On Thu, Nov 30, 2006 at 01:14:34PM +0200, Tshepang Lekhonkhobe wrote:
> Hi,
> A killer app is an application that compels one to use a certain
> system. On Debian lists, someone mentioned that meld, a GUI diff
> utility, was killer. I can't think of any I have because I moved to
> GNU/Linux for its said overall magnificence, instead of a particular
> application, and today there's isn't one utility I admire so much I'd
> consider such... maybe gnome-terminal, lsof, grep, top,
> epiphany-browser, or less. I'd mention admirance for Blender, GCC,
> Python but they are cross-platform. I'd mention GNOME, but it's a 100
> apps. So I give up and ask you, what's your killer app(s)?
Hi Tshepang,
from the myriad of answers, it seems clear that the answer depends upon
what the user think is important to them and there are different
requirement for each users. There is not just one user type for Gnu.
Some are people are looking for text processing, some graphics, some
audio, some programming platorm, some privacy, some no viruses, etc. It
takes any person _a lot_ of persistance to want to use *nix systems. At
least the folks that I know simply have no interest in doing anything
'odd' or 'difficult' or 'not what everyone uses' and that requires
asking questions and reading alot, what with literacy today. They must
have learned about something like DRM, copyright, or have been in
academia where *nix system are used to have a wish to depart from the
mainstream. I like reading about relatives or friends of *nix people
installing Gnu. And Ubuntu seems to be making some impression although
I've not really figured out how they get those average folks to use it
against all the pressures of todays society to not be geeks and be like
everyone else. The 3-clicks approach is helpful to get it installed,
but it doesnt prevent the need for join irc or mailing lists which most
folks are not very interested in doing. Any way, once you set your mind
to install it, the rest is easy. Just ask question, wait for people to
answer you, and read alot. Any thought on how people come to Gnu is the
harder question to me, not what they use when they get here.