[PLUG] Redhat changes, fedora

[Fedor Pikus]

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Russ Johnson wrote:
> Well, he has a point.
I'm not sure he does.
> Despite it's crashes and some problems (which in
> all honesty have gotten better over the last 3 years) Windows IS more
> user friendly to the average user.
I'd argue it's the case only if they don't have to install it (which is
almost always the case).

> Case in point. I have a digital camera. Here's the two methods:
I did exactly the same operation, connected a digital camera to the PC via
USB cable. Here is how my experience went:

> 1> Linux.
> Configure the system to see USB devices as drives. This involves
> configuring SCSI emulation support, and sometimes a kernel rebuild. Once
> that's done, I write a shell script to mount the camera as a drive,
> download the pictures and rename them. That means finding a third party
> utility that can read the jpeg image and rename the image appropriately.
> Tweak files in /dev so that *I* as a user can do this. I don't want to
> su to root everytime I copy pictures to my system.
Hmm... nope. Plugged it in, hotplug as came with RedHat 7.3 loaded usb_storage
which created a SCSI device. On My RH 9 laptop there is additional magic which
creates a directory under /mnt if needed and mounts the camera, but on RH 7.3
I have to add an entry to /etc/fstab if I want to do it as a user.

> 2> Windows.
> Put CD that came with camera in drive. Install drivers. Install other
> programs that came with camera. Plug camera in. It works.
Plugged in the camera, Windows detected it as a removable drive. One out of
about three times it then refuses to disconnect the camera from the little
tray icon, and hangs when I pull the USB cable without disconnecting it.

> In this situation, both systems do nearly the same task, with equal
> ease, once the configuration part is done.
Both do it, yes. The trick is telling which is which :)

> The problem is that the configuration part is beyond the capabilities of
> the "average user".
This is true on Linux and on Windows. But it's a great myth that Windows is
easier to configure. It's only easier if someone else does it for you.

> as Matthew Szulik said, it has a ways to
> go before it will be ready for primetime with the vast majority of
> computer users.
So is Windows. But for Windows, there is a) huge infrastructure which
solves the problems for users or at least hides them, and b) the
ever-so-pervasive myth that it's easier on the average user.

-- 
                                  Fedor G. Pikus
Mentor Graphics Corporation         | Phone: (503) 685-4857
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