Carl Fink wrote:
There is absolutely nothing wrong with an installer that opens a can of beer for you during the installation process as far as I'm concerned, it is totally immaterial.While your description is exaggerated, what's wrong with an installer that detects the hardware for me, so I don't have to manually set dozens or hundreds of things? You seem to be implying that's bad. What's wrong with an installer that lets me resize NTFS partitions? What's wrong with an installer that fully supports RAID? Like I said, some people are too defensive about Debian, thinking that any criticism or suggestion for improvement is the equivalent of slapping in the face.
It is this aspect which is going to permit Debian to seize an ever increasing market share from monopolists that restrict access, and in so doing enforce an exhorbitant market cost. With the ability of all open source/free software to continue to do this comes the market force that forces monopolists to decrease their end product cost in order to compete. Witness Ballmer's offer to the Munich government last year to supply M$ to them free of charge in order to lock Suse? out of the situation, a strategy that failed. The Munich govt. continues with Linux migration. Many endusers are simply not interested in configuring every aspect of their home theatre system through their PC. Even if they were, their wives wouldn't let them.
I feel that the wrong issue is being addressed here.As long as access remains within Debian, along with up to date documentation, the personal potential of configurability will remain. After that, it is a matter of personal choice, and nobody, one way or the other, has the right to dictate that. Given that there is a complacency factor inherent with completely automatic installation and there may be a delay for individual choice to assert itself, this too is individual choice, the responsibility for which lies with the individual and not one that Debian has the right to make on their behalf. This is the mental attitude assumed by the proprietary vendors, and not one that I would choose to be associated with.
Regards, David.