Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: ESR and Apple's irrelevance

Author:Zac
Posted:8/25/2000; 8:48:21 PM
Topic:ESR and Apple's irrelevance
Msg #:20297 (In response to 20291)
Prev/Next:20296 / 20298

It should be clear that the people who are really involved in Gnome (of which Nautilus is a part) are not blind to the problems that beset Unix and Linux from an HI point of view.

I'm not trying to infer that they are.

And (if you'll excuse me wrapping a reply to two posts into one) I think the comparisions to DOS are interesting. I'm not entirely sure if DOS is a valid comparision in this instance.

While it is safe to say that Windows 95 (less so than Windows 3.11) is based on DOS its really not as similar, in my mind, to a Linux/ X Windows system. My Windows 95 machine required no understanding or awareness of DOS but if I am going to run Nautilus, when it is released, I will need to understand Linux.

Even if Nautilus is a resounding success it still needs to run on an OS that is decidely unfriendly to install and maintain.

And I think this is the xrux of the issue. ESR can talk till he's blue in the face about Linux's superiority to Apple and Microsoft (a point I will not contest as its not germaine to this discussion) but until I can send my Grandma a Linux box and she can get the machine up and running by herself then Apple and Microsoft only have to fear losing technically oriented users and perhaps, in the case of MS, users of consumer electronics packages that use embedded OSes.



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