Folks, How common is the "Debian last" practice, that is, try other distributions (including non-GNU/Linux) and then come to Debian to stay? Within Humbug[1], approximately 2/5 of the membership are now Debian users; however, only a few went straight to Debian. For me, Debian is the high point in most respects on a long road. In my work as a Systems Administrator I have used Solaris, Irix, Digital Unix, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and GNU/Linux. Within GNU/Linux, I've used MCC Interim Release, Yggdrasil, Slakware, Redhat and Debian. I still use all the non-GNU/Linux systems at work and they *do* have advantages, e.g. OpenBSD for security and crypto or Solaris for some serious 64 processor hardware; however, I believe that "Debian last" has allowed me to appreciate how good Debian GNU/Linux really is. Debian is improving all the time. Given the nature of the Debian distribution, I think that it is inevitable that Debian attract more first-time users. I believe that Debian will get there without needing to force it in that direction. For example, we Debian does auto-detection, it will be done *right* and this will be one step towards the "first distro" status. In any system that novices can use, the challenge is to scale to expert users. By aiming at the expert/developer end of the spectrum, Debian has avoided this very difficult problem. Yours sincerely, -- Mark John Suter | I know that you believe you understand suter@humbug.org.au | what you think I said, but I am not sure GPG key id F2FEBB36 | you realise that what you heard is not Ph: +61 4 1126 2316 | what I meant. anonymous [1] http://www.humbug.org.au/
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