“Last week I was on my Linux box doing whatever it is I do on my
Linux box when I became a little bored and decided it was time for
some rest and relaxation. I sat back and started a game of KDE’s
Shisen-Sho ($KDE/bin/kshisen is where you’ll find this game on your
KDE-enabled Linux box), which is a simple strategy game using the
same game pieces as the popular Mahjongg.”
“At this point, my long-time pal, computer novice, and
girlfriend entered the room and caught me red-handed playing
Shisen-Sho. She sat with me and asked about the rules of the game
and helped me out with clearing some of the tiles from the
board.”
“Users really don’t have time to worry about stupid things like
cross-platform source code, operating systems, proprietary
protocols, and monopolistic practices. They want to run
applications on their computers. But we system administrators have
to worry about all those limitations unless, well, unless we’re
working with a system that has open standards, like X, telnet,
TCP/IP, POSIX compliance, and all the other niceties that make such
user requests easier.”
“The hours following her request contained a lot of decisions,
searching, brick walls, and frustrations. I was reminded that Free
Software is seemingly always better than proprietary equivalents,
and that when you throw a closed, proprietary thing, be it an OS or
software package, into a complex system (like my 3-computer
ethernet), you will always have more work to do.”