[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Why is linux not popular



Hi Boris,

I'll try to answer you...

> 1. Until Linux is not  _TRULY_ layman friendly, it has no chance in the
> battle with MS-Windows and even with Mac-OS. I use RH7.1 and (with all my
> respect to it) it is less friendly than Workbench 2.1 that I used to use
> with my Amiga 500. Well of course there are lots of of help sources, but
> everyone I know (including 2 programmers) think that they are too
> complicated.

Well, I'm also an Amiga user (still use it with the UAE emulator under 
Linux). Yes, Amiga is very convinient to use much more then Linux today, but 
you're actually comparing oranges to apples - Amiga was built by an engineers 
for 3 years (from 1982) by J. Miner and some other briliant people (open an 
Amiga 1000 and look at the bottom of the plastic - you'll see all their 
signatures). Amiga also has a wonderful scripting language from IBM - the 
AREXX scripting language.

But Linux is totally different - it was designed from day 1 to be a Unix 
clone, with multi user support, and functionality came in priority of GUI - 
Unix people back then didn't give a damn about "spoiling things" like GUI - 
not like today.

If you want to see a progress in Linux - go ahead and install Redhat 4.2 or 
very old slackware (2.x) and compare it to Mandrake 8 or Redhat 7.1 - and 
you'll see how in less then 4 years made a HUGE progress. True - it's not 
enough to replace a Microsoft Windows workstation - but it's getting there - 
install KDE 2.2 and see what I mean...


> 2. HEBREW
> I think it would be a good idea if someone release a _READY_ Hebrew enabled
> distro. When I say ready, I mean that user has to be able to read and
> wright Hebrew immediately after the installation (with no need to run
> scripts, change files etc)

Well - thats the next step - both with KDE and GNOME. QT-3 right now has 
hebrew support out-of-the-box - switch keyboard and just type in hebrew - it 
will automatically switch to right-to-left. Same with the upcoming GTK 2.x - 
and I belive that once KDE 3.0 will be out (around January) and GNOME 2.0 
will be out (I belive also at the same time) - then you can use hebrew and 
read/write emails/letters/whatever u want to ...

I was trying to talk to some people to release some components to have some 
sort of hebrew support in a specific major app, but unfortunately the person 
gave me tons of unrelevant excuses that he/she can't (I won't say the person 
name or what app because everyone got their own problems and issues), which 
left lots of people (including me) out of luck regarding hebrew. Thanks to 
some good people in this group - hebrew is possible today, and I can tell you 
that I get tons of emails in hebrew (from outlook users) and I read them in 
KMail without any problem.

So it took more time - but it's coming - by the next major version of 
Redhat/Mandrake I'm almost sure you'll have hebrew right out-of-the-box and I 
will personally will assist both Redhat and Mandrake if needed to have this 
hebrew.

>
> 3. Developers (or: Microsoft conspiration)
> A friend of mine is a computer sciences student in a college (michlala) in
> Tel Aviv. Every student in that college (and in many others) can get freely
> MS-Studio from their library. More than that, they learn programming using
> this package in classrooms. It's like giving free examples of new (or old)
> medicines to doctors (I'm a pharmacist, and believe me it WORKS). Can
> anyone change this?

I know for example the College in Netanya are teaching Unix classes with 
Linux workstations ;)

Seriously though - ask your friend to take a look at KDevelop 2.0 which came 
out with KDE 2.2. When I was working at Magnifire I installed to everyone 
there KDevelop since almost all the users came from MS world - it took them 
around 10-15 minutes to find their preffered settings (and overload the NFS 
servers - heh, everyone wants their own background, fonts, tweaks, themes 
etc) and they liked it a lot. They liked it so much that someone asked me to 
install KDevelop ON the testing servers! (I didn't do it of course - I 
explained the person how to use the Konqueror LAN:/ extension to get/store 
files)

The joke at my work was when our new CEO saw the first KDevelop he called me 
to his office and told me that he didn't want any piracy and I should buy 
this KDevelop "thing" because he didn't see the license papers... it took me 
some time to explain to him that there is a good software in the open source 
world ;)

One more thing - rest assure that even people from Microsoft Israel 
development in Haifa are using KDevelop at home for example - and they love 
it. I know this because I forward their bug reports ;)

-- 
Hetz Ben Hamo
hetz@kde.org

=================================================================
To unsubscribe, send mail to linux-il-request@linux.org.il with
the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
echo unsubscribe | mail linux-il-request@linux.org.il