[arachne] Re: User-friendliness or lack thereof in Arachne

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Eric S. Emerson wrote:

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

Hi Jason,
I am not saying and never did say
what is the "best operating system". I never even
suggested that there is a "best operating system."
What I did say is: "don't try to tell me that all the
programs that I have to run and maintain, and all the updates I have to take time to download,
and all the reboots I need to do, etc., etc., etc.,
are the same as puting air in my car tires. Maybe
for you it's common place because that's your
job.....that just proves my point. But, I put air
in my tires regularly, and I have personally
replaced my own car engines, every last bolt and nut, and believe me I know the
difference.

Maybe we're forgetting the prerequisite: 'If you chose to run windows...' then that stuff is the equivalent of putting air in your tires. As is making sure any hardware you want to buy is supported, if you choose to run linux.

And maybe you didn't say there was a best, etc. But this thread seemed to have an air of using dos and arachne is easier for the common user. Maybe I interpretted something incorrectly. And it is a hot spot for me to always hear that there is no way to avoid malware in windows. When there is and it's not even that hard.

I go back to, "Whatever you like is best." My favorite OS? MenuetteOS...if the fs stuff worked better :)

And it sounds to me like you
can say thanks to W.G. for providing you
with a great demand for your services.


Yes, I owe him one for that! Na, Bill doesn't deserve all the flack he gets. But I work on the mainframe, unix, and windows. Not just windows.

And, as far as your "friend" who thought
Linux was not that good for the average
home user.....I have heard and read that
opinion from many sources, so, your
"friend" is not alone in his opinion.


Of course he's not alone. That's the whole point. Professionals can be wrong. And in the case of selecting an OS for someone to use a blanket statement like saying one isn't good for the home user is risky and likely to be wrong. You should first check out the needs of the user, etc.

And the idea of linux not being user friendly really is outdated. Like the ideas that COBOL and DOS are outdated. All continue to evolve.

Starting from a reformat the time and ease is close enough for horseshoes to setup a machine with the common programs with linux, xp, dos or OS X(or close enough the difference isn't worth mentioning imho). Now, taking a look at the big picture, some of the negative trade offs are that xp costs money, there are hardware support issues in linux, and macosx costs money and locks you in on hw, and dos seems to be the hardest to get a working environment that will do all the tasks you want(in fact, I can't do many of the things I want to do in dos).

But I'm not the best guy to speak on the topic. I just know that it seems most of the time the 'headline' issues of one OS vs another are a bit overblown and when the big picture is considered they're all good and it's a matter of user choice as it should be.

I think the whole 'easy thing' is misleading anyway. Windows comes installed mostly these days. If dos or linux were the OS that were preinstalled, I think the opinion of what's easy would change a bit. One excersize I always do when I buy a new computer with windows installed is to reformat and install it fresh. The idea being to get support while I still can if I have things I can't install correctly. I log the issues and resolutions for future reference. There are always some drivers I can't get installed without support.

Since I like several OSs and am not rich, it comes down to price for me. So I tend to favor OSs that are free as in free beer licenses. I used to take the availability of FOSS on a platform into consideration. But these days there seems to be plenty for just about any OS.

OS to look for: reactos. By year's end, I think it'll be very interesting for many people.
Arachne at FreeLists -- Arachne, The Premier GPL Web Browser/Suite for DOS --

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