Re: January meeting

[Craig Andrews <nospam [at] currantbun.com>]

OK, here we go then...

Damion Yates wrote:
>
> There is little or no good free s/w for Windows. There is so much free s/w
> for UNIX that if I won the lottery tomorrow and retired (I'm 25 as of the
> 7th Jan) I am safe in the knowledge that I could d/l and install and play
> with my system buying new HD's where needed until the day I die.

Did I ever say otherwise?

> You found a tool you can use remotely, or from a psion/phone / nokia9110
> communicator and you're complaining about what ?

Not me! Can't afford a psion/nokia9110!

> > 2) Ease of use. Many people who I work with still only know as much as is
>
> This is an odd point to be trying to make. Windows PC's scare people, I've
> had to be called out to go and click on a persons scroll bar in progman.exe
> because all her work icons had disappeared. Mac's are often a better option,
> but both are new to an absolute beginner. I _Seriously_ doubt that a
> pre-setup work machine running StarOffice would be any different to a
> beginner with Office2000. I'm not in a situation where we get completely new
> to computer people joining and needing to sit down for the first time to use
> a computer, but I'd feel confedent (these days) with the latest desktop
> environments, sure ISDN/Video/audio stuff can be hard, things are getting
> easier, but please remember that they are not easy in Windows either and if
> not setup initally on a fresh PC then can be so much hastle external help is
> needed to sort them out. And I'm always around for my Dad and friends as
> 'external' help for free Linux support.

Yes indeed.

> My Mum is in a situation where she deals with children just starting school
> (5/6) who are about to have their first look at computers. They used to have
> RiscOS boxes, but now The goverment has just signed a deal that should keep
> imperial interference away once and for al.... oops got carried away (watched
> The Empire Strikes Back last night) Now my taxes go to MS as our children
> are infected by this sick invasion in to our lifestyle, removing the
> knowledge that PC's have a choice of OS, leaving people thinking windows is
> like the BIOS. Soon there won't be people left who don't know anything about
> computers and so can pick and choose a system (be it OS/2, BeOS, NeXTSTEP,
> MacOS, RiscOS, Windows, Unix/X, AmigaDOS) everyone will be windows literate
> at our own expense I'm feeling sick about this as I write it.
>

My point exactly. Much of the IT world sees 'computer literate' and
'Windows literate'
as interchangeable terms. Personally, I never touched a copy of Windows
'til 96, before
using RiscOS on an A3020 and my BBC Master. The fact is tho, that now
Microsoft have
managed, not without help from the media, to 'allow' people to assume
that the
Windows way is obviously the best (and possibly only) way.

> > 3) Ease of maintenance. A great many people I know in the IT industry see
>
> I don't understand, you wouldn't have to get out of your seat, all admin
> could be done remotely with and with scripts to aid multiple problems etc.
>

See above, about the scroll bar thing. If the widgets don't look right,
people moan.
How would a company run entirely on Office97 survive the transfer to
StarOffice,
considering the problems caused by upgrading from Office 95?

I'm not talking system admin, just little things, like people clicking
icons to see what
happens, not like the result, and assume a faulty system!

> Many companies have switched from dos/win3.1 to Win95 (winfile.exe displayed
> Y2K as ;0 or some such other bug) for Y2 reasons. Switching to Linux would
> not require huge h/w upgrade and would also not be any more difficult to
> use.
>

True enough, again once the fear factor has been breached.

> > 4) Speed of deployment. Put simply, build a PC, install Win95, and be on
> > the network with Office97 and full network printer support in 3 hours. <--
OK, 1 or 2 at most. Geez
> > However, teaching a co-worker the most basic of commands (ls,cd,mkdir and
> > the like) took more time than I'd like. Although this is not that far
> > removed from MS-DOS commands, the fear factor prevents many people seeing
> > how elegantly simply the whole thing fits together.
>
> Huh?! It only takes a few minutes to install almost all of the new dists.
> Corel and Caldera took me about 30 mins and was system ready once finished.
> Win98, which I infested my system for for the first time ever took hours
> including having to repeatidly reboot and let it ask for manufacturers cd's
> for stuff like the gfx card drivers.
>

The beauty of Win98 is that it pretty much installs itself. However,
then it
also crashes itself, asks for driver CD's before enabling the CD-ROM,
etc.
SuSE has never given me ANY installation problems. Don't forget, I am
on
your side!!

As a few final notes (to clear the air):

1) The company I work for is NOT planning an operating system change.
Its all hypothetical.

2) All points raised were to stimulate discussion, and were not my
direct opinion

3) Linux is the best thing to happen to my PC since, well, since it was
built I suppose.

finally) Thankyou everyone who has given me responses to these points.
All appreciated,
and certainly kept me entertained over this last week or so. I
personally believe that
for the majority of computing tasks, Linux now has the upper hand in
terms of support,
availability and stability. I wouldn't trust Word to hand over control
to the screensaver,
even WITH autosave turned on, but StarOffice5.1 on my SuSE6.2 machine
just goes on and on
and on....

Keep up the good work, everyone,

Craig

Start your own FREE mailing list at

&copy; 2000 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved