Re: debian

[Bijan Soleymani <bijan@psq.com>]

> What is the reason that this same question should come up in this 
> mailing lists every 2 weeks?
That's possibly an indication that this is a big stumbling block for certain
users. I myself had to spend an entire week just getting Debian to run, the
first time I installed it. A year and a half later and I'm just now
completely comfortable. Now I'm completely happy and satisfied with
Debian. But the first week I spent staring at a bash prompt was
different. I might have enjoyed it because I'm a geek, but I'm sure some
people get fed up at some point.

> What is the reason that people (like you) do not underestand that Debian 
> supports way more hardware architectures than RedHat does, and that 
> detecting hardware on all these architects, and developing an installer 
> wich runs on all of them, is not an easy job? (Hell, RedHat even does 
> not support PPC or Sparc).
Hardware detection on one architecture shouldn't hurt another
architecture. There are many autodetection tools that are already in
Debian.

> What is the reason that people who are only concerened with x86 and want 
> hardware auto detection, do not use Libranet?
They may not know about Libranet (also is it Free Software?)
They could use knoppix also (sadly Knoppix includes the non-free
adobe pdf reader...).

> What is the reason that you don't underestand that Debian is free 
> software project, so if you are unhappy with something, you can get 
> invlved and help it ?
Not everyone is a computer programmer. I think he'd gladly test out any
autodetecting installation program if someone would just point him at it.
I suggested Knoppix, because it is Debian inside, and once installed to
the harddisk it turns the computer into a Debian Sid Box.

> Someone mentioned a while back, that if you think installing Debian 
> GNU/Linux is difficult, then try installing Debian GNU/Hurd ;-)
I've installed Debian GNU/Hurd. It's really not that difficult.

P.S. I think that making the installation foolproof (grannyproof as some
call it) is good, because then I can hand my friends and family a Debian
CD and tell them to install it themselves. Now when I want to do that I
give them a knoppix CD. I think non-geeks (a.k.a. lusers) deserve
Freedom too.

Bijan