[LINK] Legacy/high-end platform conversions to Linux/Intel a threat to Microsoft W2K

[Chirgwin, Richard]

Whoops, sorry about the sysadmin/user error, which was mine.

As for Win/Lin arguments, it's pure religion. Most Linkers are reasonably
expert; most users are not. Some of us install our own operating systems;
most people don't.

In the CLI versus windowing argument, though, I will toss an incendiary
comment in: there seems to be a belief abroad that you're somehow slacking
if you don't want to study computers. "Point and Click equals illiteracy".
Really, that's silly: it's saying "I enjoy this hobby, therefore those who
don't are somehow less than I". Nice fantasy, but I don't see any reason to
assign a value to someone solely on their command of commands.

A previous post said:
>GUIs are for the illiterate....but it's even worse than that.  
>GUIs actively promote & create illiteracy by attempting to 
>make literacy an obsolete skill.
...it left out an adjective. "Computer-literate" is not equal to "literate",
no matter how many times the MIT MediaLabs marketing fluff says "computer
literacy is the new literacy". Perhaps, having abandoned the expression "new
economy", we could now jettison the notion of a new literacy...

RC

-----Original Message-----
From: Danny Yee [mailto:danny@anatomy.usyd.edu.au]
Sent: Wednesday, 14 November 2001 9:11
To: Chirgwin, Richard
Cc: link@www.anu.edu.au
Subject: Re: [LINK] Legacy/high-end platform conversions to Linux/Intel
a threat to Microsoft W2K


Chirgwin, Richard wrote:
> The OS X difference is that it's explicitly a consumer offering. 

But we were dicussing it's appeal to system administrators, not
general users!  (And as a consumer offering OS X isn't quite there
yet -- there's a reason Apple is still shipping Macs with MacOS 9.2.)

> I know
> everyone who likes Linux believes Linux is easy. 

Well, having spent three days last week trying to install Windows
98 on a brand new computer. I'm more firmly than ever convinced that
Linux is no harder than Windows.  MacOS installs and reinstalls are
generally no problem at all, but it's easier for Apple than for Red Hat
or Microsoft, because they produce both the hardware and the software.

Danny.
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