Re: SEUL: About friendlyness

[jfm2@club-internet.fr]

> 
> I think that this project is an interesting proposal, but I have an 
> annoying question.
> What is the REAL objective of Seul?
> Some like a linux-kernel based version of Windows? A sad idea.
> There are a lot of things to simplify the use of Linux, but I'd like 
> to say two topics about:
> 1) What is an EASY interface? A GUI is pretty, but sometimes isn't so 
> easy as Microsoft claims that it is. The better interface must be the 
> sense interface.
>  2) A Windows system is frustrating for me because 
> there is just one way to do anything you want,  the (supposed) easy 
> one. So, always must be a way for the user growing to an advanced 
> (traditional?) way to work.
> 
>         ______________________________
>         || Julio Cesar Gazquez      ||
>         || email: j-gazquez@usa.net ||
>         ------------------------------
> 

There are many things in user friendliness but the basic one is this:
the user has the basic right to be bored by computers and the right to
go to bed early because the day after he wants to go fishing.  There
are people who think he should spend the whole night hacking and
studying RTFMs

An example of this: many people have asked "Why Linux is detecting
only 64 Megs of mem when I have more?", others asked for help because
they were unable to reboot after screwing the boot sequence or
forgetting the password.  Of course they were flamed for failling to
read the three thousand pages of the LDP beforehand.  Wouldn't have
been simple to put in the LILO prompt screen the answers to the
Frequently Encountered Problems related to booting?

Wouldn't it be simple to have the XFree configuration software flatly
tell to the user: "Your card is supported only in the horripilating
VGA mode and that is as good as no support at all.  But wait! This
XFree release is 16 months old.  You should check in case there is a
new version".  Instead of this there were thousands of people in 1997
who struggled for days with their (then unsuported) Matrox Mystiques".

They were supposed to refrain their impatience and excitment about
Linux and read a documentation they didn't know where it was nor the
tools to peruse it.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org