Re: How to install X-Chat in five hours (or more)
I agree with every word ....
There are lot's of packages to do Debian more user friendly, they are
available at install time and after by running tasksel.
Maybe the problem was the way that Debian was "pre-installed".... I
think they only installed base. This isn't suitable for a "user". Maybe
if you installed Debian by your own you could feeled more confortable
with dselect and tasksel (called from debian installer) among other
words/commands.
> You will lose many more than you will gain, since there are many more
> > computer illiterate users than geeks.
>
> And? There are a slew of other OSs and Linux distributions as well.
I think many people choose Debian because it's a "geek" distro, without those RH/Mandrake
annoyances that are good for users and bad for "us".
After all .. all this problem happened not just because libgtk1.2 .. but to install a
browser, right ? ... just apt-get install mozilla ..... =)
C´ya and sorry for poor english .. just my 2 c.
[]'s
On Tue, 2003-08-05 at 12:41, Steve Lamb wrote:
> > You will lose many more than you will gain, since there are many more
> > computer illiterate users than geeks.
>
> And? There are a slew of other OSs and Linux distributions as well.
>
> This is what always gets me in discussions that are based on the lowest
> common denominator in computer users; the presumption that everyone wants to
> cater to them.
>
> It has been my experience that packages that cater to the lowest common
> denominator are packages I don't care to use because I find them *hard to use*
> even though they purport to be "easy to use". I have almost always been on
> the side of the scale where I preferred the "harder" package because in the
> long run, once I got over the nominal learning curve, it was easier to use.
> However there was always that drive to go for the lowest common denominator,
> the computer illiterate. It has ruined more programs that I care to list
> because they would add too much, dumb things down, make the program too large
> and hard-to-use in the quest to get people who have to ask "Left or right
> click" after the first time you tell them to right-click something. IE,
> people with no concept of "default behaviors/actions".
>
> I have never, EVER understood why anyone would want to take a package
> which is beloved by the niche geek market and destroy it for the illiterate
> market. That is triply so for commercial packages.
>
> You're wrong in saying that we (in general) would gain more by making our
> package (program, OS, etc) more palatable to the neophyte. As I said above,
> there are a slew of OSs and distributions that cater to that segment. To move
> Debian into that realm would be to lose what it has and compete with
> established entities. 100% of this slice is better than <1% of *that* slice.
>
> > Just to clarify, I've nothing against verbosity itself. /var/log, for
> > instance, is great (although "var" is a historical name that really
> > should be replaced by something more user friendly, but that's another
> > story). The problem is verbosity when things don't go wrong.
>
> Erm, no, it should not be. While it is a historical name it is a name
> that should remain because every person who's ever worked on a Unix-like
> system during that history knows where /var is, why it is there and what is in
> it. It is up to those new people to catch up, not for us to ruin what works
> and works well in the vain attempt to catch more of a market which, in the
> end, doesn't really matter as this is not a commercial venture.
>
> > I'm all for a "tell me what is going on" feature for debugging.
>
> Which is why you need verbosity when nothing is going wrong. Let's see a
> show of hands on this situation.
>
> Ya boot up a Windows box post after '95. Here's the sum of it letting you
> know something is going on: a rotating palette for the bar at the bottom. The
> palette stops rotating. So, uh, what's wrong? Oh, wait, it started rotating
> again. No, wait, it stopped again... for 30 seconds. No, there it goes, it's
> fine.
>
> > Even then, though, it would be nice if the verbose messages were
> > consistently formatted, and used plain english instead of jargon.
> > Error messages like "E: Invalid operation foo" are not helpful.
>
> No, that's a bad idea. Take a look at IE's 404 message sometime. It's a
> dumbed down version which doesn't explain jack or shitte. Error messages are
> there for people who know what they need to do. People who don't know what
> they need to do will not have that knowledge suddenly imparted upon them by a
> "plain english" error message because, without the jargon to point you in the
> right direction, there would be absolutely no place to start.
>
> > The first option I'm faced with is:
>
> > * 0. [A]ccess Choose the access method to use.
>
> > I have no idea what that means. I tried using it (not logged in as
> > root) and I got the following message:
>
> Did you choose it to find out?
>
> > dselect: requested operation requires the superuser privilege
>
> > Yet another example of an obscure error message. :-)
>
> Uh, no, it isn't. Superuser, aka, root. But not always root. sudo can
> grant superuser access w/o root. Also any account with a uid of 0 has
> superuser access but that doesn't mean it is called root. I recall one job
> where we had root and jfroot. Both were uid 0 but they had different
> passwords. Don't ask me why we had to 0s w/different passwords. Didn't make
> sense to me then, doesn't make sense to me now.
>
> But the really ironic part about all this is that the above message is
> more of the "plain english" message you want. Root is jargon. Yank someone
> off the street and ask them two questions:
>
> On a unix system, what does root do?
> On a unix system, what does the superuser do?
>
> A geek'll answer both the same. A moron who can't think his way out of a
> wet paper bag won't be able to figure out either one. Someone who has a
> decent brain and actually stops to think a minute might be able to puzzle out
> "super user would be a user with more power, like superman has more power than
> a man." Ain't no puzzling out root. Root what? Root of the file system?
> Root of the process table? The cables that come out of the computer and are
> so tangled they resemble roots?
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