William Ballard wrote:
I would agree with this too. I tried RedHat and Mandrake for a short time a year or so ago and I never really cared for them because of the same reasons. I didn't know any more about how/why things worked than I did with Windows. Three months ago I installed woody and started playing with Debian 6 - 8 hours a day. I am hooked on this distro because I'm learning how thing this work, why they work, and how I can customize everything. I love the ability to modify most system settings through the use text files. Within less than two months I was custom installing my own software, building my own kernels, playing with iptables to create my own firewalls, and building Debian boxes for other people. I'd have to say that anyone who says this distro isn't user friendly enough for just about anyone to use is wrong. I built a Debian box for a friend of mine who is about as computer illiterate as anyone I've ever seen. He'd had his computer for 6 years and didn't know how to copy and paste in Windows or use Explorer to look around inside the system when I first met him less than a year ago. He was scared stiff of the thing. I built him a sarge box a couple of months after his Win98 machine had been hacked for the 4th time. He's as happy as a clam with this thing. He's actually excited about learning about his computer for the first time in his life. I've walked him through making changes to his system by editing .conf files over the phone, walked him through the CUPS setup and how to administer his printer, and a few other things. He likes seeing these things and understanding how they change his system. It's changed his attitude towards computing in general because it's no longer a "black box". I'd have to say I really like Debian because it is what I always imagined computing was going to be like. It's a great fit for me.Mark Crean wrote:Debian must be fantastic as a server OS (though I've never had trouble in three and a half years with SuSE for httpd, ftp, mail, so far) but it seems too rough on the desktop, lacking in polish and with the Debian system of commands in many ways more complicated than the rpm and YaST-based stuff on SuSE (which can also now be set up for the apt system).I started with Debian. It took me a month. I also burned a Mandrake ISO, and some others, and used them as references to see what I should expect to work and what I shouldn't. But under them I was as completely ignorant as to what was actually going on as I was in Windows.I started from ground zero, I mean just getting old non-truetype, plain jane X fonts with twm working. Then getting a GTK1 envronment. Then a GTK2 environment, with anti-aliasing. Then my printer. Then burning CDs. Then watching DVDs. Each task, required active learning on my part, but nothing was inconsistent, or unachievable. It took a month, but by the end I knew exactly what was going on and exactly why each thing worked. I wasn't ignorant any more.But it took a month, and 3 months before I knew how to create my own software. I must have started over 15-20 times. This was a month of 5-6 hours per day. The tradeoff is knowledge and control, versus ease of use. Difficulty vs. frailty. Now I have exactly what I want: a perfect eye-candy environment when I want it, with total control over when and how it functions. It suits me at least.