On Thu, 2003-02-27 at 07:59, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 12:12:40AM -0600, Steve Langasek wrote:
> > [...] But while I want Debian to be an empowering operating system
> > that grows with the user, I think any strategy that expects users to
> > also be administrators is a losing one -- no matter how easy we make it
> > to administer that system.
>
> Who do you think should administer the systems used by random people
> at home?
They usually got neighbours, sons, nephews, ....
I know many, many, many home computer users (windows of course) who
can't and don't administer their own system. If they do, usually the
first person who knows anything about administrating a computer bangs
his head on the next wall if they see the result...
I do the more specialized tasks for my mother (XP now), while my mother
does the easier administration tasks on some of her friends/collegues
PCs (with phonecalls to me if things get more complicated) etc.
> > [...] -- but I think the way to do that is by giving those
> > doctors pre-configured systems, not by giving them a box of CDs [...]
>
> This fails when it's time to do security updates, or an update of the
> entire system; running "apt-get dist-upgrade" will quite happily ask you
> lots of things that Joe User shouldn't need to know. For a doctor, this
> is fine: they can hire a consultant to keep the system up to date. For
3rd world doctors can't afford consultants. But never mind.
> a home user, that doesn't seem as reasonable.
see above.
Security upgrades shouldn't ask many questions - it's not installing new
packages, but just corrected ones, so all the debconf questions should
have been answered.
I think Steve's position holds quite far.
greets
-- vbi
--
If you are going to run a rinky-dink distro made by a couple of
volunteers, why not run a rinky-dink distro made by a lot of volunteers?
-- Jaldhar H. Vyas on debian-devel
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