Someone responded to my recent post, and made some good, and some poor comments. This is in response.
"Uhh… install it and choose KDE as the default session the next time you see a login screen. Not really hard. To install KDE is just as easy – open up a terminal and type “sudo apt-get install kde”."
Maybe that works in Debian, but I use some less-well-known *cough* distros: SuSE 9.3 Pro and Gentoo, and installing KDE after Gnome, or vice versa, has RARELY added the new screen manager to my login screen. It has occurred, but as a rule, I have to reinstall the whole distro and select both in order to get both to show up on the menu. Am I a moron after all? Hmmmm… I think the distro is misbehaving. But that’s my point. It’s not (always) as easy as it is for the developers. If it works for the developers and most users, that apparently doesn’t mean it works for everybody.
"Press on the little update notification on your panel and have all of your apps updated (not just the OS itself). Now that’s incredibly hard, you are right."
I’ve seen that icon on some distros, yes. But not all recent ones make it that easy. However, I’ll submit that some distros make it as easy as Windows does, and yes, having it work for (some/most) apps plus the OS rather than just the OS is a huge plus.
"About your other drivel. You are aware of sudo and acls, aren’t you?
And you are aware that you can share folders on modern linux distros by simply clicking, just like you described for windows?"
Oh please. Did you even read that paragraph, or did you just skim it? I know you can share with Linux. I mention ACLs myself in that blog. Duh. Someone’s not reading. (I’m only being blunt because you take no pains to avoid it. I can hear you now "well you started it" Ha ha. You’d be half-right. Actually I point at the original article poster). Are ACLs easy in Linux? I’ve not seen a single distro that makes it so. Are they pervasive throughout the OS and apps? No. Can the average Linux user, with their window manager, or even at the prompt (AVERAGE user, I say) share one file with one friend, without sudo privileges? I don’t know that it’s even possible, but I’d love it if you could SHOW me that it’s so easy your mom could do it.
"To sum it up, your blog entry is probably one of the dumbest things I have read recently. Not one good point, only senseless drivel."
You only addressed 4 or 5 of the many points I made. Are you out of breath? Some of your retorts have merit. The biggest one is the update process. But to make poor return arguments about window managers not updating the login menu properly, or ACLs that are inaccessible to most people, that just shows either your obsession of Linux or how clueless you are that not everyone knows the inner workings of Linux like you do, and to wrap up by saying my blog was "one of the dumbest things [you] have read recently" sounds pathetic.
Finally, to qualify what I mean by "the average user" or "most users". Have you ever walked into a regular business, or home, and seen the way most users work? They pull up Excel and know about 5 commands: open, save, bold, italics, and center. I’m exaggerating slightly here, but if you DON’T know what I’m talking about then you’ve been in your system admin den too long and need to get out into the light.