Augie Grayfox wrote:
| On Friday September 12 2003 10:05 am,
| plug-discuss-request@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us wrote:
| *v* 6. RE: InstallFest decisions (George Gambill)
| *v*From: George Gambill <ggambill@computer-guidance.com>
|
| *v*Enter Red Hat:
| *v*
| *v*Speaking from experience (as a newbie) I lurked this list for some time
| *v*before choosing a distro. From this list, I decided that Red Hat
was one
| of *v*the (if not the) most newbie friendly (with MS background) distro
| available.
|
| Shouldn't we base our choice of a distro more on the users experience
level?
| Say we have a Grandma, we certainly don't want to set her up with a
distro
| that will drive her back to the evil empire.
| Yet if we get an experienced sysadmin that has been using the command
line to
| do a lot of their admin chores Debian would probably be the best
choice for
| them.
I just don't buy this line. The hard part about Debian is the install.
~ If you would like, my 8 year old daughter will gladly instant message
you, email you or even fill out a webform for you. Telling you how she
loves her computer and how she is learning how to type with TuxType. I
can have my 5 year old tell you how she likes gCompris memory game.
My wife who broke windows daily and thus produced a phone call to me
daily asking for help. Maybe calls once a month with question now.
Usually it's a case of someone else's internet connection not being stable.
Or my cousin who is 21 who can now use MSN, Yahoo and AOL Messaging all
in one client to talk to all his friends back in Kansas will tell you
how cool he thinks GAIM is.
All of them use Debian. The great thing. They couldn't tell you it's
Debian. Heck they probably couldn't even tell you its GNU/Linux, but
that is the point. Just because something is easier to install does not
make it easier to use. I think there is a misconception about Debian
not being suitable for newcomers (that is largely based on install
problems) I think that Knoppix is good proof that Debian can do well in
the hands of a newbie. Synaptic is coming along nicely that makes
updating Debian for newbies a snap w/o having to go to the command line.
| I think if we come up with three choices based on ease of install and
use, we
| could very well cover the entire spectrum of the newbies' needs.
If we come up with 3 we are not making progress. (IMO) For the most
part I only see three distros discussed on this list in Mass...
1. Red Hat
2. Debian
3. Mandrake
Probably in that order. Which is funny as when I attended my first PLUG
meeting. I thought they didnt know what Debian was. I think Hans might
have been the only person running it and everyone else thought it was
evil. :) Mandrake was the prominent distro, even Red Hat wasn't much
discussed. Kind of funny looking back.
- -Derek
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