Well said, Maeg.
Sandwich, when it comes to Choice, the world IS binary. There's CHOICE and there's NO CHOICE. Choice might further subdivide, but to get to the subdivisions you have to already fallen down on the side of CHOICE. You might disagree with how much choice a user should have, but that can only be a personal thing: you can't determine how much choice everyone else should have. You made the following comment:
I'm calling for the 'equivalent' to be agreed upon, voted into office, picked at random, whatever.
That's already been done. That's why you can buy Mandrake and SuSE at the store. Or, if you want to download one, you can visit DistroWatch's "Top 5 Beginner Friendly Distros" list, or do a little reading around Distrowatch.com. A search for "Beginner Friendly Linux" on Google reveals useful resources. You just have to make an effort.
Finally, let me address something very specifically:
B) LIke I said, and like you quoted me as saying, my not wanting to search for help on changing resolutions is not the point. The point was that if a computer-savvy guy like me couldn't figure out how to change the resolution, then something was seriously flawed (in that distro and version).
You can liken it to using an elevator. Sure, you could make all the buttons identical, with super-cryptic labels, forcing elevator newbies to ask the vets how to get to the 5th floor, but why not just make it easy for all, put a simple label on the button (something along the lines of "5" would do quite nicely), and be done with it?
Two things here. First, you complaint is valid, but only partially, because it came from self enforced ignorance. Back then, the X server could not natively change internal resolutions. It wasn't something that was done on X. At all. Ever. You restarted the X server to change resolutions. However, some basic investigation, on your own machine, in the man pages for X would have revealed that you needed to adjust some things in your X configuration file. If you had asked a veteran, he or she would have pointed out that nearly everything in *nix is configured with a text file. That single bit of knowledge will take you a VERY long way to adjusting nearly anything on a *nix system. After that, a computer savvy guy like you could have solved the problem in mere minutes.
But now we get to the second part. A windowing system is not like an elevator. An elevator is a simple gadget. Its got doors, its got floors, its got buttons and it moves up and down. That's all. A windowing system is more like... oh... a fleet of ships. There's a lot of factors, a lot of variables and everything has to work together in the right way. You weren't asking to go to the fifth floor, Sandwich. You were asking to reroute the elevator around the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors, and asking it to open next to your cubicle, instead of the wall the elevator shafts were hidden behind. That was back then. If you had the same problem these days, yes, you would have been complaining about a cryptically labeled fifth floor button. Regardless, though, in both cases (then and now) examining documentation and asking for help, whether you are "computer savvy" or not, is not unreasonable.
I guess what I'm trying to say, Sandwich is that you must be THIS TALL to ride the ride:[list=1]
- You must be willing to read the documentation.
- You must be willing to ask for guidance.
- You must be willing to have patience.
- You must not expect it to be Windows, MacOS or anything but *nix.
If you don't meet these criteria, don't get in line to ride this ride. If you think that's unreasonable, tough. Its the minimum standard. Jesus, if you leave out the last point, you have what I consider to be the dead minimum standard for computer use, full stop.
You're saying *nix should do this and the other thing for acceptance by the general public for a desktop OS. I'm saying you're wrong to think that acceptance by the general public as a desktop OS is at all relevant.
