Pressing a button in linux is too complicated

[Brian Densmore]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: jeffslists
> 
> I had to laugh when I started to read the thread "unmounting 
> a volume"  
> This complicated button reminds me of a very short story, "King's 
> Advisors and the Toaster" 
> (http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/6271/compu034.html)
>   In this 
> story an engineer and a computer scientist are asked to design a 
> toaster. 
> ...
> 
> In windows or any other sane desktop operating system if I 
> want to open 
> my cd-rom drive I press a button and it always opens, unless 
> I'm burning 
> a cd, and even then getting the drive to open is no problem.  
> But with 
> all linux distros, AFAIK, pressing a button can be very 
> complicated.  In 
> order to get my cd I have to search through processes using 
> 'ps' and try 
> to determine what process is locking my drive.  What a total waste of 
> time.  Even though I have a B.S. in computer science I don't care to 
> waste my time searching through processes in order to 
> retrieve my cd.
My thoughts on the ease of use of Linux and devices, versus Windows.
1) Windows doesn't always allow you to eject a cd, even if it is only CDROM
drive. I have constant problems with the older CDROM on my office PC. Sometimes,
it will take in a cd and then the entire CDROM will disappear from the filemanager.
And if I ask it why, it says something like 'there is no CDROM on the computer, please
reboot'.

2) Windows will sometimes annoyingly run anything I insert into my cdrom, even if I've
just taken the CD out and reinserted it to get the software key off of it, without asking
me first.

3) I generally do not have any problems using a CD or DVD on my Linux desktop. If I insert
a CD all I do is click on an icon and "presto chango" the cd mounts and opens up a file
manager or starts xine or plays the music on it. Actually that last statement isn't 
strictly true, because it autodetects and plays music CDs.

4) occasionally, I will come across a rogue application that locks the CD and I have to
ps search it out and kill it. 

5) Occasionally a rogue windows program will lock the CD and refuse to release it and refuse
to allow me to find the culprit and kill it. Forcing me to reboot or at the least log off
and back on to free it up.

6) The problem with Linux ease of use is the all too frequent spreading of Linux Usability Myths.


JMHO,
Brian Densmore