Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on March 02, 2004 03:00 PM
I hear an elitist sentiment in this thread that resonates with something deep within I once believed myself but alas no more. I too believe that GNU/Linux is powerful and very useful and not for everyone, and I too (once) believed that therefore why should we try to make it so? Windows does a good job of configuring a standalone machine with a local printer and some sort of internet connection pretty cleanly most of the time from the average users perspective, which is what the average user wants and needs, so why not just let them have it? I mean who am I to tell them GNU/Linux is somehow better for their needs when clearly it is not?
Then along came Palladium and LaGrande and UnTrusted Computing and Software as a Service and Word/XML + virtual desktop patents and suddenly it became Really Clear that sure yes and I can sit back and enjoy GNU/Linux and let the Windows World go the way it wants and in five years I won't be able to buy the cool hardware that will do what I code it to or be able to email anything other than ASCII text with my family throughout the country, and all because the GNU/Linux community did not give The Great Unwashed a usable alternative back when it could have made a difference.
So there is the ideal, and the very real reality. The other very real reality is that a good, usable GUI involves a *lot* of thought, time, and tedious hard work. Even a have-decent GUI requires at least as much time and effort as whatever the program took that it is supposed to interface with. I know this from current experience. My hunch is the reason that so many Linux GUI's are so piss-poor is that the Free Open Source project just didn't have the programming time and resources to put on the GUI. That the original author underestimated the effort the basic underlying program would require in the first place, and there just wasn't anything left for the GUI.
So what GUI was implemented was done by someone else who did not thoroughly understand the application being GUI'd and the best they could come up with was a half-assed mindless wrapper around the underlying CLI, which is exactly the wrong model for a GUI.
Not that the GUI shouldn't necessarilly communicate through the underlying CLI, but that if all it does is wrap that CLI, what you end up with is 'zactly the problem ESR rants about, and that must be solved if private personal computing is to remain private, personal, and free.
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Re:to further question that great analogy...
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on March 02, 2004 03:00 PMThen along came Palladium and LaGrande and UnTrusted Computing and Software as a Service and Word/XML + virtual desktop patents and suddenly it became Really Clear that sure yes and I can sit back and enjoy GNU/Linux and let the Windows World go the way it wants and in five years I won't be able to buy the cool hardware that will do what I code it to or be able to email anything other than ASCII text with my family throughout the country, and all because the GNU/Linux community did not give The Great Unwashed a usable alternative back when it could have made a difference.
So there is the ideal, and the very real reality. The other very real reality is that a good, usable GUI involves a *lot* of thought, time, and tedious hard work. Even a have-decent GUI requires at least as much time and effort as whatever the program took that it is supposed to interface with. I know this from current experience. My hunch is the reason that so many Linux GUI's are so piss-poor is that the Free Open Source project just didn't have the programming time and resources to put on the GUI. That the original author underestimated the effort the basic underlying program would require in the first place, and there just wasn't anything left for the GUI.
So what GUI was implemented was done by someone else who did not thoroughly understand the application being GUI'd and the best they could come up with was a half-assed mindless wrapper around the underlying CLI, which is exactly the wrong model for a GUI.
Not that the GUI shouldn't necessarilly communicate through the underlying CLI, but that if all it does is wrap that CLI, what you end up with is 'zactly the problem ESR rants about, and that must be solved if private personal computing is to remain private, personal, and free.
Ed L.
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