Hi all,

I don't post much really on these boards, but I do find it an
in-valuable source for most day to day problems. I work in the IT
indusrty and have done for more years than I can count on all my digits
(including my toes). I work in a mainly windows enviroment, but that's
only because I shut down the 3 unix boxes a year ago and no one has
asked me turn them back on in that time (I suspect they don't need them
any more, and when they ever ask me, I can easly turn them back on..
but the main point is.. we have obviously moved away from unix). I did
this after I left support and moved into the training/teaching sector
of the company as I knew no-one in the company knew anthing about UNIX
at all especially the support department.

Anyway, at home I still use UNIX alot. I have on my desk, an ULTRA 10
that's packed to gubing with stuff, 2 SCSI cards using external drives,
SUNPCi card a nice Sun LCD 18inch TFT and it has a licenced C & C++
compiler (not GCC). It really is a nice system. On the other side of my
desk I have a 3GHz intel thingy running XP. Next to the SUN, on the
floor is an O2 with the nice 1600sw screen.. all unplugged and waiting
for me to find some space. My wife and daughter have XP machines each,
my daughter connected via wirelless. In the study there is a cupbord
that houses an IBM intel with the role of AD controller and another SUN
(LX) which also has a fully licenced C & C++ but also acts as a NIS+
server, (There is also an SGI 320 that is doing nothing). Downstairs in
the fridge room is a SGI Origin 200 that has LDAP and massive amounts
of disk space connected via a CISCO hub and a wireless point (ok not to
fast.. but definatly usable).

So I hope you will agree.. I'm definatly a UNIX lover??

OK.. main point..

I'm browsing a site.. searching for the name of Starsky and Hutch on
the SUN (which is running Solaris 10) and I come to the official site.

It requires a flash plugin...

I go to the site and install it..

And I get to thinking.. (mistake???)

How on earth is a normal user ever to cope with such a thing?

Looking at it from a none-technical users point of view.. even
installing a pluggin is just soo complex..

gzip-d it..

untar it..

then install it..

during the install... find the path of mozilla-bin..

Jeeze...

What do Windows users get? click and go!

SUN, SGI HP etc.. need to do something.

UNLESS WE ARE ALL WAITING FOR LINUX??????????

Now read the history of UNIX and it's the same of LINUX.

To many manufactorers producing slightly different versions..

Anyway.. before you attack me.. remeber I'm a UNIX lover.

Thanks for listening...

grep the crap out ;-)

mark@uunix.com wrote:
<snip>
> UNLESS WE ARE ALL WAITING FOR LINUX??????????
>
> Now read the history of UNIX and it's the same of LINUX.
>
> To many manufactorers producing slightly different versions..

I use FreeBSD almost religously on everything (workstations, servers,
multimedia boxes, etc), but my wife's and kids' machines are running
Ubuntu. If i want to view a web page with flash i her's because flash
is just plain broken in FreeBSD (ok.. you can use Linux binary
compatability and the linux plugin and/or the linux plugin wrapper...
PITA IMHO).
If there isn't a plugin installed on her machine that's needed
(haven't seen it yet) you just clickety click click and it's installed.
My wife and, of course, my kids (2 and 1yr) are not power users and
therefore use an easy, user friendly Linux distro. On the the other
hand I have specific requirements that are fulfilled much easier with
FreeBSD, Slackware, and Gentoo (Solaris is simply a learning experience).
What its going to take are more big guns like IBM and HP getting
behind 1 or 2 Linux distros for the desktop market. What's good for
GNU/Linux, arguably, is going to be good for the rest of UN*X. I see so
many things from GNU/Linux that have been ported to FreeBSD, BeOS, and
Solaris.
Now, if they'd only standardize a little...
The world will always need Windows and Mac for those that can't type
and those that can't opperate more than 1 button at a time respectively.

my $.02
--
- - james <at> hal-pc.org - -

"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for."
- Will Rogers
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dont forget add unix flavour here...

