chulbert said:
Well, I thought about starting a new thread to reply, but this one's pretty much shot as far as my original intent anyhow -- which is OK. No one seemed to reply who was new to the idea of linux. But the replies that did come were good; I've enjoyed the way it turned out.
I agree with you when I say Linux is for a more technical user than your average Joe. That is why I carefully chose my words in my original post. I didn't avoid discussing things that most users have no experience with, because if they decide to try out Linux, they're going to end up experiencing them, and they have to be of that mindset. You will notice that I gave a description of what each unfamiliar term was in layman's lingo, so it was easy to understand if you aren't afraid of new things.
I think of the 23-year old salesguy at my office, who is not a "computer guy" by *any* stretch of the imagination, but he is very bright, and when I explain things as I did in my original post, he follows them very well. He had never heard of Linux before, but now that our entire office has been using it for some time, he quite likes it. (Although in fairness, I beleive some of his enjoyment is watching one of his disliked officemates struggle with the same Linux system.)
Unfortunately, I'll take the lack of replies from such people to mean they either aren't out there, or I did not explain it well enough.
English is a funny language. It's very difficult -- or impossible -- to distinguish between the singular and plural forms of "you." Therefore, I'm not sure how to take your rather rude comment.
If I choose to take it as singular, and you are referring to me, then you are mistaken as to my business. I program online credit card processing networks. I have no interest in the "desktop." I will, however, take the online processing market -- you just watch.
If I choose to take it as a plural, then I expect you are being prosaic, and you mean "the linux zealots" -- I would say "community" but the "community" has no interest in "taking," as you put it, the desktop market. Only the zealots do. Your comment is extremely out of place.
As you might have inferred from my comment about my office, I do have some experience exposing "the average joe" to linux in a controlled environment. And I have many regrets about taking our office to a full-on Linux environment. Not enough to outweigh the reasons we went to Linux, though, so as time passes I will only gain more knowledge of how the system lacks -- and in how it excels.
If I hadn't had that experience, I might have been so bold as to tell people to install linux, instead of asking them to check it out, risk-free. I know better than to do that. Linux isn't for everyone. It may not even be for most people. I *had* hoped to reach someone who would at least check it out as a new thing, though.
If you'd like to start a fight, you may start another thread for that -- I'd even be glad to get involved and throw a few zingers at you, assuming you present your own stance on what makes a good OS, so I don't attack strawmen...
-Chris
