Why I'm dropping recommendation of Gentoo

[Valkura]

Well, it sounds like the wife had no idea where to find the program because there were no folders with a name that looked like it might contain programs.

So why not just go through and rename some of the folders?

Maybe something along the lines of /usr being renamed to "Programs", and then /usr/bin being "/Programs/Programs." (Think of the Windows user trying to get through... "oh! programs!" "programs again!" and there are the binaries.) That would make more sense to the fresh-from-Windows user, I would think. Maybe do some other renamings, such as /etc -> /configuration. Serious users would know what /sbin, /usr/sbin, etc would be, so it doesn't really affect their usage much.

Would that work?
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SFH, because it's awesome

[curtis119]

[enderandrew]

I'm not the only person to make this complaint. Sure you can learn any procedure, but if it must be learned because it isn't intuitive, then it can be improved upon. Something that makes sense upon first place is better than something that doesn't make sense at first glance.

GoboLinux isn't perfect, but it demonstrates that this is a desired feature, and one that can be made to work.

They do symlinks, which should be a band-aid at best. The true solution for a new file structure is to patch programs to know where to look with the new file system.

There is a standard, and standards get revised and rewritten. I know that patching thousands of programs is not easy or fun. You can't fully adopt a new standard overnight, and you would have to use symlinks for a while. But I imagine it would help more people adopt GNU/Linux.
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Nihilism makes me smile.

[Kensai]

[marslander]

hey just instead of complaining i'm using gentoo on servers system and i have no prob maintaing them kinda use nagios mrtg
and wrote some stupid script to do a emerge sync each week and send me the updates and do a emerge world when needed by itself maybe reisky to let run a emerge world alone but it works

say i find the way the system ahs been build realy nice

but not side of workstation

say i hate red hat on servers you get a huge chity system in a way whit way to mutch useless rubish
you can un a gentoo on a old comp and get the same stats out of it as running red hat on a new one so kidan not what i'm looking for i whan it fast and stable

say exept for a mismade perl package say mismade link that i relinked myself i never had any trouble

my nagios runs the system whitout me if you just put some work in it after you don' need to look at the comp anymore just at your mailbox what most poeple do a few time a day

and for realyrealy hard alaert like web server crash or mail server i get a sms true my phone pprovider so i would recomend this system to all those that arentd scared from learning and trying out and awhant fast stable system

doh -try to run one prod box and one test one :p

i do that kinda and my test box runs stince 2 year i think never been restard since and reuns realy nice and for security i find it secure enough and up to your own to make the security you need kinda

and if you play games on your comp don't even think of security i don't secure playng mahicne that useless and don't think that it realy is what this system originaly was aimed for

[curtis119]

[Shadow Skill]

Curtis its actually very easy to blow your whole assertion out of the water; the unix system uses an insane system of case sensitivity which is indeed counter intuitive because the human brain simply does not interperet differences in letter case as entirely different symbols with entirely different meaning unless there is a specific context to the symbols. GUI's tend to be built in similarly stupid ways just think about scroll bars why are they on the right side of the screen if you start reading text from the left side of the screen? If those bars are going to be of any use they should be on the same side of the screen that someone starts reading from, if you read from right to left the scrollbars are actually somewhat usefull, one can then only conclude that the scroll bars should be placeable on any side of the screen at the end user's descresion and should not be dictated by the GUI theme, or the Operating system. Yet how often do you see options to alter the position of the scroll bars?

You can say all day about how something works for you but that doesn't actually mean that it really is intuitive or even logical [case sensitivity for the entire system, and scroll bar placement for example]. Its like trying to say that C++ is intuitive because you have already learned how to deal with the syntax of the language. There is a real argument for changing the names of at least some of the directories in the unix hierarchy simply because there are indeed better words that are used in more traditional communication that can be used to describe the purpose of a given directory.

If you really want to get deep into things I would argue that the entire methodology used to design computer interfaces of all kinds for the past twenty or so years has been counter intuitive in nature and that people mistakenly believe that those who are not programming [for which this is inescapeable] should be forced to bend thier minds to the way the computer functions when it is well within the power of the computers and the programmers themselvex to create interfaces that work more like the way people do.
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Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.

"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it."

[enderandrew]

[curtis119]

It works well for "me".

Case insensitivity on Windows DRIVES ME CRAZY!!!! Of course "A" is different than "a". It's as plain as the nose on my face that those two symbols are not the same.

As I said at the end of my last post, I'm not against change. I'm against changing things soley to make it easier for n00bs. If a good way of changing the file structure comes along that makes it better somehow or more secure than I am all for it.

