Re: Why "free" shouldn't have to mean "complicated"
David Nusinow wrote:
> On Mon, May 05, 2003 at 10:19:40AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > On Mon, May 05, 2003 at 02:17:57AM +0200, Felix Steiner wrote:
> > > But in my opinion free software fails if it is only for geeks. Why not try
> > > to coordinate development to make an easier installer? Why not bring to
> > > people what you are working for so hard? I'm sure that there are people that
> > > would like to make things simpler. I hope they will do so.
> >
> > If you're new to Linux, downloading ISOs and hoping isn't a really good
> > thing to do. Buy some CDs from someone reputable, and an introductory
> > book, and install the former while reading the latter. Unix is _very_
> > different to Windows, and if you don't want to suffer through relearning
> > all habits, you need either a book or a friend to guide you through it.
>
> This does remind me, has anyone started a real Debian Desktop
> metadistro/flavor? The desktop subproject hasn't been very active in
> terms of discussion, and I think a good piece of the work is in place
You should discuss this on debian-devel where the discussions take
place.
> with the new package tags to make it. apt and aptitude/dselect/other
> frontends still need to be patched to work with sublists of packages in
> order to cut things out like web servers for the user. Knoppix is a
> good start, but its focus really is more on the liveCD thing than on
> being a desktop distro. Unfortunately, the really big missing piece to
You are free to pick up Knoppix as basis and extend it to your desktop
distribution of choice. Maybe this would just contribute to the
number of Knoppix-like liveCDs, maybe this would contribute to the
desktop distribution.
> this as far as I can see is still the installer. After all, hardware
So HELP!!!!!!!!
The installer is a lot of work and it's depressing having to work on
it. Why? You don't need it very often. You don't use it very often.
You don't need it in your day-to-day job like Mutt, vi, Emacs, gcc or
whatever. It's a pain, but it needs to be done in order to keep
Debian being installable. Please help and contribute to the
installer. Even if you only test the current work and report
problems, that would be a lot of help, I assume.
> autodetection and a pretty installer is something that many users have
> been asking for on their desktops.
Somebody needs to implement it. Please help.
Regards,
Joey
--
Have you ever noticed that "General Public Licence" contains the word "Pub"?
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