On Thu, 2004-01-08 at 18:34, Karl Bielefeldt wrote:
> > Also it seems that people start using Linux for a lot of different
> > reasons and their needs and expectations aren't considered when this
> > 'use my distro' mentality gets tossed their way.
> 
> You make some good points, and we're in more agreement than you think. 
> Notice I'm not advocating a 'use my distro' mentality, but a 'try a few
> distros before you invest too much energy in one that might not best fit
> your personal needs' mentality.  My favorite distro now is gentoo, and I
> learned the most about Linux from a few months with linuxfromscratch,
> but I wouldn't dream of recommending either to a newbie.  I just wish
> that someone would have told me I might have a better experience with
> another distribution when I was a newbie, in _addition_ to helping me
> work out specific problems.
---
ok but to some people, they correlate better with having proprietary
drivers for their hardware so they don't have to dirty their hands on
the command line, downloading and installing modules - all that they
want is for things to just work - I understand that. 

Some people recognize that some Linux distributions have taken the hard
line that if the full source code isn't available, if the license isn't
BSD, GPL, LGPL or something in harmony with the spirit of free software,
it isn't going to be provided or supported by that distribution. Yes, it
can be a pain in the ass but that should be a clue to the people that
are really trying to embrace and abide by the concept of free software
let the vendors know that their licensing policy or their code
distribution policy (or both) support a narrow corporate agenda that
impairs the users ability to use the software and hardware as they wish.
If nothing else, it causes some people to look elsewhere for hardware
and software solutions and that is a good thing.

How is anyone going to know what trojan horse programs are buried in the
code of nVidia's new unified driver since much of it is released only as
binary code? How about Flash? Acrobat Reader? Not much of a leap of
faith for Windows users since everything that they get is pre-compiled
binary code and they never get the source code.

Now back to the newbie...who told this newbie that everything worked
perfectly right out of the box? 

I was trying to make the point that I've been playing with Linux since
RH 5.1 - perhaps 5 years ago. I stuck to using it for server via command
line and via webmin and it was good but it held me back from learning
how the thing actually worked. It wasn't until I read my email with it,
surfed the web with it, tried to do anything and everything with it did
I actually understand how much of a multi-user system it is. My previous
thinking of multi-user was more along the lines of a Windows NT
workstation on a Windows Network with an NT Domain Controller so you
could log in with various profiles. Here I am now 5 years or so later
and now I think I finally have learned enough to figure out the
differences between the distro's in a meaningful way and not base my
opinion on whether it simply detected my hardware without the need to
tweak it.

There is so much more to a distro than whether it picks up and installs
all the drivers for the various hardware on initial install. Shell
choices, security defaults, Window managers, desktop managers,
application defaults, application bundles, ssl integration, system level
security, hard drive preparation and let's not forget updating and
upgrading. It was clear that Debian had something with apt-get. Now that
I've seen Red Hat apt-get dist upgrade, I'm not all that eager to run to
the store and pay $79 for X-Distro Professional. 

As for gentoo - emerge mythtv - damn, I am tempted to put together a box
just so I could do that one...

Myself, I'm much more interested in being able to setup
DHCP/BIND/LDAP/TLS/Samba 3/PAM/Kerberos/ and acting as a Windows PDC or
joining a Windows AD than reading from a dual boot NTFS partition (FWIW,
considering the price of hardware these days, dual booting is a huge
waste of time, effort and resources). I got Windows SFU (Services For
Unix) working this week without a single cheat sheet, manual or
anything...all with the distro whose desktop apparently stinks. I guess
all this time, I didn't realize that the Red Hat desktop was holding me
back.

Craig