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Absolutely. The sad reality is that, to a lot of linux users right now (and I'm talking about people that know they're running linux, not android users), it's a black box.

Software is "packages" that you install with "synaptic".

Source code? Compiler? What's that?

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This seemed like a developer-targeted article, though. I mean, who is having trouble with even 1 million directory entries, let alone 8 million, who is afraid of a compiler?

Developers who only write in interpreted languages :-)

That's not sad reality, that's success.

Both valid perspectives; it depends on your priorities. Some people want computers to be a black box, because when the black box works, it means less cognitive load to use.

The most interesting thing (in this subthread) is that Linux is able to be a black box. That wasn't the case not too long ago.

Well, once the hardware started working and the graphical toolkit options expanded beyond Tcl/Tk / Perl/Tk...

Ubuntu accelerated the process. Despite being a long time Linux user and programmer, I'd rather know the machine is goin' to work when I haven't done anything to mangle the beast.

I've spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours in the past just getting networking drivers to function. The brave new world of Linux is a good thing, the Interp-Only volken serve only to bolster the ecosystem, not harm it.

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