mdlbear | Can't we all just get along?

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Can't we all just get along?

I'm always surprised at how emotional some people can get about my choice of software. I get ad-hominem attacks when I mention that I prefer Emacs and LaTeX to somebody's favorite WYSIWYG word processor. I stopped allowing anonymous comments after somebody literally accused me of "child abuse" (those words, exactly) when I mentioned that my kids sometimes used Linux. I continually get snide comments whenever I mention that, as a visual illiterate and long-time X user, I find the Mac user interface unuseable. (And I'm not saying that Windows is much better, but nobody sends me hate mail when I criticize Windows.)

Seriously, I get fewer flames when I mention that I'm an agnostic Druid. In fact, I don't think anyone has flamed me about my religion recently.

I'm not asking for tolerance, exactly. Or maybe I am. At least until Linux achieves its goal of world domination. Then we'll see who...

Oh. Right. Sorry about that.

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Child abuse for your choice of editors & operating system? The worst I'd call somebody is "crazy" for that (and of course, "crazy" is usually just a description and not a purgorative.)

So if Linux is supposed to dominate, why can't someone explain to Fred & me how to install it? (Or are you only dominating people who can afford new hardware or have time to backup everything before repartitioning the hard drive with EVERYTHING on it)

Most people will, of course, install Linux the same way they install Windows -- go down to Fry's and buy a machine with it pre-installed. (They're only about $150, because Linux is free and performs well on cheap hardware.)

For the rest of us, boot from an Ubuntu CD, which runs Linux without touching your hard drive. When you feel like it, do the install, which includes repartitioning without having to back up.

And if you're willing to spend $150 on a USB hard drive you can use Linux to back up your Windows partition any time you feel like it.

The flame wars, when Andy Trembley created a Hugo Nominees LJ, from Rick Moen who claims anything less than Open Source on your own website is an abomination over at the BASFA list was pretty ugly.
As you know, Rick is Real Annoyed that I can't find the open source programs I need to run only on Linux and that I would rather just buy off the shelf Account Programs that run on Windows. The fact that they are the Industry Standard and nothing in the Linux World has that standard is immaterial.
Religions are ugly no matter what you do.
By the By, Moose has decided he loves the Mac OS, then again, he's highly visual. But he's also working to set up the windows machine to dual boot with Linux. He's real open about his OS, though windoze is his least favorite.

Account Programs? You mean Accounting?

That's the remaining thorn in Linux' side, is the non-appearance of good small-business accounting software (and the fact that the Dominant Paradigm is so firmly entrenched in the banking world)...

Yeah, Accounting Programs. I was tired and way too busy this am to properly poofread. And I've been on the look out for good programs in both the Linux and Mac world and come up empty. Even the Quicken/Quickbooks for Macs are weak in comparison to their windoze versions.
Oh, yeah, they also need to be Affordable! I work for Non-Profits! Usually donating the program. So programs costing $300+ are not in my range. Which believe me I'm bummed about because I really like Peachtree and just can't afford it.
Still if you know of some Big Fancy Program that costs a fortune, sorry, it will never be on my list.

For what it's worth, you won't get any arguments from me about what you use... I mean, yeah, I use OpenOffice but that's just because it's been so damn long since I had a system that would run LaTeX effectively... that and there is the singleton advantage that OpenOffice reads DominantParadigm .DOCuments.... but for what you are likely to use it for (music, science, etc.)? LaTeX is *the* way to go; hell, Knuth purpose-built TeX for such. And good on'ya for keeping the "old school" ways alive. (jeezus, when did 80's tech get to be "old school"?)

And frankly? Windows is abuse, in more ways than I can count. Partcularly 95-98, where you're stuck in god mode all the time whether you like it or not. Anybody that would turn a kid loose on the internet with that swiss cheese of an OS deserves the screams s/he will inevitably be woken with...

