Considering open source software is what she is talking about and what we are interested. It is interesting People are approaching this author with a CLOSED MIND. Windows programmers used to do the same thing. Those who remember dos and the instructions that needed to be typed to get something done. Sure, if you did that system work every day it was easy, but for those of us who only entered commands occasionally, maybe once a year, the commands were difficult to remember. The techies writing the software always assumed people would know or should know. Or that they should hire a techie to FIX their computer. Considering all of the conflicts that would occur in those days between hardware and the software problems, and those conflicts and how that would cause the system to blow up. It was not until Microsoft began to make software user friendly with windows 95 and then 2000 and then xp that people could relax just a bit at their monitor.

Personally i think this writer is ABSOLUTELY right. Techies should be open minded about their open source. I am not a puter person but am pretty good about building computers for my office and installing hardware and software. Even so i would not know what to do with that command. I intend to become familiar with linux but i also know the learning curve is going to be high, like going back to the dos days.

While some of her points may apply to the Linux desktop, they certainly don't apply to much else.

With regards to usability:

Microsoft and Apple invest a *lot* of money in usability testing and interface design. I think what we really need to see is more usability experts contributing to Open Source.

"cloning Apple's good work" wouldn't work either, since Apple and Microsoft alone file *thousands* of patent applications every year. Software patents hurt open software.

With regards to the documentation bit:

Unix? End users don't install UNIX!

I could go on for hours...

Don't pay any attention to this article.