[PLUG] Linux Screen Shots Wanted

[Jeme A Brelin]

On Tue, 31 Dec 2002, Robert Kopp wrote:
> KDE can be made to look almost exactly like Windoze. Do you suppose
> this would make Linux look less threatening to those who were
> considering a transition?

This is just a personal comment and really has nothing to do with the
thread of screenshots for whatever Cooper's purposes might be.

I think that KDE's (or any other window/session manager's) similarity to
Windows is a Bad Thing <TM>.

The similar look and feel leads a user to do things "The Windows
Way" rather than "The Unix Way" and, thus, negate much, if not all, of the
benefit of using a unix-like operating system.

I'll admit that getting people off of proprietary software and into Free
Software use is a Good Thing <TM>, but if a person is going to make a
change, perhaps they should be encouraged to get as much long-term benefit
out of the change as possible.

For those that insist that Windows is "easier" or that familiarity is
appealling to the average user, I have only anecdotal evidence to the
contrary.  My most recent personal convert is a young woman of 21 with
almost no college education and very little computer experience outside
basic word processing for school and operating retail POS terminals.  
She's taken to The Unix Way like a duck to water.  She uses Eterm more
often than any other application in X (in number of instances... xmms is
running all the time) and things grep is the coolest thing ever invented
(I've only just introduced her to sed, but I think the learning curve is
going to take a while to climb).  Again, this is only my most recent
conversion experience and it is not unique.

I find that when moving someone from Windows instead of promising that
things will be very much LIKE what they have used in the past, better
success is achieved (and a more well-rounded user/home administrator
developed) by focussing on how DIFFERENT things are on this side of the
fence.

Just my thoughts.
J.
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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