OS X is just *different* enough from what you and I grew up with to be really damn confusing. Although I imagine I find it easier than you do because I got so used to shifting gears when I first really got into computers: CCASTGS could log into a pair of Cyber 170's running NOS, a Cyber 180 running NOS/VE, a Pyramid running plain vanilla BSD 4.3, an AT&T 3B20 running the One True Squished'em Vee, a cluster of Sun graphics workstations, another cluster of Macs running System 6 and later System 7, ... and the PC's with Windows 3.1, which I didn't use very much because I had unlimited access to so much better. To me a PC was a big semi-smart terminal.

As for world domination: Frankly, I'd settle for world acceptance. And a belly full of herring.

I'm with you on the herring. Pickled, preferably.

I've actually used all three UI's extensively; the problems I have with the Mac are:
1. menu bar at the top
2. click-to-focus (which is required by 1)
3. no "drag-to-select" plus "middle mouse button to paste" the way you do in X.
4. the reliance on icons, which I can't parse.

obsessivewoman is somewhat technical, but not linux-admin technical. But she finds Fedora Core 4 quite usable at home: she knows to hit Ctrl+Alt+F9 to get to her desktop where her entire environment is waiting for her, and all the tools she needs are there. She’s quite happy with how stable it is compared to Windows.

jenkitty is much the same way; I got her a Windows 95 box in January of '98, and it lasted about three months before 95 ate the registry twice in as many weeks. I put Red Hat on it, and she's never looked back. She's now running Ubuntu on one of those el cheapo Fry's boxes that comes with Linspire on it, and she loves it. Yeah, I admin it for her, but she's got sudo access if she needs it, and knows how to kill java processes when they wonk out... she's only occasionally wistful about games, but that's usually when the net is down and she can't get to Yahoo. Now that we've finally got Speakeasy back, that shouldn't happen much anymore.

I stopped allowing anonymous comments after somebody literally accused me of "child abuse" (those words, exactly) when I mentioned that my kids sometimes used Linux.

WTF?? Somebody needs to get a) a clue, and b) a life.

I continually get snide comments whenever I mention that, as a visual illiterate and long-time X user, I find the Mac user interface unuseable.

I'm not enamored of the Mac UI myself - to me it's clunky and limited. Too many steps to do basic admin. Mice need *three* buttons, not two or only one! ;-)

Mice need *three* buttons, not two or only one!

But the joy of it is that the Power-PC-based Macs are USB, and having a Real Mouse is a matter of plug-and-play...

OTOH, the one Microsoft product I'll admit to using is the Logitech-built ergo keyboard, which needs a PS/2 to USB converter to be used with the Mac... the advantage to that, though, is that said converter usually also has a mouse port, saving a USB jack on the Mac...

But the UI still doesn't use them the way X does. Being able to cut and paste with one hand is a major advantage. And you can't do it at all without an external mouse, which is a real pain on a laptop. I really like the IBM laptops with their three actual buttons.

I'm currently using an IBM model M keyboard and Logitech Trackman FX, both plugged in to a PS2-to-USB Y cable. (Running Etch on a Dell box with a 1980x1200 display.)

"On Beyond Zebra" by Dr Seuss. I'm not quite the insta-filker to make a suitable Seussian verse for it though, not from work.

Mandelbear, you and I have probably used, heck - *made* computers since the days of discrete logic. I still have a working 6502 system with hand etched double-sided PC boards and a wire wrapped video card made out of 74xx TTL chips. I've been part of the big-iron mainframe companies, Apple, and Microsoft.

Like yours, my litany of OSes is also long, and along the way I must say my favorite was AmigaDOS. Though I use WinXP (and Vista) pretty much exclusively, I still have my OS 9 based Macs around. I can't stand OS X, I actually like Win XP, and I'd never ever use Windows 1-98/ME. I never liked unix as a client system and linux is not much better, though I like how well linux works in embedded spaces. I loath X-windows, find the damage done by OS X to Apple's once nice UI (well, the top-menu model was a major mistake) makes it ugly to me.

