Hi,
Octocontrabass wrote:
Brendan wrote:
If the auto-configuration is so broken that you ended up with a flickering screen, then auto-configuration is broken.
How do you determine what will be considered a flickering screen?
CRT monitors always flicker, and the best you can do is set a refresh rate that makes the flickering too fast to be visible. Some users will find 60Hz acceptable, and others will require a minimum of 75Hz to prevent eyestrain, headaches, and immediate pain upon looking at the screen.
You're mixing up completely unrelated things in an attempt to spread discontent.
There's normal flicker; like the flicker you get from things like fluorescent lighting and monitors (when working correctly) that happens so fast normal people don't realise, that is only noticeable when there's movement and the graphics system doesn't have motion blur.
Then there's abnormal flicker. There are only 2 cases where this occurs - either a fool screwed up video mode timings (e.g. tried to push a VGA into 800*600 despite not having a fast enough pixel clock and ending up with < 40 Hz refresh rate); and IBM's dreadful "1024*768 interlaced" video mode (where frame rate, not field rate, is only 43 Hz).
Octocontrabass wrote:
Of course, you can't know what the user thinks is acceptable without asking the user.
The same applies to colour depth, and horizontal and vertical resolution.
It's not a question of what is/isn't acceptable to the user; it's a question of finding the best compromise between multiple factors (refresh rate, colour depth, horizontal and vertical resolution, monitor capabilities, video card capabilities, renderer capabilities, etc); while taking into account mitigations (dithering, anti-aliasing, motion blur, ...).
Octocontrabass wrote:
Brendan wrote:
"text adventure"
Funny you should compare it to a game, because that's exactly what it is. I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't discovered how much fun this game could be.
Yes; for some people the more "challenging" (unusable, obnoxious, worthless) something is the more fun it is to try to "win". My OS is not designed for these people.
Most people see a computer as a tool intended to help them (not as some hideous
Rube Goldberg puzzle). These are the people my OS is intended for.
Brendan wrote:
....(note that software developers tend to be an extremely poor statistical sample, as they have knowledge that existing users lack and are more likely to persevere).
Cheers,
Brendan