Jean Francois Martinez wrote: > > > I think that it is really cool, spiffy, neato that RH 7.2 installs and > > pretty much just works. For the last three installs of 7.2 I did, I > > *needed* to make only a couple of little tweaks to get basic > > functionality going. This is a good thing. I work as a research assistant in an atmospheric chemistry research group in a university. The area of chemistry I am involved in requires computers to crunch large data sets. Therefore everyone in the group must know how to use and program computers. I have been using linux at home for about 5 years now, and prefer it in large part for the reason Jean gives. I have been the victim of plug-and-pray too many times, and love the fact that I can get in and configure/fix things that are broken. I administer a network of about 15 machines as part of my job. I would like to use a number of Linux boxes at work. So far all but one of the machines are windoze boxes, (and that machine is a personal machine that nobody else needs to go near). This is because the researchers need to work with them, and they have no desire to wrestle with configuring an operating system for days, no matter how stable, flexible or cheap it is. They see Linux as the domain of hackers and sys admins. If there were more configuration tools to allow easy maintenance/setup of the os I think they may reconsider their position. I have convinced them to allow me to run Linux on a new file server we are installing, but this is only because they don't need to be involved with the server in any way other than as a client. Linux is making big ground as a server os, but if it is to ever become competitive as a desktop envirnonment the system needs to become easier for the literate non-programmer to administer. This user friendliness does not have to come at the expense of good documentation. It IS possible to have a well documented, open and maintainable os and still provide config tools for those that don't want to delve that deep every time they want to change a setting. The more machines running an os the more tools and support there is, the more users come on board.... Cheers, ************************************** Graham Kettlewell Atmospheric Chemistry Research Group Univeristy of Wollongong Australia grahamk@uow.edu.au ************************************** _______________________________________________ Redhat-devel-list mailing list Redhat-devel-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-devel-list
