jobezone
August 22nd, 2005, 02:49 AM
"This is really what's wrong: Coders don't care. Elitists don't care. Linux is controlled by coders and elitists." Answer: If coders or "elitists" weren't controlling linux, linux wouldn't exist. Period. This isn't even disputable.
I'm back to commenting on old blog comments again, and this is what I wrote following the quoted comment above, here http://skaznak.blogspot.com/2005/08/insight-gnu-source-installer.html. People may think I have some special agravation or dislike for autopackage, but what I really dislike is some of the nonsense or half-truths that usually arise when people get together and discuss these matters. It does in no way mean, that I live in a happy, happy place, far, far away inside my mind, where all is good and fine with free software and its usability.
Anyway, here it begins:
" "This is really what's wrong: Coders don't care. Elitists don't care. Linux is controlled by coders and elitists."
If coders or "elitists" weren't controlling linux, linux wouldn't exist. Period. This isn't even disputable.
Linux, or free software development in general, has over the years been developed with programmers, coders, engineers mostly in the helm, of course with many exceptions. But in the majority this is still true today. These various and diverse group of people have been developing some part of this huge ecosystem.
The most positive outcome of this is the lack of virus, spyware, and less instability, breakage, and lack of most of the obscure problems which plague other rushed-to-complete-the-deadline systems. These kinds of problems are the most obscure and unintuitive to users: They can't understand what happened with their system, why it happened, and what they can do about it.
The less positive outcome has been a lack of usability design oriented to non knowledgable users, such as desktop, gammers, etc. users. But nevertheless effort has always been made towards this over the years. The most recent developments of both Gnome and KDE putting into use usability principles on the design of their desktops, being a prime example of this.
In fact, any piece of graphical software you see on your system is usually at the head of a long line of previous less usable software (graphical or not). For example, the first proponent of easy package management in Debian was apt-get (and still is, the reason why many use it still). From there, new ideas arised, and dselect gave a visual window to package management. Then aptitude, which improved on the interface, and introduced new important features.
Now synaptic, which while it lost some cool funcionality of aptitude, gave a full graphical and easy acess to package management. Tomorrow gnome-app-install which abstracts the packages into applications, making it easier to browse, search and install applications.
In the future, who knows? The point will always be to make it easier _and_ better for users of any kind to completely manage software when using a Debian system. Easier and more intuitive to use, but also stable, secure and functional.
This is what these "elitist" coders have been developing over the years. Perhaps slower than others, but better as well."
I'm back to commenting on old blog comments again, and this is what I wrote following the quoted comment above, here http://skaznak.blogspot.com/2005/08/insight-gnu-source-installer.html. People may think I have some special agravation or dislike for autopackage, but what I really dislike is some of the nonsense or half-truths that usually arise when people get together and discuss these matters. It does in no way mean, that I live in a happy, happy place, far, far away inside my mind, where all is good and fine with free software and its usability.
Anyway, here it begins:
" "This is really what's wrong: Coders don't care. Elitists don't care. Linux is controlled by coders and elitists."
If coders or "elitists" weren't controlling linux, linux wouldn't exist. Period. This isn't even disputable.
Linux, or free software development in general, has over the years been developed with programmers, coders, engineers mostly in the helm, of course with many exceptions. But in the majority this is still true today. These various and diverse group of people have been developing some part of this huge ecosystem.
The most positive outcome of this is the lack of virus, spyware, and less instability, breakage, and lack of most of the obscure problems which plague other rushed-to-complete-the-deadline systems. These kinds of problems are the most obscure and unintuitive to users: They can't understand what happened with their system, why it happened, and what they can do about it.
The less positive outcome has been a lack of usability design oriented to non knowledgable users, such as desktop, gammers, etc. users. But nevertheless effort has always been made towards this over the years. The most recent developments of both Gnome and KDE putting into use usability principles on the design of their desktops, being a prime example of this.
In fact, any piece of graphical software you see on your system is usually at the head of a long line of previous less usable software (graphical or not). For example, the first proponent of easy package management in Debian was apt-get (and still is, the reason why many use it still). From there, new ideas arised, and dselect gave a visual window to package management. Then aptitude, which improved on the interface, and introduced new important features.
Now synaptic, which while it lost some cool funcionality of aptitude, gave a full graphical and easy acess to package management. Tomorrow gnome-app-install which abstracts the packages into applications, making it easier to browse, search and install applications.
In the future, who knows? The point will always be to make it easier _and_ better for users of any kind to completely manage software when using a Debian system. Easier and more intuitive to use, but also stable, secure and functional.
This is what these "elitist" coders have been developing over the years. Perhaps slower than others, but better as well."