Jim Henderson wrote:
> I think it's largely a mindset - coming from a Windows background, one 
> typically is used to just being able to do things.

Yes. I was amused by one reviewer complaining he got a UAC prompt trying 
to change the time.

Maybe MS could put UAC prompts in appropriate to the version of the OS. 
Home users can change the time without a prompt, while enterprise 
versions need a prompt, for example.

> On *nix platforms with sudo, the mindset is a little different, but also 
> having the option to use NOPASSWD (which is ignored actually by kdesu and 
> gnomesu).  

Yah. You can do this just by logging in as administrator, for example. 
Then you get no prompts at all.

> When I installed VNC on Vista, UAC prompted me *several* times 
> during the installation, and that was a pain.  With Linux, I get asked 
> once during a software installation.

Yeah, they could obviously clear this up. Maybe you would have had 
better results using "run as administrator" on the install script, as I 
expect VNC was installing (for example) both the client and the server, 
perhaps as launching separate executables.

>> Yep. To each his own. :-) I already had to reinstall OpenSuSE 11 twice
>> due to it doing f'ed up things I couldn't figure out how to undo. Like,
>> taking the "start button" off the "task bar", or screwing up the package
>> management system so that attempts to update crash out.
> 
> KDE or GNOME?  I haven't had those issues as a GNOME user.

GNOME. I didn't have them in KDE SuSE 10, either.

I think I'm just f'ing unlucky. I seem to run into every weird problem 
that no other Linux user ever has trouble with. Must be my morphogenic 
field or something.

> I've not had that problem - using KDE or GNOME? 

GNOME, this time. I'm just picking "yast" off the system menu and going 
to the "update" stuff.

It used to be YaST would say "Hey, there's three packages to install to 
update the installer. Click "OK" to install them, and I'll restart."

Now it tells you there's three you ought to install, so go scroll thru 
the list of 600 updates and find just those three, then click on each to 
make the "install" button appear, then click on the "Install" button, 
*then* accept it.

And don't just select all the packages and say "install", because then 
we'll warn you that we're about to break stuff, even if we really aren't.

I just think the UI went really downhill there, even if it makes more 
sense to someone more experienced.  Or maybe there's a better way to get 
to the same functionality now, or something.

> the updater works very well and makes a lot of sense

Except it locks the package manager for several minutes when I log in. 
(Probably less annoying than in SuSE 10, where it downloaded the package 
lists every time you logged in.)  Assuming you're talking about the 
automatic one that runs in the systray-equivalent.

That's what I *thought* I was turning off when I confirmed ditching the 
"start menu" button, since it had crashed out repeatedly with bad 
package repositories or something. And just *try* to figure out how to 
get that button back when it's gone. ;-)  Since I had *just* made a full 
backup, it was easier to restore than to look up what I needed to know.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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