Why do people insist on using the “Granny test” when arguing if Linux is ” desktop ready”. I’m not refering to any particular piece of writing or site but I have to say I find the notion a little bizzare.
The PC as it stands is not a microwave, tv or other household appliance. Maybe in the future it’ll be seen like that but currently it’s not and that’s important. Firmware doesn’t get upgraded on household appliances and they generally have a single basic use unlike a PC. Has anyone in a marketing dept ever said “Take some of these buttons off the remote otherwise it’ll confuse grannies and aunts”? Didn’t think so. Hell, I use Linux, PHP, ASP and built my own machine. Can I manually program the video recorder? Can I fuck!
Some Linux distros can be difficult to install but then so can Windows. No, really. You give someone new to computing a Windows cd and tell them to install it. It should be easy but they won’t be able to do it alone because they’ve never done it before and will need reasurance. The obvious point here is that they don’t need to learn how because most new Pc’s come with Windows pre-installed. Granny will certainly never need to learn how to install Windows will she?
Unified Desktop? You show me any electrical equipment that has the same looking buttons in the same place across different models let alone makes. Granny uses something until it breaks down so she buys a new one. Are you telling me she’ll never use it because the buttons are different? No, she’ll adapt like the rest of us. If granny has never used a PC then she has no preconceptions otherwise use Gnome or KDE if she’s more comfortable with “bar” styles. There are ways to hide all that “confusing” text at startup as well.
There will never be a bell that goes off that says “Ding! Linux is desktop ready”. It’s the general public who’ll decide if it’s ready. We’ll only realise it after the event. Getting it onto machines that people will buy is the problem here not how they use it.
Monki Towers has been an Internet Explorer free zone for the last couple of weeks. Kim read a newspaper article about the various security issues and decided that was it. I wonder how many others thought the same. It probably coincides with the 1% increase in Firefox usage I read about recently.
Half the fun of getting software to run on Linux is trying to interpret the error messages. I finally got Evidence to run after going through the error messages and finally realising what it was it needed to run. It’d be really nice if someone wrote a utiliy that ran in the background that brought up a message box saying “Hey! you need to get this library to get this to work”, and no, I’m not talking about apt-get or it’s clones.
Still can’t get Skippy to compile though.
The GTK2 theme I’ve been working on looks nice but nothing more. There’s nothing special about it. Looks like I’ll have to rethink this one a bit.
On a slightly different tack, now that every Linux distro and their dog has a package management system which (supposedly) takes care of dependencies what’s the main selling point of Debian? I’ve never tried it so I’ve nothing good or bad to say but I’m curious.
We saw Spiderman2 last night and it’s not that different from the last one. The action bits are great. The rest is just slow. Sloooowwww. The comics never interested me so I guess that’s why I didn’t take to the films.
Staying with the subject of films I saw Awakenings recently. Since Good Morning Vietnam I’ve tended to avoid films with Robin Williams in them as I find them overly setimental and my sugar intake is already too high. We started watching as there wasn’t anything else on at the time but somehow I got caught up in it. While Williams was ready and willing to do his usual thing Robert De Niro’s acting made the whole thing watchable, although it didn’t need the pseudo happy ending the film makers gave it.
As people we tend to work around our shortcomings when doing things. Can’t get the hang of “a” but find “b” relatively straightforward? Then there’s a good chance you’ll use “b” 99% of the time and “a” only when you have too.
For a while now I’ve lived under the assumption that I’m quite good at the XHTML/CSS part of development. I suck at anything javascript related but can mockup a layout quite quickly but (and this is the key bit as it turns out) only if I’m working to my layout so I can do things my way.
I’m currently putting the finishing touches to my companys new web site. Being a print company we have plenty of graphic designers (and good ones at that) but all of them are used to designing to a size and having it stay that way. It’s been a trying time for both sides with some changes in direction from them and some embarresment from me:
Me: “No, you can’t do that I’m afraid”
Boss: “Well this site does it” - types in url
Me: “Ah…oh..er…well I’ll give it a go then”
Lets not forget the different browsers and platforms out there as well. Just when I think I’ve got it working ok on the pc side something doesn’t look right on the mac. Why is always someone else who spots these things?
I suppose it’s all part of the learning experience really and I just hope I haven’t come out of it looking too bad. We’ll see as they’re designing the site for a sister company and if they offer it to me then I guess I passed the trial by fire.
The kitchen is pretty much done and life is returning to a semblance of normality here at monki towers.
I’d written a rant on Aqua style themes but deleted it as I wasn’t really making much sense. If you’re going to make a case for something it may as well be coherent otherwise you just look an ass, which is something I’m quite capable of doing without needing to rant thank you very much.
I know I’ve been tired this week but I’m sure I saw an add for a 30″ flat screen monitor from Apple. I’m not sure I’d be too popular if I bought one of those home and I’ve certainly got more important things to spend the money on right now, but later? who knows.
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