Windows - ready for the desktop?

[mdlbear]

Finally set the workgroup on the YD's new laptop, thanks to a couple of Windows geeks on the flist. Oddly enough, I'd been on that tab (System/Computer Name) earlier to fix a typo I'd made during setup, but failed to notice the default workgroup. This may have been in part because I was expecting it to be the old default name, WORKGROUP, instead of the current one, which is apparently MSHOME. I had also spent quite a lot of time looking in the networking area, which is where things like the DNS (name server) parameters hang out, and where the system and workgroup names were in earlier versions of Windows.

And now it wants to be rebooted. Sure.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on my network, ...

[steve 502] ssh -lroot dmz
Last login: Wed Aug  1 06:34:07 2007 from 198.180.216.25
gc:~# uptime
 07:41:12 up 494 days, 12:21,  2 users,  load average: 0.15, 0.07, 0.02

That machine has had its IP address, DNS name, and firewall rules changed, and its software updated, more times than I can remember over the last year and a half. I think the last time I took it down was to change the battery on the UPS.

Look, folks -- if somebody with a masters in computer science and 40-odd years experience in the computer industry has trouble navigating Microsoft's pile of obscure icons, oddly-named tabs, and twisty little popups crap, it is not ready to put on the desktops of non-technical users. And before the Mac users reading this jump in, ask yourselves what IP forwarding rules are doing over in "sharing" rather than "network". (Sure, it's obvious that IP packet routing has more to do with "connection sharing" than with "network connections" -- obvious once you know it!) I'm not saying that Linux is perfect in this respect, or even a whole lot better. But at least everything you need to tweak is in one directory, in text files you can search. And modern Linux desktops have control panels that have had more thought put into them, if you want to go that route.

I'm reasonably convinced that people put up with this nonsense only because they don't know that things could be different. If you've only used an OS that crashes every couple of days, you're surprised to hear somebody complaining about how their flaky Linux box crashes every six months or so. If you're used to clicking down through a half-dozen folders to open a file, you're don't know what I'm complaining about when I gripe because an application doesn't remember what directory it was started in from the command line. If you're used to reconfiguring your desktop and reinstalling your favorite applications on every new computer, you don't know why I keep my home directory on a fileserver. The idea of having a set of desktop configuration files that haven't been substantially changed for 15 years is simply inconceivable.

Comments

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I rebooted this machine the last time because I was told to. Didn't need it.

It can be up for years. YEARS. Works great, don't break.

Now, if I could only learn how to configure the damn thing without help.

[mdlbear]

Which OS?

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I believe this build is a Ubuntu Linux -

[mdlbear]

Most of the configuration tools you need for day-to-day operation are probably on the main menu under "System Tools". But that's not what you need to know.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

No, I want to be able to figure out the hardware configurations and why sometimes the networking gets wonky...and stuff.

[mdlbear]

There are some good books, including one called Ubuntu for Non-Geeks that I will probably be getting for some members of my family, but they don't get very deep into configuration issues. Your best bet may be the Ubuntu Community and, because I don't see anything comparable on Ubuntu, the Debian Reference.

(Ubuntu is based on Debian, so everything in the reference should apply except for things like where packages live online. Chapter 10 is about networking, for example. It probably goes deeper than you'll ever need to go, but it starts out with basics and it's nice to know it's there if you ever need it.)

There's also an Ubuntu LJ community; ... um... ubuntu_users.