Mac for inept user?
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From: Jim on 20 Mar 2010 11:22 Conor <conor(a)gmx.co.uk> wrote: > > Because for all its faults OS X is still about 100x easier to use than > > any Linux. > > > > And yes, I've tried a few. > > > Any recently? Yes. Current SuSE+whatever-KDE-is-current-this-week. Took me 20mins to work out how to set the onboard ethernet to DHCP or, in fact, exist. This on a fairly standard 2 or 3year old Fujitsu tower. No weird hardware. It's a mess. It's a very _pretty_ mess, granted, but it's still a mess. Jim -- http://www.ursaMinorBeta.co.uk http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK Please help save Bletchley Park - sign the petition for Government funding at: (open to UK residents and ex.pats) http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/BletchleyPark/ Thank you.
From: Chris Ridd on 20 Mar 2010 12:00 On 2010-03-20 15:22:20 +0000, Jim said: > Conor <conor(a)gmx.co.uk> wrote: > >> The Gnome desktop is very similar as Mac OS X. I can only assume you've >> not used it recently. In fact, some things are actually easier to do >> with Gnome. > > James Jolley is blind. Literally, actually blind. As in 'has no sight'. > > How does a modern Gnome or KDE desktop cope with that? Honest question, > I genuinely don't know the answer. > Sun added a *lot* of accessibility code to GNOME, so that they could ship it in a commercial operating system. -- Chris
From: Jim on 20 Mar 2010 12:01 Chris Ridd <chrisridd(a)mac.com> wrote: > > How does a modern Gnome or KDE desktop cope with that? Honest question, > > I genuinely don't know the answer. > > > > Sun added a *lot* of accessibility code to GNOME, so that they could > ship it in a commercial operating system. That's good to know. Jim -- http://www.ursaMinorBeta.co.uk http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK Please help save Bletchley Park - sign the petition for Government funding at: (open to UK residents and ex.pats) http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/BletchleyPark/ Thank you.
From: Chris Ridd on 20 Mar 2010 12:05 On 2010-03-20 16:01:50 +0000, Jim said: > Chris Ridd <chrisridd(a)mac.com> wrote: > >>> How does a modern Gnome or KDE desktop cope with that? Honest question, >>> I genuinely don't know the answer. >>> >> >> Sun added a *lot* of accessibility code to GNOME, so that they could >> ship it in a commercial operating system. > > That's good to know. There are blind OpenSolaris (uses GNOME) users, so there are probably blind Linux users too. I don't know if they provide all the different things that blind users might need, but they provide at least a bare minimum. -- Chris
From: Bernard Peek on 20 Mar 2010 12:15
On 20/03/10 15:22, Jim wrote: > Conor<conor(a)gmx.co.uk> wrote: > >>> Because for all its faults OS X is still about 100x easier to use than >>> any Linux. >>> >>> And yes, I've tried a few. >>> >> Any recently? > > Yes. Current SuSE+whatever-KDE-is-current-this-week. > > Took me 20mins to work out how to set the onboard ethernet to DHCP or, > in fact, exist. This on a fairly standard 2 or 3year old Fujitsu tower. > No weird hardware. > > It's a mess. It's a very _pretty_ mess, granted, but it's still a mess. One of the things to note is that the more experience you have with Windows or Mac systems the harder you may find it to work with Linux. It's the same if you are switching to Linux or Mac from the other systems. It's difficult to unlearn what you currently consider to be intuitive. Linux has, barely, reached the point where I could recommend it to a naive computer user. It wouldn't be significantly harder to learn than any other GUI system. There used to be a training course called "Computing for the Terrified." Someone who is terrified of breaking their computer by inadvertently clicking on the self-destruct button won't be able to experiment enough to learn any GUI. Once they get past that point most people will be able to learn to use any system. This extends to the increasingly rare need to use a CLI. -- Bernard Peek bap(a)shrdlu.com |