Re: [TCLUG:3331] Windows NT pricing

[Christopher Palmer <reid@pconline.com>]

On Thu, 14 Jan 1999, Anthony Beltran wrote:

> Some of the current advantages of the Linux environment
> compared to the Windows environment may start to disappear
> as window managers and applications move toward the same
> level of user-friendliness as is provided by the Windows
> environment.  With KDE, for example, you have a much
> more resource-hungry environment than you have with
> the smaller window managers such as FVWM and MWM.

Three things:

1. You make an extremely important point -- thank you! A major benefit of
Linux is its efficiency. X and *especially* KDE/X impinge on that
efficiency.

2. User-friendliness != inefficiency (remember how much memory Mac OS 1.0
had to do its thing in).

3. KDE is not a window manager (kwm is), and cannot rightly be compared to
window managers.

> Integrated office applications such as StarOffice and
> Applixware (which I use) can be just as big and resource-
> hungry as their Windows counterparts.

Too true. And buggy, and crashy. :)

> I am not making a value judgement here (e.g. good vs bad),
> but just an observation.  User-friendliness has its price,
> expressed in terms of resource usage and software complexity.

Again, I disagree on this. It costs nothing in terms of efficency to
design with users in mind. (Towards this point, I'm working on a book
review for Slashdot on UI design. Expect it in two weeks.)

> The UNIX environment, to me, has historically promoted the
> idea of small, specialized applications working in harmony
> to achieve the desired objective.  However, that approach,
> while great for programmers and technical people, requires
> a higher level of computer literacy from the causual user.

This is not necessarily so. Small, elegant code bits of the Unix variety
can be well-integrated into an easy-to-learn shell (unlike *sh) -- it's
the CLI that is unlearnable, not the programs themselves.

Imagine a work environment full of hypothetical data objects and code
objects: BillGatesPieFace.jpg, JPEGViewer, HomePage.html,
SGMLRenderEngine, SGMLEdit, et c. You want to add the funny pic of Bill
Gates to your home page, so you double-click HomePage.html. The shell
knows to launch an instance of SGMLEdit. You then drag
BillGatesPieFace.jpg in to the area in the document you want to add the
picture. Drag and drop HomePage.html on to SGMLRenderEngine, and the shell
passes a hint to SGMLRenderEngine that it will need to incorporate an
instance of JPEGViewer into itself as well, since it pre-parsed the HTML
document before passing it to the Engine, and noted the embedded JPEG. And
there's your new and improved home page.

Want to FTP it to your site? Drag and hold HomePage.html over the FTP icon
-- up pops a dialog. You enter the server and authentication info, and off
it goes. And of course, the shell reminds FTP to bring 
BillGatesPieFace.jpg along, too.

Note that like 'sed' or 'grep', SGMLEdit and JPEGViewer are not proper
applications -- they are minimal code bits made to do one thing well. With
a smart shell and UI idioms familiar to users, it's quite possible to
extend the Unix philosophy into the mainstream.


> A very good sign (to me) atesting to the growth and
> maturity of the Linux environment is when I recently
> took Win98 off my laptop completely and am now
> running only Linux.  My laptop is my only computer -
> no desktop for me.  It has been 2 months since I did
> this and have had absolutely no regrets.

Woo hoo! :)

> My primary hope is that Linux itself remains freely
> available so that no software developer competing in
> the Linux marketplace can ever hold all the cards!

So why doesn't this apply to applications, too? ;P

_____________________________________________________________________________
Christopher Reid Palmer : reid@pconline.com : www.pconline.com/~reid/