Two Slashes

A question was posed in the TechCentric IRC channel about why Linux seems to have taken a backseat to other, more graphical alternatives. Of course, Windows. Yes, Mac OS X. Hell, throw OS/2 in there for measure. Well, funny thing I mention graphics, because that’s what it’s all about.

Take a trip back to the age of the Apple II. Yeah, remember? Well, even if you don’t, or had little experience with one, it’s part of my point. If you noticed, they never had mice. Everything was keyboard-driven. There was no such thing as “point-and-click”; the monitor simply couldn’t sense what part of the screen you were pointing at. Think of it as talking to a blind, deaf person; they can’t hear or see you, but they can feel your touch – a la, you can’t dictate orders to it, and (like I said) you can’t just gesture at something and expect the computer to comply. You actually had to touch the thing in certain ways (typing commands, anyone?) to get it to do anything.

This form of input had a few limits to it. For example, you had to know how to instruct the computer to do what you wanted, whether it be some funky acronym for the Canadian French word for the command you wanted, or whether the command wanted to know your pants size in addition to what it needed to do. This required memorization, and a certain amount of brainpower (which is proving to be a really finite resource in today’s world). You couldn’t just type “Move File A on Disk B to Disk C as File D.” and expect the computer to comply with anything other than the DOS equivalent of “WTF?”.

There were some benefits to doing things this way. If you wanted to be anywhere near productive, you had to be able to provide input to the computer as quickly as possible. And if you can follow where I’m going, this isn’t a place for hunt-and-peck typing. Ah, yes…you actually had to LEARN the sacred art of touch typing, with as few mistakes as possible. You never know when one mistyped command makes your 200KB of hard-written letters disappear. (Oh wait, am I jumping ahead past the invention of the software word processor? )

So, fast forward to the introduction of the Graphical User Interface. And the mouse. “Hey! Look over here! I’m making gestures with this newfangled pointing device…and the computer’s following along! I don’t have to type the name of my programs anymore; I just ‘click’their name and the computer starts them for me!” If you don’t get it already, this is where the trend starts to fall. People are no longer “learning” to use a PC by throwing commands at them or typing; they simply move a bloody box around and watch as the computer does all the important stuff like figuring out what the devil they’re trying to do in the first place.

(Admittedly, the Apple II did have graphics capability – very limited graphics capability – and you still needed a keyboard to control what you were doing. So call my mistake if you want, but you’re forgetting that there’s more than just a pretty red square at stake here.)

Ooh and ahh all you want, but like I said, this is where intelligence begins to lose importance as a prerequisite for computing. You don’t have to memorize commands; you don’t have to lay a finger on the keyboard unless you want to write a note at all. The mouse, with far fewer buttons than a keyboard, is part of the reason.

I’ll stop assuming you’re thinking about old copies of Mac OS a minute and lead you instead to earlier versions of Windows. Yes, my friend, there were Windows before 95. Again, people were dumbstruck by the simplicity compared to previous computers. Not only could people use their blasted mice like with the Apples, but (in the case of those who could remember what a console app was) console apps could be run too; a true case of having your cake and eating it too, if you will. Along comes good ol’’95 – “Oh look! All my programs are accessible from this one gaping button, and all the stuff I’m doing shows up on this bar here!” – and people are further retarded by “technologies” such as Autorun. No longer do people have to browse to the blasted CD, find the appropriate application, and launch it; instead, they sit back and watch as the computer brings the contents of the CD to THEM. Same thing with getting a new peripheral; plug the thing in, and instead of installing anything (in most cases), Windows goes through that hurdle all by its lonesome.

So, returning to the question at hand. Why isn’t Linux or some other alternative operating system mainstream? You want the truth? The keyboard…it scares people. When they’re not using it to type letters to their grandmother (which by the way, is now so advanced that the letters can move, show up blue and big and bold, and appear as if on a wooden tabletop), most users don’t want to be hassled with it. It’s a reminder of times past; times where people could only make their computers go as fast as their little fingers could move (which in some cases was not all that fast at all). And with the surging downfall in the mental capacity of most people today, it’s becoming harder and scarier for people to actually have to do more than click a box and watch their worries disappear with the contents of their Recycle Bin.

You see, it isn’t just eye candy that draws people. Compiz Fusion (or whatever the heck it’s called), transparency – anything extra isn’t the primary focus, it’s just a benefit to make things look better while things are (purportedly) getting done. It’s simplicity and automation; being able to walk up, move the mouse as little as possible and avoid the keyboard at almost all cost, and go 1/8 of the way while the computer does the remaining 7/8 and then some. If people actually wanted to put physical movement into anything, would there be such a market or demand for dictation software? Would operating systems even need to include something like that?

People want the computer to follow the fallacy that it brings information to them, rather than bringing them to the information. This isn’t Google…its the operating system, and it’s supposed to make things easy, right? Perhaps we’ve gone too far, and people are just too lazy now to understand that to get the most out of anything, you need to put some of the work in yourself as well.

In short, it isn’t about what you can duplicate from another operating system that draws people to it (since they can get their calculator anywhere), it’s how much work they have to put in to get some sort of benefit to using the OS in the first place. The more maintenance, typing, or dabbling people have to do or hear others doing, the less they become interested in following that footpath.

This is the place where we have our major split. The average Windows users are lazy, and assume they are like magnets in that everything comes to them, be it the Internet, their music, viruses (you have to admit, most viruses DO come TO you), or a girlfriend (I wish. ), and that as far as they’re concerned they don’t care about their keyboards – they’re second class input devices. Mac users, well, they’re not as lazy, since there is still the extremely occasional typing to do, and the keyboard helps out in some of the applications they have. There are 10 types of Unix users as well: GUI users who have no idea what a shell is and are probably only using the OS because a relative with computer savviness realized that they had thirty installed copies of Bonzi Buddy and needed an out badly, and those people who don’t like their mouse, but prefer navigating around a system using all ten (eleven, if you somehow have an extra) phalanges and avoiding the mouse (aka the opposite of the average Windows user).

To sum everything up nicely:  to get the more “common” lazy man, you simply need to provide enough cupholders, and make sure there’s a built-in auto-sensing back scratcher too.  That’s all everyone really wants.