Valentin Gagarin writes: >>> - s/backed up and// >>> >>> The difficulty of backing up is a specific instance of the >>> fragmentation problem. But this is likely only evident to Qubes >>> users. We can expect most readers to know about it theoretically at >>> best. While it's not wrong to have this sort of anchor, keeping it >>> risks diluting the main message. >> >> I'm concerned that removing the more specific verbs here might make it >> more difficult to understand /why/ treating the system as a whole is >> desirable. We don't have to be so specific as to call out backups or >> management, but I think without talking about something more specific, >> even if that's just "thinking", as in "one only needs to think about a >> single system", it loses its motivation. > > Yes, what we're trying to convey here feels tricky to get right. Not > sure "thinking of" is more specific than "treating", but maybe it better > gets across a sentiment of "conceptualising" (in the sense of: mentally > grasping). In my drafting I was mainly focused on the interaction with > the system, since I came from the original which worked with examples of > handling the system and thus *implied* some thinking. Maybe thinking is > just the right thing. At least this sounds perfectly fine to me: > > This means that the system can be thought of as a whole, rather than > many virtual machines each becoming a system of its own. > > One could argue that thinking about a system is a very specific > interaction we perform very often... > > Feel free to fix it up like that, otherwise I'll give it another round > of ideas. Thinking about it some more, I wonder if maybe my emphasis on verbs was misplaced. The underlying thing I wanted to communicate is the feeling, and I was relying on the verbs to connote those feelings to the reader. The relevant feelings here are "burdened" and "overwhelmed". Perhaps there's a better way to get those across, either directly or indirectly. What do you think?