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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