[ltp] Slackware on T42?

[André Wyrwa]

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Hi,

> > I feel your pain...but remember Open Source is all about choice and
> > freedom.  If you don't like a text editor you're using, there are a
> > hundred to choose from=20
> This is exactly the problem.  Too many choices are overwhelming to
> most end users and pushes GNU/Linux even further from being ready for
> prime time.

Joshua, i'm loosing your point.

First of all i doubt that the distros don't get a grip on the
non-techies because of them being overwhelmed by too much choice. I'd
rather think the problem with too many efforts in the open source world
is the feeling that this power should be joined into single projects to
make them improve faster. But i think that there are these joined effort
projects who make non-techie-desktop-users switch to open source
software (Mozilla, GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice, ...) and i also think that it
is good to have the diversity we have.

Second, i doubt that the linux world has much more text editors than the
windows world (a search for "text editors" brings 227 results on
freshmeat, but 365 in the windows category of download.com). You just
have more choice in the linux world because they are all for free, while
in the windows world the bigger part of them gets out of scope because
you have to pay for them.

Third, i'm quite sure that there are more MP3 players in the windows
world than in the linux world, not to talk about DVD players. However, i
don't wanna know how many Windows users stick to one of only three of
those lots of available players.

I think that your impression of too much choice doesn't come from the
existence of too many projects, it comes from the fact that all of them
are available for you. Your trouble is that in the Linux world everyone
tells you that you are the one who has to choose, while in the Windows
world certain companies try everything to keep the slightest trace of
such an idea from rising in you.

The only true reason for not having much choice in a Windows world is
that certain companies established proprietary non-open
"standards" (which is understandable because standardization wasn't a
property of the computer industry in its immature youth) and still try
doing so (which is plain immaturity). This cuts off a whole lot of
choices for you - because there are actually a lot more of them, you
just don't consider them at all, because they might limit your
interoparability.

And you might also have the feeling that you can't manage to be
competent about Linux the same way as one can be competent about
Windows. There are no Linux system administrators in the sense of
Windows system administrators. Or actually there are, but in truth they
are SuSE administrators or RedHat admins or whatever.

If you don't like choosing too much, stick to what your distro
recommends you. But in the end i think your problem is less that there
is too much choice, but rather that you can feel it more.

Andre.

PS: Personally i think that "having not enough time" is nothing but an
expression of choice.


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