On Sat, Aug 21, 1999 at 10:08:39AM +0200, Sarel J. Botha wrote:
> I agree with both of you, but how do you please the enduser and the
> administrator/experienced user ? The only way I can see is to ask a question
> at installation time: Will this be a server or and end-user machine? (or
> something similar).
Three things.
First, I agree with Manoj. I, personally, think letting people jump into
Linux without strongly encouraging them to learn every damn thing they can
about the system is doing them a disservice. Maybe in a year or so we'll
be at the point where you can use Linux boxen satisfactorily without having
to know how to use the root account, and can thus encourage people to just
install it without thinking, and hire a consultant if something drastic
goes wrong.
Second, I don't see the problem here anyway. It's quite possible for
us to have two sets of bootdisks, one that is informative and helpful,
the other that hides everything scary away and generally pampers the
newbie. Or to have two different configuration frontends, or whatever it
ends up taking. It's more a matter of doing the work, than arguing about
which is better. We're Debian. We don't have to worry about finding one
size to fit everyone.
Third, the question isn't "what's this going to be used for", it's
"how much do you want to be coddled". If you want to know something
about the user, ask about the user, don't ask about the machine and try
to extrapolate.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. PGP encrypted mail preferred.
``The thing is: trying to be too generic is EVIL. It's stupid, it
results in slower code, and it results in more bugs.''
-- Linus Torvalds
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