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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
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