[ale] more on RedHat's Null desktop -- vent mode!

Sean Kilpatrick kilpatms at mindspring.com
Tue Sep 17 14:52:31 EDT 2002


On Tuesday 17 September 2002 01:13 pm, Charles Shapiro wrote:
> (". . .corporate desktop and cube drones . . .") That would be me.
> Making machines which anyone can sit down & find their way around on
> regardless of window manager choice is a reasonable thing to do.

<START Rant>
As someone moving to Linux from OS/2 I have to say the Linux
desktop has a way to go to be useable by the moderately competent
user migrating from a winbloze box.
Simple example:
  insert previously used floppy into drive and try to delete all
but one file to make room for others that need to be moved via
sneaker net.  If that floppy were previously used on a Win box,
it's FORGETABOUTIT!!  The files can't be deleted. Joe NewLinuxUser
can reformat the floppy but he can't delete the files. He has to be
able to open a root account to change the permissions. (And know how
to do that. Remember that Linux shell commands differ from DOS
commands so new Linux user _must_ learn an entirely new set
of commands. Until he does he is damn near helpless.)
Result: instant frustration.

I bang my head against this sort of thing damn near daily on this RH
Linux box.  Today, it's trying to pull pix from a digital camera.
The Linux box can clearly see the camera on the USB port. (Using the
KDE GUI to look at USB devices, I see the following:

-------------- <copied data> --------------------------------
Vendor ID     0x4cb   (Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd.)
Product ID    0x100   (FinePix 4700 Zoom digital camrea) (_sic_)
Revision
16.0

Speed         12 Mbit/s
Channels      0
Max. Packet
Size          0
------------------- <end copy> -----------------------------

But I can't for the life of me figure out how to access the pix.

<fi>

<sigh>

Sean

PS I'm not happy about RedHat's decision on desktop GUIs. I like 
my KDE and want to be able to access all its features. That means
working through the KDE site, which means learning a helleva lot
more about the underpinnings of Linux than I really want to.



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