Re: Why

[aphro <nate@firetrail.com>]

I don't think people should concentrate too much on making the installer
easier, at least with the people *I* know they very rarely reinstall
windows and those that do always need help.

case in point a co worker just got his first pc a couple weeks ago(with
advice from me he got an athlon 550 from cybermax) with win98se on it.  He
got a gravis gamepad, which specifically said don't plug the controller in
before you install the drivers, well guess what :) he didn't do that and
ended up working with it for a few hours before calling tech
support.  Then he spent(with my help) a few days with multiple video
drivers trying to get quake3 working on his savage 4. finally after
upgrading the opengl stuff would it run.  linux may be hard to install but
from what i see win9x is still far from 'easy'.  At the same time I see
linux aiming to replace winNT rather then replacing win9x.  People say
people wouldn't use linux at home..well i only know very few people that
use NT at home, most of those are using some form of *nix as well be it
linux or *BSD.

saw a mac install once, looked nice.  but at the same time they dont have
a tenth(or even a hundredth?) amount of hardware to support, and with
their closed arch. its quite easy to ensure compadiblity.

i believe the key to linux expansion is pre installed machines. users will
be very hesitant to change their OS from something that works for them,
even if it means upgrading from win95 to win98 or nt or win3 to
win9x. this isnt something that can be blamed on linux but on installing
any other OS.

my 0.02 

nate

On Mon, 6 Dec 1999, Evan Moore wrote:

evan >Ever look at the macos installer? it has one of the nicest installers of
evan >all. for a newbie it is nicer than ncurses or xwin based linux installers
evan >and much nicer than a windows based installer. You can get full blown 24
evan >bit color at full resolution with their installer. the UI is nice and easy
evan >to use etc etc... easiest OS of all to install. Wow i sound like a mac
evan >fan, i'm not, but just thinking that if linux had an installer that was as
evan >easy to use as the mac it would then be a lot closer to being "the OS for
evan >tha masses". It may be interesting to see what the linux community can
evan >bring over from the darwin project (Apple open source project). 
evan >
evan >On Sun, 5 Dec 1999, Ethan Benson wrote:
evan >
evan >> On 5/12/99 Bart Szyszka wrote:
evan >> 
evan >> >
evan >> >This is exactly what I was thinking. The windows installer uses a generic
evan >> >16-color, 640x480 mode ("Standard SVGA" or just "Standard VGA"?) and
evan >> >I've never heard of anyone having graphic-card related problems with it.
evan >> >Why can't someone do something similar with Linux? Is that what Corel
evan >> >did?
evan >> 
evan >> this is exactly what it already does, it runs a generic server at 
evan >> lowest common denominator modes, the problem is even generic servers 
evan >> must have support for various cards, because all cards are not 
evan >> created equal and have various degrees of proprietary obfuscation and 
evan >> other differences that make creating a `single always works generic 
evan >> server' easier said then done.
evan >> 
evan >> MS simply has a `more generic' "server" then we do.
evan >> 
evan >> BTW corel's generic X server fails too from what i have heard.  the 
evan >> difference is corel does not `allow' you to use a console based 
evan >> installer so if the generic server fails you are expected to get a 
evan >> new computer :-)
evan >> 
evan >> personally i think the ncurses based installers both look better(*) 
evan >> and are just as easy to use (easier IMO) then an X based installer. 
evan >> and are certainly more reliable.  besides which is easier, a X 
evan >> installer that won't run or the console based installer?
evan >> 
evan >> * at 640x480 16 color mode 60Hz (or less) refresh rate EVERYTHING 
evan >> looks like sh*t  ;-)
evan >> 
evan >> 
evan >> -- 
evan >> Ethan Benson
evan >> To obtain my PGP key: http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/pgp/
evan >> 
evan >
evan >
evan >-- 
evan >Unsubscribe?  mail -s unsubscribe debian-user-request@lists.debian.org < /dev/null
evan >

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