Re: Proposed documentation, please comment! [was Re: Bug#838919: debian-installer: please calculate swap parition according to max RAM...]

[Wouter Verhelst <w@uter.be>]

Ian,

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 04:26:49PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Wouter Verhelst writes ("Re: Proposed documentation, please comment! [was Re: Bug#838919: debian-installer: please calculate swap parition according to max RAM...]"):
> > On Fri, Sep 30, 2016 at 01:41:11PM +0200, Bart Schouten wrote:
> > > I don't think Debian is for lay users
> > 
> > Why?
> 
> Personally, I think Debian is trying to be for everyone.  That
> includes lay users and experts; people who want to set up one machine
> and people who want to deploy millions; people who want to the default
> install with no fuss and people who want to rebuild everything; people
> who like emacs and people who like vi; etc.
> 
> Of course we pay a price for that: sometimes there are rough edges.
> Some other distros smooth the path for their target audience, at the
> cost of making things very difficult for those who outside the target
> audience.  We usually choose not to do that.  That makes us a good
> upstream for deriving from; lets all of us collaborate on our
> different goals; gives us flexibility if we should change our mind;
> and so on.  But there is a price of course.
> 
> A lay user may find Debian is best used if they have someone nearby
> who can help them sort out any problems.  We can hope that the are
> minor and we try to remove, where possible, barriers to fixing them.

I agree with the general gist of what you wrote. However, Bart does not
seem to agree.

I think that claiming that "Debian is not for lay users", and acting in
that manner, makes us elitist, and that that is wrong. Even if that
happens without our intending to do so, I *still* think that would make
us elitist and wrong. Therefore, I want to understand why people think
that "Debian is not for lay users", so that at the least we can try to
fix the problem.

Regards,

-- 
< ron> I mean, the main *practical* problem with C++, is there's like a dozen
       people in the world who think they really understand all of its rules,
       and pretty much all of them are just lying to themselves too.
 -- #debian-devel, OFTC, 2016-02-12