Re: Experience the New Windows

[Suresh Ramasubramanian <mallet@xxxxxxx>]

Indraneel Majumdar rearranged electrons thusly:

> Is it because Linux has too many applications and the user doesn't know
> what is loaded and what's not, or even what works and what doesn't? Maybe
> we need a application chooser with a brief note, pros and cons of each
> application in some format (another application?) for the user to choose
> from?
 
Actually, there is a flip side to this ... all the user-friendliness that's
being built into linux very often comes at a huge cost to security.

As most linuxen (with the possible exception of Caldera, with its e-desktop and
e-server classification of its distro) are an all-in-one thing (the same CD
serves for a desktop install as well as a server install, with little, if
anything, to differentiate between the two except the profile of apps installed).

Redhat is especially bad at this - and Redhat 7 (and 6.2) are insecure out of
the box in their server installs.  This is because of some very conscious
decisions by redhat engineers to build user-friendliness into their product,
*at the cost of security*.

One of the basic tenets of marketing (proposed by Al Ries and Jack Trout) is
the STP concept - Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning.  So far, 'doze has
done that admirably with their clear differentiation between NT Server
(servers), NT workstation (office workstation) (and Win 98/ME (home box).  

This is somewhat blurred in win2k, perhaps because the name suggests a
continuation of the win9x series rather than an NT type server OS)

Very few linuxen have done something like this.  If you attempt to cater to the
needs of everybody in a single distro, you'll end up with a distro that nobody
is satisfied with.  Debian and Slackware have more or less stuck to their
original image - primarily server class [security conscious].  Redhat and its
ilk haven't.

The quest for user-friendliness, if taken too far, can lead to linux shooting
itself in the foot by alienating its original, core audience (and still its
primary market) - server admins.

> On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, Atul Chitnis wrote:
> > But Linux does not currently have anything that would entice a non-techie
> > Windows XP user at home. This is something that badly needs addressing,

Should a linux distro be a "home users" OS, a "workplace OS", a "server OS" or
an "all in one"?  That's the question.  Comparing a server / workstation class
OS to a home user OS (and excessively focusing on the home user market because
of its sheer size) is self defeating IMHO.

	-s

-- 
Suresh Ramasubramanian  <-->  mallet <at> efn <dot> org
EMail Sturmbannfuhrer, Lower Middle Class Unix Sysadmin
"What separates normal people from kooks is how they react when people disagree
with them or tell them "NO"  <-- Ron Ritzman on news.admin.net-abuse.email