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Re: Debian for Joe Average



Ron Johnson wrote:

On Sat, 2003-09-20 at 22:29, sturla wrote:
David Palmer. wrote:
On Mon, 29 Sep 2003 11:49:13 +0200
Martin Jungowski <jungowsk@in.tum.de> wrote:

On Sun, 2003-09-28 at 02:31, Tom wrote:
On Sun, Sep 28, 2003 at 11:19:06AM +1200, Edward Murrell wrote:

[snip]

If I should advice somebody new to Linux, I would say RedHat, that's
where I started.
RedHat 9 has a great installer and contains anything a normal user
will ever need, including OpenOffice.Org.


Gak!  And send him into Dependency Hell?

Hehe, why do you think I made the switch?
I don't say RedHat is better than Debian, but it's easier for Joe Average to start with. I started out with RedHat and ended up with Debian, but then I'm a little above Joe Average when it comes to
computers.
What you have to remember is that Joe isn't upgrading his system all the time, he gets the system doing what he
want's it to do and then uses it, that's it.
Up2date works ok for security updates, so Joe won't be in dependency hell, because he doesn't change the system. If he's not really Joe Average he'll find out that RPM stinks (like I did) and try out something else. By that time he will have learned something and maybe he's ready for Debian, then he'll stay.

Some of the problem in the discussion about what distro to use is that everybody has their favourite and sticks with
it at all cost.
I myself use debian on most of my machines and are really happy with apt, so I won't change back, but for somebody who never have used Linux/Unix/BSD before and aren't the kind of person to sit up til 3 in the morning to get some gadget to work I wouldn't recommend Debian, not because I don't think Debian is better, but because I think RedHat
is easier for a newbie.
The goal should be to get people to use Linux, then when they are using Linux and are happy with it we can start telling them why they should use Debian, then they would actually understand our arguments. By advocating Debian in it's current form to new users who will administer their own system I think we will scare
many of them away from Linux.
As I said, I like Debian, but lets face it: For Joe Average RedHat is easier to understand at first, so give him that, get him hooked on the stability of Linux and when you see him tired because he's been up all night trying to solve dependencies
to install something new THEN tell him about Debian and apt.

Sturla



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