Re: To the Debian Project, IMHO

["Simon Martin" <smartin@isys.cl>]

Ok, ok, I sit corrected in several respects, but I am still adamant that any attempt to paint Linux as an out of the box solution
with no prior knowledge is a real danger to the on-going comercial success of Linux. I worked in tech-support for Xerox for about 7
years (Xerox used to sell Apple Mac, IBM PS/2 and Dell in Latin America), and I would say that at least 70% of the problems we had
we with users who not only did not know what they were doing (no problems with that) but who did not WANT to know what they were
doing. Microsoft has fixed the image of it's OS as "just use and ignore it". Let's not fall into that trap.

Fixing the customers expectations is paramount for a successful install. If you fix the expectations as "zero cost, zero learning"
then you are NOT going to have a successful install. I am fairly competent with Debian, but the last time I looked at RedHat, I did
not want to do any real config changes until I had read the corresponding man pages and other documents, and these are both Linux
based!!!!

In short. If you use a tool you have to know it. If you want to use a tool well you have to learn how it works. You don't get
something for nothing and you definitely don't want to tell your customers to expect the world for nothing.

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'I used to be schizophrenic, but now both of us are all right'