There are more than our fair share of unix.
Adobe (offical)+ debian = oh?? broken ... this is because Adobe hasnt
got a clue about Intellinux.

To many manufactorers are producing slightly different versions this is
why the programmers of things like flash should make their installers
customizable so that operating system makers can provide customized
versions.

Windows reg makes it easy for programmers to find where reqired
applications are placed.

rasnetworks wrote:
> Dont forget add unix flavour here...
>
> There are more than our fair share of unix.
> Adobe (offical)+ debian = oh?? broken ... this is because Adobe hasnt
> got a clue about Intellinux.
>
> To many manufactorers are producing slightly different versions this is
> why the programmers of things like flash should make their installers
> customizable so that operating system makers can provide customized
> versions.
>
> Windows reg makes it easy for programmers to find where reqired
> applications are placed.
>

And since this is a sun hardware group, let's not forget that while
there may be a linux flash plug-in that works (in some cases) on i386
distros, it doesn't work on sparc, so for those of us running linux on
sun hardware there are a lot less ads!!! But joking apart, I'd like the
choice and would install a sparc flash plug-in if I could find anything
that worked. I gave up on the third party players some while back...

Now if Adobe/Macromedia were to encourage development on platforms that
they may not think are worthwhile things might get going a lot better.

John

mark@uunix.com wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I don't post much really on these boards, but I do find it an
> in-valuable source for most day to day problems. I work in the IT
> indusrty and have done for more years than I can count on all my digits
> (including my toes). I work in a mainly windows enviroment, but that's
> only because I shut down the 3 unix boxes a year ago and no one has
> asked me turn them back on in that time (I suspect they don't need them
> any more, and when they ever ask me, I can easly turn them back on..
> but the main point is.. we have obviously moved away from unix). I did
> this after I left support and moved into the training/teaching sector
> of the company as I knew no-one in the company knew anthing about UNIX
> at all especially the support department.
>
> Anyway, at home I still use UNIX alot. I have on my desk, an ULTRA 10
> that's packed to gubing with stuff, 2 SCSI cards using external drives,
> SUNPCi card a nice Sun LCD 18inch TFT and it has a licenced C & C++
> compiler (not GCC). It really is a nice system. On the other side of my
> desk I have a 3GHz intel thingy running XP. Next to the SUN, on the
> floor is an O2 with the nice 1600sw screen.. all unplugged and waiting
> for me to find some space. My wife and daughter have XP machines each,
> my daughter connected via wirelless. In the study there is a cupbord
> that houses an IBM intel with the role of AD controller and another SUN
> (LX) which also has a fully licenced C & C++ but also acts as a NIS+
> server, (There is also an SGI 320 that is doing nothing). Downstairs in
> the fridge room is a SGI Origin 200 that has LDAP and massive amounts
> of disk space connected via a CISCO hub and a wireless point (ok not to
> fast.. but definatly usable).
>
> So I hope you will agree.. I'm definatly a UNIX lover??
>
> OK.. main point..
>
> I'm browsing a site.. searching for the name of Starsky and Hutch on
> the SUN (which is running Solaris 10) and I come to the official site.
>
> It requires a flash plugin...
>
> I go to the site and install it..
>
> And I get to thinking.. (mistake???)
>
> How on earth is a normal user ever to cope with such a thing?
>
> Looking at it from a none-technical users point of view.. even
> installing a pluggin is just soo complex..
>
> gzip-d it..
>
> untar it..
>
> then install it..
>
> during the install... find the path of mozilla-bin..
>
> Jeeze...
>
> What do Windows users get? click and go!
>
> SUN, SGI HP etc.. need to do something.
>
> UNLESS WE ARE ALL WAITING FOR LINUX??????????
>
> Now read the history of UNIX and it's the same of LINUX.
>
> To many manufactorers producing slightly different versions..
>
> Anyway.. before you attack me.. remeber I'm a UNIX lover.
>
> Thanks for listening...
>
> grep the crap out ;-)
>

IMHO this is not a UNIX problem at all. You are especially referring to
the flash plugin. Adding packages on most UNIXs is quite easy and adding
an extension to mozilla is very easy even under UNIX. But getting a
plugin installed under mozilla and friends is just painful. I agree. But
the reason for this is the way mozilla handles the installation and
execution of those plugins. If it would be done in a similar fashion
like extensions, I think you would be happy.