The changes proposed here are strictly for n00bs to be able to figure things out faster. They can read the MAN pages like the rest of us and if they don't want to learn the system then they can use a GUI-only system like Windows or Mac. I'm not trying to be elitist here at all (seriously). I'm trying to say that I like the way *nix is set up. If others don't they can change it, just like GoboLinux is doing (more power to them) or use something else.

I'm not one of those people who think Linux will rule the world. I think we need as many different OS's as possible so that we will never again be held hostage to one way of doing things like the Windows world. Diversity is the key to success. If linux doesn't suit your needs - then use something else. It really is that simple.
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Gentoo: it's like wiping your ass with silk.

[Shadow Skill]

The two symbols have the same meaning unless context is given to them that is actually outside of the scope of the symbol itself. "A" is indeed still "a" and therefore the meaning is the same until you change the meaning with context. There have actually been scientific studies with respect to this, essentially mixing case for example uses more processing power for the human brain but in no way affects how the symbols are interpereted. This is why we don't have a 48 letter system with half the letters coming from case alteration. It is a contrived system interface that forces one to give a new context to those letters based on the case and is not something that is intuitive because the brain itself just doesn't treat the symbols differently as it is processing them. Hence your attempt at showing the opposite argument fails; even if you were to allow for the sake of argument that the brain actually does treat these symbols as it would treat totally seperate words you fail to address that it is only the interface of an application that makes the distinction between PROG1 and prog1 and that nowhere else in speech would the two be taken to mean something entirely different unless one gave context the the appearance of the symbols which still comes after one has interperted the what the letters actually are.

Quite frankly I'm a fairly annoyed at having to alway worry about whether I typed emerge or Emerge because as far as I am concerned the commands are in fact the same and if I were talking to a human being they would indeed be the same as long as there was no change in context. It is only the operating system that likes to think these things are different even without a change in context where context would be the actual path to the executeable. Does this make me a noob? At this point I would argue that you are just talking out of your rear end claiming that removing what is otherwise useless will only help noobs when in reality only programming need deal with a case sensitive construct. Which is again a type of context that is applied after the symbols are understood by the mind.

Leaving it in the general interface just encourages bad habits on the part of both users and developers like having about ten different files all named "readme" that are differentiated by difference in case. Forcing users to type less README as opposed to Less readme is not smart, not convinient, and has no benefit to the users of any kind.

You have yet to provide a real reason to actually keep things the way they are save to say "Well I already know what it is so screw anyone and everyone else who thinks different." It makes no sense to have one of the most important directories be named "etc" as though it was a bit useless where as something like config would que alot more people into exactly what the directory contains. I would imagine that the term "application" would make a hell of alot more sense to someone who is not nessecarily familliar with the term binary irrespective of the overall experience level of the users. But because you seem to like wasting time cracking open what amounts to a dictionary to look up various words everyone else should.

This goes beyond the base system and into the actual programs and the directories they create and how they sometimes have fairly ugly nondescriptive naming conventions that in the end slow the user down as he or she has to try and find documentation to tell him or her what is going on. The fact that you know is entirely irrelevant, just ask the Opera developers who smartly decided to change around some of the shortcuts to be more like other browsers and to make more sense to people using Opera for the first time. If you want to open a new tab why would one do ctrl+n which one would rightly given prior experience with a whole host of programs [across operating systems.] to open an entirely new window? How does this help somewhat more experienced users use Opera if basic mnuemonics have been needlessly switched to things that don't properly indicate the resulting function?
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Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.

"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it."

[Shadow Skill]

The reason good tools must be hard to use is that people are so used to using crap that they don't know what a good tool actually is. It is also true that some manage to gain power because the tools are in reality less useful than they could be because they are designed in such a way as to make them the only people that actually understand them. [In other words they are 1337.] You might hear stuff like “we have usability engineers working on our product.” quite frankly I believe this to be a lie at the very best after using computers for almost ten years. If you actually step back and look at the way one is all but forced to work with an overwhelming majority of the software currently available you realize that they are not truly engineered in any active way.

Just look at all of the baby sitting you have to do with web browsers today constantly having to specifically tell them that you want to entre a url even though that is the seminal means by which one browses websites! However you can tell at least a few fairly well known browsers to find text as soon as one begins typing.....

Then look at how often one's eye has to move all the way to the top of the application window in order to access some functionality far away from what you actually want to focus on; how many programs do you know of that support “floating” menus? How many of them let the file edit etc menus float like they let the button tool bars float if they support this feature at all? Where are these supposed usability god's that defined these sorts of things? Better question: Where is the application of good sense? We already more or less understand that non-technical people have no real interest in staring at a black and white terminal screen and would rather deal with pictures of some sort. In that sense the wisdom of the usability gods has been applied for the most part although some refuse to accept that the rest of the world actually wants prompts that tell them they are about to royally fuck themselves over if they perform a given action etc.

