Re: Why is PPP so screwed up!?!?!
CoB SysAdmin (Joe Emenaker) wrote:
>
> >
> > On Tue, 4 Mar 1997, Craig Sanders wrote:
> >
> > > 1. what do you expect for free?
> >
> > Well, one would expect at least a clean install... If people perceive
> > Linux/Debian as being impossible to install, then, well, they won't use it
> > :)
>
> Which is one of the points I've been trying to make. I work at a university
> and I see many, many students who hear about Debian and they take the time
> to come into our computer lab and make the 5-6 disks needed. They take them
> home and install them on their PC at home. Since they don't have a whole lot
> of time to go reading a bunch of HOWTO's or to go rooting around in the
> files of the base install.... *and* since they see no mention of ppp in the
> install program or install guide, they go for about 2-3 days of running
> Debian before they conclude that this isn't any fun at all (not being able
> to connect to the net).... and we lose a potential user.
>
> On the other hand, I've talked to the few that *have* gotten PPP going
> with dselect and they are the most *jazzed* people you will ever meet.
> Using dselect through PPP is the most innovative software distribution
> concept they have ever seen. They are fascinated... and, more importantly,
> they are Debian users for life, pretty much. It's hard to explain.
> Dselect, when it *WORKS* (meaning, "when there's a connection to the net
> active" pretty much) and when the user *UNDERSTANDS* what the concept
> behind it is, I think that it is the SINGLE BEST selling point for Debian.
> But, when the user doesn't understand what the idea is behind it, they
> think "Why the &$^&*^# did it stick me in *THIS* program. How do I kill it?",
> just like *I* used to do for about a year back in the 0.9-0.93R6 days.
>
> Now, as things seem to stand now, the ppp part seems like almost an after-
> thought (as far as its importance to the effective operation of dselect
> goes). The base install seems to be more targeted to people with: A) a
> live internet connection, B) Debian on CD, or C) The Debian distribution
> on another filesystem or NFS. However, like I mentioned, of the people I
> deal with each day, about 5% of the Debian newbies fall into that group.
> It seems appropriate to mention Occam's Razor at this point, y'know?
>
> - Joe
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