I outgrew 80-column real or virtual displays long ago.

On mice/mouses, I'd like to see 5-buttons, one per digit, but that's venturing into hand gesture systems.

I have gotten to the point where I see the use of computers as ease-of-use devices and that anything that expedites data interchange is often more important than other features. That speaks to marketplace ubiquity, so generally Windows wins hands down.

Now eventually or sooner, WEB services will begin to address data interchange ubiquity and I think the distinction between linux based or Windows based end-clients may become irrelevent. Indeed the WEB services model (or what some people call 'cloud-OS') will commoditize what we think of today as OSes to the point where all that code base will be effectively free. So, this Windows vs. linux debate will just slide into the commodity black hole. When was the last time anyone argued about their wired telephones and their features? Even cellphones are no longer compared - the offered services, however, are considered worthy of comparison becasue that's where the value lies.

We differ -- I like X, have been using it and Unix/Linux as a client for most of two decades, and can't stand any flavor of Windows or Mac.

The apps on my desktop are almost entirely 80-column text displays, including xterms, emacs frames, and Firefox (which I configure to the same size as an Emacs window, though the proportional font tends to get more than 80 columns on the screen). Those rare occasions when I have to view a legacy Office document I fire up OpenOffice and grit my teeth at the UI.

I personally don't believe web services will take over in the next decade, if ever, and in any case interfaces are getting more diverse, not less. I do think that open source will prevail, and commoditize OSs and data interchange formats.

None of which really addresses the original topic, which was the degree to which people get defensive about their preferred UI's. Except perhaps to illustrate the point.

None of which really addresses the original topic, which was the degree to which people get defensive about their preferred UI's. Except perhaps to illustrate the point.

I think it illustrates the counterpoint, that people can differ and yet remain amicable. When I see you go off on Windows or OS X or GUI versus command line interfaces, I just see you and I differ.

"In an old and perhaps forgotten tradition of a place elsewhere, Draco settles himself next to the bar and offers Mandelbear a drink."

Not so forgotten a tradition. Have one yourself.

A little of both.

Not forgotten here -- let me buy the next round.

It's somewhat ironic that you mention Emacs and praise X's cut-selection behavior in the same breath...since Emacs is the -only- app I use with any frequency that breaks X's cut-selection behavior (it only puts things into the selection buffer when they enter the kill ring -- though modern emacs at least -also- put things into the cut/paste buffer when they do this, I think).

Modern Emacs running under X uses the X cut buffer -- I think if it's more recent than the kill buffer. So if you kill something in emacs or drag-select it with the mouse you can paste it into an xterm. Or vice versa. It all works very smoothly and seamlessly except when something like Firefox gets confused and won't hand over control of the selection.

I know the feeling.

I've used pretty much every OS around, but these days run three or four different ones as standard. Oddly I get the most negativity from people who've standardised on one...

To be honest, I'll respect anyone's choices - and I'll defend their right to use whatever tools they want.

After all, that's what they are. Tools.

Yes -- it's all about choice, and being free to choose the right tool for both the user and the job.

I currently use OpenOffice on Linux for business cards and address labels, Emacs for almost everything else, a Mac laptop for viewing Quicktime movies, Windows 98 for my taxes; basically whatever works. And I'm buying my Mom a Mac -- probably a 17" iMac -- for her 86th birthday this year. My older daughter has both a Macbook and an HP mostly-windows box, and reads her email in pine over ssh.

Did I mention that we're a cross-platform household?

http://www.ichthux.com/

Laugh or weep, as you will.

[laughs] -- that's pretty bizarre. Probably a karmic counterbalance to Dyne::bolic.

haha, Linux WILL rule the world.

And my mom works at microsoft :P

... so maybe you don't want to show her this icon?

*snort*

Or... this icon

I don't get that one...

Borg me.

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Can't we all just get along?

SOMEONE really needs told to get a life

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I look at that icon and think

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