeable and extremely adventurous :-)  But I look
forward to the day when it will be very much a case of "just
pour it in and it works."  That's one of the reasons I want
to learn to program: I want to beat Apple and MS at the
ease-of-use game :-)

Cheers,

Jonathan

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