newlinux
April 5th, 2007, 04:50 PM
I just was thinking about this the other day and thought I'd write this because my experience with OSs is probably a bit different than it is of people just starting to use computers today. It might be telling.
During the 80s I used commodores, apples, TRS80s and other computers at friends houses and at school. Even though windows was around, I never used it. Really I didn't use computers much at all until I got to college. When I got to college I used exclusively UNIX OSs because thats what they had in the labs (DECs, SGI, SunOS/Solaris, RSAIX). So to me, normal was X-windows with some version of a tab window manager. The ability to customize was great and I absolutely loved Unix. My first windows computer was a Pentium running windows 95. And I absolutely hated it. The user interface, the stability, all of it. I was used to command lines and X-windows. I eventually spent a lot of time putting netBSD on it and never booted to windows again. When I got to the work world however, everythig was windows. I eventually sold my computer and so I went a good 10 years using windows exclusively from 95-98-NT-2000-XP. I hated it at first but eventually I got used to its quirks. to me Windows was weird and UNIX was normal. But eventually I got used to windows and it was fairly easy for me to use.
Last year I decided I wanted to go back to UNIX. I read a few articles and was intrigued by the free software, and how for it had come, package management, and I had missed it quite a bit after really thinking about it. I chose Ubuntu because of the reviews and at first it seemed weird to me after using Windows for so long. Plus, it seemed nothing like my old netBSD machine - desktop environments instead of windowmanagers? Who knew? :). It actually seemed a lot more like windows. But I took the time to learn, and slowly relearned some of the mastery I had of the commandline and now I love it for many reasons. It is easy to do most things from the GUI, and I can still use the CLI too. I now also know a ton more reasons why I prefer Linux...
What's the point of this rambling? Well, I just had something on my mind mostly. But I wanted to point out that what OS seems normal has a lot to do with simply what you are exposed to and use a lot. for me, Windows was strange, but I eventually got used to it. For Windows users, Linux will be strange, but if they spent as much time using Linux as they did Windows, they'd be fine. It's all about taking the time to get used to using a system. They do things differently, but it's about adjusting. People just have to be willing to take the time to learn. I don't think one is a ton easier to use than another - especially with the advancements in the desktop environments. Stick people in a foreign country speaking a foreign language and eventually they'll speak the language...
During the 80s I used commodores, apples, TRS80s and other computers at friends houses and at school. Even though windows was around, I never used it. Really I didn't use computers much at all until I got to college. When I got to college I used exclusively UNIX OSs because thats what they had in the labs (DECs, SGI, SunOS/Solaris, RSAIX). So to me, normal was X-windows with some version of a tab window manager. The ability to customize was great and I absolutely loved Unix. My first windows computer was a Pentium running windows 95. And I absolutely hated it. The user interface, the stability, all of it. I was used to command lines and X-windows. I eventually spent a lot of time putting netBSD on it and never booted to windows again. When I got to the work world however, everythig was windows. I eventually sold my computer and so I went a good 10 years using windows exclusively from 95-98-NT-2000-XP. I hated it at first but eventually I got used to its quirks. to me Windows was weird and UNIX was normal. But eventually I got used to windows and it was fairly easy for me to use.
Last year I decided I wanted to go back to UNIX. I read a few articles and was intrigued by the free software, and how for it had come, package management, and I had missed it quite a bit after really thinking about it. I chose Ubuntu because of the reviews and at first it seemed weird to me after using Windows for so long. Plus, it seemed nothing like my old netBSD machine - desktop environments instead of windowmanagers? Who knew? :). It actually seemed a lot more like windows. But I took the time to learn, and slowly relearned some of the mastery I had of the commandline and now I love it for many reasons. It is easy to do most things from the GUI, and I can still use the CLI too. I now also know a ton more reasons why I prefer Linux...
What's the point of this rambling? Well, I just had something on my mind mostly. But I wanted to point out that what OS seems normal has a lot to do with simply what you are exposed to and use a lot. for me, Windows was strange, but I eventually got used to it. For Windows users, Linux will be strange, but if they spent as much time using Linux as they did Windows, they'd be fine. It's all about taking the time to get used to using a system. They do things differently, but it's about adjusting. People just have to be willing to take the time to learn. I don't think one is a ton easier to use than another - especially with the advancements in the desktop environments. Stick people in a foreign country speaking a foreign language and eventually they'll speak the language...