I'd also like to know why auto completion of various symbols is not a standard feature of every text editor that has been made within the last five years? Why is it that in Word and Writer I am expected to actually hammer out the termination symbol for quotes, or brackets or braces or parenthesis? Yet I can download virtually any “programmers” editor and have this type of completion despite the fact that whenever any of the symbols I just mentioned are used in normal speech they must having an appropriate termination symbol, save for the apostrophe or single quote when it is used for plurality and certain pronunciation queues.

This sort of feature is not anything specialized or “1337” yet so many general purpose and office suite type editors have no real support for this.

If people were honest with themselves we wouldn't have this polarization of users into power users and “lusers” or everyone else and there would not be any real excuse for programs to just lack truly useful functionality nor would there be a real way of just not listening to a user who makes a suggestion. But of course this wouldn't be good for those who wish to maintain the status quo for whatever reasons they may have.
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Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.

"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it."

[Kensai]

[Shadow Skill]

I would like to ask why did you piss on Momesana's thread about a better configuration tool for Gentoo when he was basically asking for someone to help him code the project or to give suggestions on how to design the project?
_________________
Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.

"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it."

[codergeek42]

[Shadow Skill]

Yes you are right Coder I think Xterm does this as well, it seems like terminal apps are the only ones capable of that sort of a switch without having to resort to hacking the system theme or a program theme. Though I see the logic in what you say Coder the action you suggest creates a situation where you actually loose your place in the line because you have to essentially read backwards in order to keep your place if you were going to make use of the scroll bar. It almost makes the scroll bars useless for reading exercises because they are located at the termination of a line instead of at the genesis of the line. I bet that the fact that Gates forced people to code like machines to get the first Windows OS out has a bit to do with things like this and they just carried over for twenty years totally unchallenged.
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Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.

"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it."

[codergeek42]

[Kensai]

@ Shadow Skill: Yeah I follow you in that

Man Gentoo is so great and the Linux way is so great, it is free you can alter whatever you like to your likings and even sell it. I recommend you to buy the Linux from Scratch book and make your own Linux in an easy to use way, so other people that don't agree can bash it. I just accept what the other has said against your point you know why? Because you fail to understand the point I come to a point to think that you don't even read the posts, since somebody refutes what you said and makes a strong point and then you just act like you always have to win. The everybody is wrong you are right kind of way.
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Gentoo: Gigabyte: nFORCE 2: nVIDIA GeForce 6600: AMD Athlon XP 3200+
Perspective of a Thinking Human Being

[Shadow Skill]

What are you talking about, you are the only one treating this like a contest oh and where is this supposed strong point? Why did you piss on Momesana when he asked for help/suggestions on how to build a configuration tool for Gentoo?
_________________
Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.

"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it."

[Chaosite]

Shadow Skill - URL to the thread you're complaining about?

Case-insensitivity is not very hard to understand. I've converted a few users to Linux, and only one (1) of them asked me about it. I don't remember the question exactly, but the answer was "File names are case sensitive", and his response to that was "Oh, like passwords? Sure, thanks".

BTW, while Windows isn't case sensitive, it pretends to be - file names retain the case you give them. This really isn't that big of a deal.

Most programs are capable of displaying the scrollbar in either side - at least those that support RTL languages, such as Hebrew. I don't understand why you find this so important, but you can probably find some way to do it.

About your tirade on auto-completing quotes and the like. The reason its not available in office suites is that it wouldn't actually work right. Languages are parsable - there is a very strictly defined syntax, and if you deviate from it, it just won't compile. So its actually a very easy job for a good editor to complete parantheses and other symbols in places where it is sure that they have to go.

Natural language is anything but strictly defined. It isn't easy to parse, sometimes impossible even, very inconsistent, and generally a bitch to handle. Something that tries to auto complete the way you suggest would be wrong too many times. Word itself is already annoying by completing senteces into things you never intended to write. I say all this from the exprience of writing a sentence completer.

Oh, and enderandrew? A wiser man than me has said, "The only intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything else is learned".

[bluedevils]

Hmmm...to me having the scroll bar on the right made sense because I hold the mouse on the right hand so it would be intuitive to my hand/eye coordination. If I was left handed, I could see the scroll bar being placed on the left side. When there is no choice it is another example of a left handed person living in a right handed person's world.

[Shadow Skill]

Here is the link Chaosite https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-364633-highlight-badly+needs.html
The scroll bar thing is just an example of how something that should be readily user defineable is not for some wierd reason. The reason the scrollbar thing is silly is this with the scroll bar located at the end of a line unless one uses the mouse as an extension of the finger [which doesn't always work perfectly mind you] the top of the scrollbar becomes difficult to use as a line guide, because you have to cycle your eyes from the end downwards and then back to the the opposite end of the screen in order to start reading again.

