Uptime
Heidi Bond bemoans the fact that because of ExamSoft, she has to reboot her computer and lose her precious uptime. Now, I'm no fan of Examsoft, but I can't say I'm that worried about the loss of uptime. In general, I shut down my machine every time I move it, so it doesn't matter that much anyway.
But uptime is mostly important for servers, and for what it's worth, the server back in my dorm room (Windows) hasn't been rebooted since... eh, since I took back my apartment over the summer, if I recall correctly. (I installed a new card when I came back, and I assume even Linux boxes have to be shut down before you attach electronics to the motherboard.) It chugs on just fine, although I admit it does nothing more than act as a webserver and occasional file storage. The only thing that's even asked me to reboot was, oddly, an Adobe Acrobat update, and I just ignored that.
In any event, I suppose I've pretty much tired of the OS Wars, and the various debates about which operating system is most wonderful. LINUX has its uses, but to date no one has been able to convince me it's worth switching for my PC. I'll consider it when I meet the casual LINUX user.
What do I mean by that? Simply put, every LINUX user I know is a computer specialist. Command prompts hold no fear for them. Mentally mapping a directory structure, and keeping track of locations without a visual interface doesn't terrify them. Rebuild their whole system from scratch? Not a problem.
Now while none of these things hold any fear for me--I remember IBM DOS 2.0, when the command "gwbasic" was actually useful--they're also not something I'm passionate about. Further, they're not things that any of the people I help with technology are passionate about, either. Usually, if I use a term like "uptime" around anyone with a computer that I'm fixing, my next words are something like, "That's how long your computer has been on for." To which eyes will roll, lips will mumble, and hopes that I can actually get their term papers recovered will be expressed.
I can't imagine these users installing or operating LINUX. Maybe Macintosh, a system probably more focused towards task-based users than even Windows, but not anything that requires--or even encourages--them to know what "grep" means. The need and the urgency isn't there, nor even the care for the computer itself. Many of the users I have worked with, personally or professionally, have brought me machines in states that can't hardly be blamed on the OS. This would include hinges falling off due to having been squashed in overful cases, corners damaged from frequent bumps and clangs, monitors with keyboard impressions... you get the point. These are not people who are going to dote over their hardware, much less their OS.
Which is why, at the end of the day, I can't get into the hate-Microsoft mentality. LINUX, to me, will be a great operating system when people are teaching their grandmothers to store recipes on it, and most of its "stability" advantages seem to me to consist of having much more educated users. Yes, Microsoft does its annoying thing occasionally, but it's not particularly bad if you know what you're doing. And if you don't know what you're doing... well, let's put it this way: I felt it a great leap forward for computing when terms like "Shut Down" started being replaced by "Turn Off." However much I may sometimes like a command line, I don't really want to see us go back to the age of Grep.
(For what it's worth, this blog runs off a LINUX server, and all of my blog maintenance involves Telneting back to England. As I said, it has its place and its uses. But whatever its other faults, Microsoft's proven quite good at moving computers from the fringes of usefulness to ubiquity. I'm not sure LINUX is helping that progress.)
Comments
Yup. Our current criteria for installing linux on the desktop here is 'when the user never needs to see a command prompt we'll do it'
To which I'd like to add a corollary of 'and when open office is a decent piece of software' but I suspect the two events are likely to coincide anyway.
The hatred of Microsoft is easy to explain. Computers go wrong, usually because someone has asked them to do something they weren't supposed to, selected the wrong option or whatever. At this stage a user can either blame themselves or blame the machine/software.
Since the machine is heavily branded and expensive and all the people you know have similar problems with the software it's obvious. Blame the software.
I tend to think that while there are huge problems with bits of MS stuff the fact that their stuff is among the most (and in the case of the OS the most) complex bit of software ever written should earn them more slack than it does.
ccjdPosted by: martin | December 21, 2004 04:55 AM
It's not an acronym. Linux. Not LINUX.
adsbPosted by: Heidi | December 21, 2004 05:38 AM
Yeah, bad habit of mine I picked up a while back: because UNIX is an acronym, and I associate the two, I just call it LINUX. But it is, obviously, Linux.
zbphv ujctmltPosted by: A. Rickey | December 21, 2004 01:50 PM
Um, Tony, "Unix" is NOT an acronym. See The Jargon File: http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/U/Unix.html: 'In the authors' words, "A weak pun on Multics"; very early on it was "UNICS"'. The author (probably Eric Raymond) continues:
I realize that I don't qualify as a "casual" Linux user by your definition, but I will note that a casual user could easily use my home system (Mandrake Linux 10.0); while I use a fair number of command line utilities because I'm comfortable with a CLI there's nothing that I do with my system that can't be done using Mandrake's GUI tools, and in fact just about all of my system administration work (the only exception being the installation and administration of the apcupsd UPS daemon, which isn't something that a casual user would need or want) is done using Mandrake's GUI tools.
Personally, I think the only thing standing between Linux and the casual user is the fact that there are still some hardware incompatibility issues (especially for users who insist on bleeding edge hardware), and things are getting much better there. Linux for the casual user is just a matter of time. And in saying that, I'm not predicting The Imminent Death Of Microsoft (as much as I'd like to see that happen, personally), just that there's a huge potential there for the expansion of Linux onto the desktop space.
Posted by: Len Cleavelin | December 21, 2004 08:38 PM
Fair enough. Point is, I'm used to capitalizing UNIX, and back in the early days of LINUX, people frequently used it in all-caps. Which means I got into the habit, and still think Linux looks a little weird. My own idiosyncracy, no doubt.
Nevertheless, let's chalk that down to one further plus in favor of Microsoft: no one yells at you if you spell it Microsoft, MicroSoft, or even Micro$oft.
As for its expansion into the desktop space, I don't know. Perhaps someone will enterprisingly come up with the kind of support and interface that would be necessary for real novice users. (I've seen Mandrake. Yes, it's a CGI interface. It's also, IMO, pretty much the techie's idea of a CGI interface, although admittedly I'm too accustomed to computers to be a good judge anymore. But the nomenclature alone would seem daunting enough, and there's not as much attempt to hide that from users as with MS.)
But who knows? If it does, I'll consider switching. But until then, the much-vaunted "stability" advantages don't really strike me as that important. I've not found that, for a similar level of skill in the user, Linux has huge advantages over MS. (Case in point, Windows Server 2003 is giving me no problems w/ uptime.)
ugqsPosted by: A. Rickey | December 21, 2004 09:15 PM
Of course nobody cares what you call Microsoft. But that's because nobody cares about Microsoft.
But other than that, two words: embedded devices.
yjowiiePosted by: Heidi | December 22, 2004 12:35 PM