[ale] bleeding edge (was why so difficult)

[Keith R. Watson]

At 12:20 PM 10/29/2000 -0500, you wrote:

>It is not impossible to create a system where people who want to get under
>the hood can, and those that want it to run on autopilot can.
>
>***************************************************************************
> > durga at burntmedia.org
>http://www.burntmedia.org
>
>Doug Bridges


Doug,

You are right it isn't impossible. I have a system sitting on my desk at 
home called NextSTEP that does exactly that. My only complaint with it is 
the cost of the OS and that source is not available. I have listened to the 
Linux debates over having GUI tools that make administration and 
installation simple versus the *NIX (or UN*X) philosophy of command line 
modules that can be strung together to get functions. Both sides have their 
merits. What was interesting about NextSTEP is that it provided both. The 
typical user got an interface that is better than Mac and NT combined, and 
that was in the early 90's, while the sys admin gets the command line and 
GUI wizards. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that NextSTEP is better than 
Linux but I do think we could learn a few things about user interface 
design from it. Why can't a system have both wizards and command line? To 
answer my own question, if it was that simple everyone would be doing it, 
so maybe it's not that simple.

happily running multiple OS's,
keith
-------------

Keith R. Watson                        GTRI/AIST
Systems Support Specialist III         Georgia Institute of Technology
keith.watson at gtri.gatech.edu           Atlanta, GA  30332-0816
404-894-0836
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