Yeah, Linux does seem to be the weak point. I've realised how much I love the way that Windows Just Works; you don't have to spend half an hour configuring things through the command line to get it to work.
I'm with you though in wanting to use Linux, because I think it's more suited to the eee than WinXP. But Windows is looking more and more tempting the more I think about it...
Lucy
· 1 year ago
As a comparitive lay-person when it comes to computer hardware and programming and operating systems and stuff like that, I have great sympathy with your comment "You can do anything you like, assuming you know how to do it". What I dislike about systems like Linux, about technology like the Asus Eee (from the sounds of it), is that they are made unnecessarily inaccesible to the vast majority of computer users - it wouldn't take that long for someone to write an understandable explanation of what these things are and how they work. But instead they just bury everything under a swathe of acronyms, which makes everything seem to complicated, and therefore elitist.
I say a 'comparitive lay-person' because this is coming from someone who is interested in computers, is logically 'wired' (as 'twere) and can program to a reasonable level in Java...
Lucy
· 1 year ago
*too
Dickie
· 1 year ago
"What I dislike about systems like Linux, about technology like the Asus Eee (from the sounds of it), is that they are made unnecessarily inaccesible to the vast majority of computer users "
To be fair to the Eee, it *is* pretty accessible to anyone. The stock user interface is really intuitive, its just that Andy and I want to do something that the stock UI wont let us do (which it really *should* do, but that's beside the point), and for that you have to jump to tweaking the version of Linux the Eee runs.
The thing with Linux isnt that its necessarily "elitist", its just that its only really made and used by techies, people who know how to (and/or enjoy) tweak the system to do what they want. There's not really been a version of Linux, that I know of, that's been made to Just Work in the same way that Windows does. You use Linux because you want to; you use Windows because it does the job.
Dickie
· 1 year ago
"The thing with Linux isnt that its necessarily “elitist”, "
All Comments
I'm with you though in wanting to use Linux, because I think it's more suited to the eee than WinXP. But Windows is looking more and more tempting the more I think about it...
I say a 'comparitive lay-person' because this is coming from someone who is interested in computers, is logically 'wired' (as 'twere) and can program to a reasonable level in Java...
To be fair to the Eee, it *is* pretty accessible to anyone. The stock user interface is really intuitive, its just that Andy and I want to do something that the stock UI wont let us do (which it really *should* do, but that's beside the point), and for that you have to jump to tweaking the version of Linux the Eee runs.
The thing with Linux isnt that its necessarily "elitist", its just that its only really made and used by techies, people who know how to (and/or enjoy) tweak the system to do what they want. There's not really been a version of Linux, that I know of, that's been made to Just Work in the same way that Windows does. You use Linux because you want to; you use Windows because it does the job.
i meant that it's *not* necessarily elitist...