Hi, On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 06:20:54PM -0400, Morgon Kanter wrote: > This one time, at band camp, David Roundy <droundy@abridgegame.org> wrote: > > > Maybe novices should only be shown gui > > programs after all. They probably don't want to be using a shell > > anyways... > > I don't really think this would be a good idea at all. I was a novice > once while using Debian, and I'm glad that the above wasn't reality. Especially because no GUI has been able so far to create the empowering experience from being able to glue lots of things together, and easily adding the missing bits yourself. In the GUI world, you either have a program or an applet for a specific task, or you're out of luck. There is no way to combine existing tools. You won't learn step by step to be more and more self supporting. There's just one very steep step up: either you write those big tools or you don't. I think that Debian, and Free Software in general, is about empowering the user and trying to bridge the gap between user and developer. Most GUI applications fail miserably in that area; they feed the user nothing but a large set of multiple choice options. They cannot be connected in a meaningful way to anything that developer hasn't explicitly created an interface for. The user can only do what the developer intended; no more, no less. That is not in the best interest of our users, I'd say. Cheers, Emile. -- E-Advies - Emile van Bergen emile@e-advies.nl tel. +31 (0)70 3906153 http://www.e-advies.nl
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