So what now? Talk to mozilla and macromedia. I think everything they
need is in place, they probably just don't want it enough to be easy.

But apart from that there are many things under UNIX that make the head
of an average user spin. But it is OK, because once one understands why
it works the way it does, one has to agree that it is working the right
way. Additionally, e.g. Sun's customers are enterprises. Sun doesn't
even want a _direct_ customer relationship to the average home user. But
I would be surprised if they would reject to help you with technical
problems (as long as you pay them or convince them that it is for their
own good), if you would start selling and supporting a product based on
their software for Mr. Joe around the corner.

So go for it, and build your own distribution for Joe based on
OpenSolaris. But maybe then you will find out that making money by
selling products to Mr. Joe is really hard work and that you need too
sell huge numbers of your product for _very_ little money to get profit.
UNIX is improving (mostly because of Linux I think) and that's good. But
it will take time, money, and a lot more software to solve end user's
problems to get where microsoft is, from an end user's perspective.

Tom

rasnetworks wrote:
> Dont forget add unix flavour here...
>
> There are more than our fair share of unix.
> Adobe (offical)+ debian = oh?? broken ... this is because Adobe hasnt
> got a clue about Intellinux.
>
> To many manufactorers are producing slightly different versions this is
> why the programmers of things like flash should make their installers
> customizable so that operating system makers can provide customized
> versions.
>
> Windows reg makes it easy for programmers to find where reqired
> applications are placed.
>


My biggest gripe are all the extras like sound systems, I've spent hours
fighting with computers trying to get various applications to work, some
of which require one sound system, some require another. At least most
of the modern Linux distros have made the dependency hell a lot easier,
I spent the better part of a weekend a while back chasing down
dependencies on an old Sparc in order to get a few applications to install.

Oh, another thing I find annoying is the lack of a "one stop shop"
system control panel app. Just figuring out how to change the screen
resolution for example is very non intuitive.

The flash plugin was just an example.. it was maybe the first time I
sat back and looked at what I do from a different perpective.

mark@uunix.com wrote:
> The flash plugin was just an example.. it was maybe the first time I
> sat back and looked at what I do from a different perpective.
>

But my comments are also valid for any other program. If the package is
created the right way, it would be perfectly possible to install it in
the user's home directory. But people usually work as "Administrator"
under Windows, so it is a little bit like comparing apples and oranges.
AFAIK only few programs under Windows run properly if installed as a
normal user with limited rights...

Or am I missing something?

jamessweet@hotmail.com writes in comp.sys.sun.hardware:
|Oh, another thing I find annoying is the lack of a "one stop shop"
|system control panel app. Just figuring out how to change the screen
|resolution for example is very non intuitive.

A project for Solaris in that area is under development - see
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/vpanels/

--
Alan Coopersmith * alanc@alum.calberkeley.org * Alan.Coopersmith@Sun.COM
http://blogs.sun.com/alanc/ * http://people.freedesktop.org/~alanc/
http://del.icio.us/alanc/ * http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~alanc/
Working for, but definitely not speaking for, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

mark@uunix.com wrote:


>
> What do Windows users get?

Lot's of viruses, trojan horses and key-loggers...

> click and go!

Everything has its price, and the price of the ease of install of things in
Windows is that clueless users can install just about anything with a single
click.

--
Nigel Wade, System Administrator, Space Plasma Physics Group,
University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
E-mail : nmw@ion.le.ac.uk
Phone : +44 (0)116 2523548, Fax : +44 (0)116 2523555