This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 22:04:57 +0100 From: "Karsten M. Self" <kmself@ix.netcom.com> To: Silicon Valley Users Group <svlug@lists.svlug.org> Subject: Desktop, Debian, RH, and Calvanism (was Re: [svlug] HW system for Linux?) Paul Cubbage (pcubbage@opencountry.com) wrote: > Karsten M. Self wrote: > > >I disagree. > > > I understand your point and it's valid. I don't think we need to > continue this on the list. > > My comment relates to Linux in general and not RH vs Debian. It's great > for systems people, programmers, et al to know Linux at that level of > detail but it shouldn't be necessary for others to know that much about > a system. > > Debian does a great job with apt-get but I don't know anyone who would > recommend it as a starter system for mortals to use. Until Linux gets > up to another level of usability, it will continue to be a sideshow on > the desktop. I'm redirecting this to the list as I've got a point or two worth making. Xandros, Lindows, Corel Linux, Progeny, and Knoppix are all Debian based. All are/were notably aimed as being end-user GNU/Linux systems. Nontechnical end users at that. Debian's policy turns it into an ideal foundation from which to provide a polished product. Me? I'm burning Knoppix disks by the spoolful and handing them out to people I meet in every-day situations. I can't think of a better tool for illustrating the usability of GNU/Linux with no configuration, installation, or set-up hassles. Mac OS X is proving nicely that Unix is a perfectly suitable foundation for end-user desktops. I don't think the stretch to GNU/Linux is particularly far. I think the biggest problem is that there are two camps: one who sees the desktop as a platform from which fundamental user choices have been removed, another which finds the most valuable single feature of GNU/Linux to be choice. That's the war we've been waging for the past couple of years. I'm still not quite sure how it washes out. ===