Most applications do not have options to change this placement on the fly the only ones I hsve ever seen that can do this are terminal emulators, and the only other way that I am aware of involves me hacking the system theme itself to move the scrollbars so while possible it is not readily doable like the swapping of mouse buttons or the changing of overall font size is. The hand that you use to control the mouse is entirely irrelevant since your eyes will end up at the left side of the screen in a left to right language regardless.

What do you think you use an office product for? [If you mention formal papers you get a prize.] The symbols I mentioned always have a termination symbol with the exception of the single quote when you use them even in what could be termed informal speech. The only form of written speech that would have any real issue is the writing of dialogue which makes use of double quotes and terminated single quotes to delineate a phrase inside dialouge which is already enclosed in double quotes which must be terminated.

I was not talking about trying to complete words [which Writer does to my knowledge.] only the symbols that always require termination in regular speech whenever they are used. The way you handle the completeion is to terminate the symbol when you entre the opening symbol and put the cursor in the centre of the symbols at which point you begin typing and the text would appear inside the symbols. You don't try to guess where you should terminate the symbols at all because the act of opening the set nessecitates the termination of the set.

For an example of how this actually works if you have access to a windows box or wine try pspad www.pspad.com though I am sure what I am talking about can be achieved with Kate OTB.

The argument against case sensitivity is not that it is hard to comprehend it is that it allows people to do stupid things like have six files with the same name that are differentiated by case in the same directory. It also creates annoying problems for auto completeion in some cases because the system will fail to return matches because the case the user enters is different from the case in the file name, it means that applications like Portage must either implement thier own case insensitivity code or accept the system method which means that typing

[Frug]

Word itself is already annoying by completing senteces into things you never intended to write.

Very true. No more helping me by assuming what I want to do. Kthx.

Also, Xresources are anoying crap garbage bull. Stupid annoying system for stupid annoying programs making it stupidly annoying to change simple things. Spending 10 minutes to change a background colour. Only on linux.
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Pentium 3 Celeron 533 MHz
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[alistair]

The most intuitive file system would be tag based. Where to create a file you would have to select the tags that apply to it and then the directory structure of this file would relate to the tags

therefore

/programs/games/fps/blah.exe == /fps/games/programs/blah.exe == /games/fps/programs/blah.exe

this allows any user to find a file really easily as there is no directory order.

But what is interesting with this is...

experiments have shown that someone who saves web bookmarks about specific pages (lets say gentoo.org, mircosoft.com,..., baseball.com) and then a week later are ask to find the bookmark they saved for .... actually have trouble finding it and very really find it the same way as the saved it.

Now whats the problem with this. Lets say your computers been around for a while and you have 100 tags

ls / will list 100 tags. now I now that would take up more than a full screen regardless of how I displayed it.
now imagine 1000 tags, 10000 tags, etc,etc,etc


as for the scroll bar being on the right does it really matter. Can't you look at the left hand side of the text regardless of where the scroll bar is. I really think you should be taking the war on intuitiveness to the keyword, ASCII, the computer power button, cars, planes.
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[Shadow Skill]

The scrollbar placement really matters when dealing with large amounts of text where it becomes more difficult to follow to the next line of text. Putting ten thousand newlines into a paragraph doesn't actually help the problem either. The scrollbar would be better suited to being at the origin of text so that one need not go through a memorization exercise or effectively read a line twice (once for recycling to the origin and again for actual comprehension.) since the scrollbar would then be better able to indicate placement than it is now. Even if I do as you say I have to ask WTF is the scrollbar even there for in the first place if I can't get the thing to help me with following text? Thankfully Firefox will eventually have a preference to allow users to override the default scrollbar placement [layout.scrollbar.side] so at least one of the programs I deal with will have a way of handling this annoyance. Its ironic that I discovered the existence of said preference while looking for a way to just turn the usless scrollbar off in Firefox like I can in Opera..Hooray for accidental discovery!

What you say about bookmarks is interesting but I think the problem is that people don't properly organize things they bookmark and don't pay attention to the name the bookmark is going to have while they are making it. I can't speak from experience as I have really never used bookmarks for websites believe it or not.
_________________
Ware wa mutekinari.
Wa ga kage waza ni kanau mono nashi.
Wa ga ichigeki wa mutekinari.

"First there was nothing, so the lord gave us light. There was still nothing, but at least you could see it."

[slonocode]

I don't follow your scrollbar argument. The scrollbar doesn't seem particularly suited as a reading guide and I've never heard it touted as one. At least not in the way you describe.