Of Linus, KDE, and mouse buttons

[Evan Leibovitch]

Robert Brockway wrote:
> On Sat, 29 Mar 2008, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
>
>> Normally I like to control my environment.  Perhaps too much.
>
> I insist on complete control of my environment.  Well the computer
> environment - I'm still working on controlling the weather.
As a result, you -- and other folks with your skill and interest in this
area -- will find much to fault with pretty well all of the current crop
of GUIs. Indeed, the debate into which Torvalds entered was the classic
quandry of simplicity versus flexibility, and how much of one you can
get without sacrificing the other.

Such debates are certainly not limited to the field of IT. I know some
people who would never consider buying a car with an automatic
transmission. They say the complexity, added resource consumption and
(wrong, to them) assumptions of user habits would make manuals more
attractive even if they were not less expensive to buy. But using a
stick requires an investment in skill and a love of driving that not
everyone considers worthwhile.

The people I know who prefer manual transmissions generally hate their
computers and consider them a necessary evil that is required to do
certain unavoidable tasks. They want to get in, do the job, and get out,
practically, reliably and with as few impediments in the way -- much the
same way many techies see their cars.

Some people like the assumptions that McDonalds, Kelsey's and Swanson
make on their behalf on the balance between taste, cost, speed and
nutritional value. Others would rather spend hours in the kitchen,
slicing stuff and sweating over a stove, for the right to make that
balance for themselves by being in control of every ingredient's
proportions.

Nobody can be an expert/enthusiast in everything. In fields where you're
non-expert, you're always balancing between control and simplicity and
are often willing to let others make assumptions on your behalf so long
as those assumptions are reasonable and trustworthy.

There are people who still use EMACS as their mail reader of choice, and
there are people who insist on always doing their own oil changes. I
have yet to find someone who shares both traits, which at their core are
very similar.

The debate here -- the one Torvalds got into and (significantly) was
raised in NewTLUG rather than the alpha-geek TLUG meeting -- is over the
way that enthusiasts are trying to develop systems that make
open source appealing to those who DON'T want the kind of control you
crave. They're perfectly happy to let others make reasonable choices for
them but would appreciate the ability to do some minimal tweaking.
Complaining that GUIs are dumbing-down the computer or using too many
resources, from the POV of the technically-savvy enthusiast, is to
utterly miss the point.

Open source already appeals to those who love and/or understand working
with computers. The current challenge is making it appealing (or at
least acceptable) to those who with little or no enthusiasm or aptitude
for computing.

- Evan

--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists