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Re: RH and GNOME



* Scott McDermott (Sat, Jul 25, 1998 at 06:10:18AM -0400)
> Petra, Kevin J Poorman on Fri, Jul 24, 1998 at 11:05:52PM -0500:
> > > I have never heard of a Debian user "defecting" to RH.  The reverse, is
> > > commonplace.
> > 
> > wow aren't we living a sheltered life. Debian _users_ defect to rh all the
> > time,
> 
> Ok, then perhaps I am sheltered.  My opinion is that if they want to
> defect, let them, they are kruft.

Up until now, I can't blame them.  However, at work, and other places, I now
see lots of Redhat users now running Debian 2.0 instead. From speaking to most 
of them I hear that we have a better administrative and packaging tool than
Redhat.

Most users[0] aren't loyal to philosophies and guidelines; they just want the 
newest and best software.  The use the distribution that gives them what they
want.

> Visibility, primarily.  Less complexity.  Caters more to newbies.  I
> say, *good* -- *why overlap*, let them graduate to Debian.  Why is this
> perceived as a race, I don't understand.

I guess that RedHat is more "new-user-friendly" than Debian, but that isn't
something I would like Debian to be if it means that we sacrifice true
user-friendlyness to achieve this.

> 
> > because we (debian) is not new user/user freindly ... we should fix
> > this problem ...
> 
> I would like you to tell me why this is a problem, why it needs to be
[...]
> way to encourage proficient hacking.  So really I don't see anything
> contradictory with not caring about newbies.

Agreed.  For new linux users, let them use a distribution that is easier to
start with. When they are "learned" enough to look at distributions and make a
choice, however, I'd like that choice to be Debian.  That is what we should
aim for.  Being the best Linux distribution for people who know how to handle
a unix system.

> > why can't we make linux, just a little easier to use, for the new users.
> 
> I guess you could...what did you have in mind? Apt is underway, looks
> great, there's lots of GUI tools to choose from for any CLI task, XDM
> and you never have to even look at a shell prompt, right?  My, would
> that suck!

But still, having the opportunity to use something like linuxconf in addition
to vi[1] as an administrative tool shouldn't be frowned upon.


[0] - Ok, Ok, I'm generalizing. :-)
[1] - Or whatever your favourite editor is.
-- 
 SSM - Stig Sandbeck Mathisen
  Trust the Computer, the Computer is your Friend

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