There’s a reason it was named after Eunuchs

Oct 13, 2007 12:18


Call me a revolutionary, but I don’t see any reason why we should use an operating system that was intentionally designed to be user-unfriendly, and which was designed 40 years ago, back when 8-track tapes were the state of the art and the two-byte difference between “copy” and “cp” was really, really important.

I still marvel as my Linux weenie ( Read more... )

usability, technology, humor, unix, computers

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ornoth October 14 2007, 13:25:47 UTC
It's true that certain people can be proficient under unix. On the other hand, I work with highly technically trained developers who have worked under unix for years, and who enthusiastically advance its universal adoption as a desktop computing platform. And I am amazed when I see how much of their time is spent rebuilding a corrupted file system, patching drivers, and figuring out unnecessarily arcane syntax for performing simple everyday tasks. Even for that highly specialized and motivated population, it doesn't seem like a very effective solution.

And I'm not necessarily a Windows proponent. It does seem stable and interoperable, and mostly usable even by non techies. But it's no panacaea by a long shot. OSX also has its adherents, although I find it pretty unintuitive myself.

What I wish we had was a decent desktop version of VM/SP, which had evolved along with the times. Thirty years ago it had complete virtualization, rock-solid stability, a mostly intuitive command set, what is still the best text and programming editor on the planet, and a forgiving and easy to learn but powerful shell/macro programming language.

Someday maybe we'll get a decent computing platform that's built new from the ground up. But so far any attempt to do so has failed miserably (NeXT, Amiga, OS2...)

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