thats why i went into business...i even have a barter system worked out..

I think the 'common sense' part should start just a leeetle bit earlier with getting an antivirus and ignoring all interesting financial offers by african royalties whom you don't personally know of..

Depends what you mean by understand it. I understand how an internal combustion engine works, but there is no way I am doing something with it. If it goes wrong, I pay for it and it is someone elses job to fix.
If a light comes on saying to stop, I will stop and phone the breakdown people, but i have no interest in the insides.

Analogies are slippery in general, and the car analogy in particular is problematic.

I know a *lot* about engines; and have rebuilt a couple. That knowledge did me no good when my alternator went out in the corolla last year, halfway to Tucson. The battery quickly drained, the computer could not run, the car died. It is not practical to carry spare parts, given that Toyotas are pretty reliable.

With computers, the failures are almost always software; bugs that could be fixed but were not. This applies to any OS or application.

I fly light aircraft. The engines are orders of manitude more reliable than those in cars, partly because of strict maintenance and design requirements. Software in the control systems of expensive aircraft also are subject to rigid standards - standards that, if applied to NITs or home computers, would make them both hideously expensive and wonderfully reliable!

Steve

that really depends. i recall there is a special programming language made specifically for military mission critical systems. unlike the most common ones on the pc (c and c++), this one do not allow the programmer to shoot himself in the foot iirc. i believe the name was ada...

hell, switching to a programming language with a built in garbage collector would be a start...

Automobile/aircraft engines aside...

The question here is, do we really want Linux to be just like Windows? I seriously hope not. The commercial OS game is based on two classes of people: developers and end-users. Linux is really a collection of peers (in theory at least). If Linux had the user base of Windows, it would be an incredible clusterf*ck, since support for Linux is maintained by largely unpaid volunteers (aka other peers). I absolutely don't think that the community would be able to maintain support if there were as many clueless users as there are on the Windows platform.

Linux has been and continues to be a great communist experiment. I don't think it would survive if not for its capitalist "competitors", however. With the way things are right now, Linux is better off having the smallest user base. Let the people who require support stick with the corporate wares, where their support is actually paid for by the company.

The more competent users (or at least willing to learn and help where they can) on Linux, the better. It's really a system that flourishes when its users can give back to the community. If you struggle with something as basic as a CLI, stick with Windows or Mac, unless you're willing to learn and help others out. We rely on each other, not Big Brother.

My thoughts exactly.

Not all computers are destined to be simple appliances. I see a Linux computer more like a musical instrument than an MP3 player. Claiming the CLI should be banished sounds to me like: "Why would you bother learning to play a guitar when you can buy an iPod that just works!?!"

There are options for people who need to do stuff without knowing how computers work. As for me, I like the power Linux gives me for doing "unconventional" things.

Much of the bad feelings toward Linux can perhaps be attributed to false marketing. No matter what Nokia or Canonical (Ubuntu) claim, some things in Linux require learning, and there's a segment of people who very much like to keep it that way.