Quote:
Originally Posted by shalym
Ahh...but see, the people that I'm talking about are the ones who never really learned how to use Windows or DOS, either. They just want to pop in the disc (or click on a link) and do what they need to do. They don't WANT to learn how things work--they just want it to work without HAVING to know how it works.
Shari
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Which is a perfectly reasonable expectation. I don't know (or care) how my car works - I just want to get in it and drive it. The days when you had to be a mechanic to own a car are long gone; PCs should be a sufficiently mature product by now for the same to be true of them, too.
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And linux is, or can be, if you use the prepackaged configuration tools supplied by the most popular end-user distributions.
Rather than being conditioned by windows to expect that the path involves plugging in a CD and running "the software", linux expects you to find the software in the software center, or preinstalled.
But I suppose many people give up when the disk doesn't have the software (again, because it is already installed).
And as I said above, I have had to help people install printers on Windows, because as a user who doesn't care about how the computer works (it should just work on its own)... they were challenged and threatened by the need to plug things in and install software that isn't already a desktop shortcut -- and they gave up and called me instead.
Just popping in a disk is still a high bar, for the people who cannot figure out a point-and-click configuration wizard (which says "click here to search for printers"
).