Marcus Blumhagen wrote:
You're quite right about the reinstall issue. Even I did that several times when things didn't go the way I thought they would. But, unlike most new users, I read the documentation, so I knew ahead of time to make a separate /home partition, so reinstalling was the simplest way to (hopefully) get the system working, and my configuration settings were kept (until one time I messed up KDE and had to delete the .kde directory from ~ so that it would regenerate the default settings. At lease I knew how to do that.On Sat, Feb 10, 2007 at 07:47:35PM -0500, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:[...] Such new users are missing the CLI skills needed to fix their system. If their X is broken and they know neither mutt nor mailx then they can't even call for help. [...]I have to disagree. Since the Ubuntu installation runs from a Live-CD(don't know exactly since when but at least from 6.06) there would be at least a way to go online and reach the ubuntu community. Of course this would only work if the hardware is detected correctly, but if Ubuntu wouldn't have done that during installation such a GUIuser wouldn't be Ubunutu user anyway. But if those users are really afraid of the command line, reaching the community for help maybe won't be of any help anyway. But there would still be the option to reinstall from scratch, since it is the knownway from the windows world. But then Ubuntu (or Linux) would most likely be no different or even worse then Windows in the eyes of suchusers. Anyway I see no alternative for CLI if things get really messed up or broken. If one really want's to know the cause of problems and then fix it, the CLI would always be the way to go IMHO. There is plenty of information how to fix things, and even the most stupid user in the world should be able to copy/paste the commands needed from the web site to the Terminal (he does not necessarily have to understand every bit of it). Also it is the easiest way to get information from such user; just ask: "What does '<command>' return? Just enter these commands and copy/paste the output into your reply to our question." Even if it were possible to do by the point and click method, just imagine how difficult it were to explain in visual language, the overhead of words would be enormous. (see above: Why is reinstallation from scratch the way to go with Windows?)
You're also right about the hardware detection. Ubuntu has very good hardware detection that they most likely got from Knoppix. Overall, I think Dapper (6.06) was a very good release, and I have a machine (for my kids) that has Edubuntu Dapper on it. The version of Kubuntu that I dumped was Edgy (6.10). I dumped it not because it was a bad distribution, but the direction I saw it going.
As far as the CLI goes, you're spot on about the cut/paste. That is exactly what I did at first. But one of the reasons for me switching from XP to Linux in the first place was because I wanted to know how the system worked. That is entirely possible, even though it takes a while to get up to speed if you've never used Unix before. Once one passes the learning curve, things make sense and it becomes easier. I still have a LOT to learn.
One thing that really bugged me was people saying things like "You shouldn't edit /etc/apt/sources.list by hand, that's why you have the 'manage repositories' option in synaptic." My reply to that kind of statement was, "Why are they plain text files then?" to which there was no answer. One of the downsides to Ubuntu is that there are a lot of people who don't know what they're talking about that frequent the forums, nor do they give any credence to any other flavor of GNU/Linux. I know there are people like that with every distribution, but they site the fact that Ubuntu has been #1 on Distrowatch for a long time, and that is proof that it is the best. I think we all know that is a bunch of bull. One of the things I have learned from my distroitis is that there are so many distributions because different people have different needs and/or ideals. The fact that there is a Christian and a Satanic version of Ubuntu proves just that. Personally I don't think that religion should play a part in an operating system, but then again, I don't (and never did) use either one.
What bothers me the most about Ubuntu is that it uses the .deb format and its packages are not always compatible with Debian. If the popularity of that system gets too high, then it will become quite confusing to many people why the packages don't work. I've had the opposite happen with kvirc from the author's website. I tried installing the .deb file that I downloaded and it didn't work, so I sent an e-mail to the author about it. He replied promptly asking which version of Debian that I used. I told him I was using Ubuntu Breezy (5.10). He said, "That's not Debian, that's why it doesn't work." That's the last I heard from him. I guess he didn't like Ubuntu. I hear he's not alone.
Like I said before, the fact that people are using Linux at all is good, because the larger the user base, the more likely hardware manufactures will support it. However, I do think a standard should be adhered to for compatibility's sake. There is a LSB, and I know efforts are being made to achieve this, but forking a distro and changing its packaging system is not good for the community as a whole IMO.
Regards, Joe