Re: (clug-talk)

[S�bastien Taylor]

Ugh, does management need to read your installation documentation? I doubt it.

Le Jeudi, 31 octo 2002, � 20:27 Canada/Mountain, Kevin Anderson a �crit :

Ummm. I missed something somewhere. The distros are all pretty much equal
if you want them to be. But that's a technical perspective.

My concern is selling this to people who are NOT technical. Debian doesn't
have the MIND SHARE that Red Hat does. And like it or not, that's a big
part of my battle. It's hard enough to have people accept Linux. They've
heard of Red Hat. IBM does Red Hat. Nobody has heard of Gentoo or Debian,
at least not at the management level. Which is the level that technical
installs are approved or vetoed at.

I want my documentation to read "Install red Hat from cd. Select All
packages. You're done"

I do not want it to read.

"Install <whatever flavor> download patches for X, Y, and Q. Apply them
against the kernel. Run menuconfig, and choose this list of 175 options to
compile into the kernel, and this list of 50 others to compile as modules.
Compile the kernel. Compile the modules. Copy bzImage to /boot. Update
LILO/GRUB. etc, etc, etc..."

One sounds complete. One shounds like a patchwork of pieces that sort of
work. *I* know otherwise, but you don't need to climb the food chain very
far from <hands-on IT Admin title of choice> before this is a hopeless sale.

Documentation should not exceed 2 pages per application. And if it strays
more than 2 commands from "click next", the sale is going to fail.

Kev.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Cade Cairns" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2002 11:48 AM
Subject: Re: (clug-talk) <rant>

oops.. didnt mean to put that forth in a belittling way.  sorry.

Regards,
Cade Cairns

On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, Cade Cairns wrote:

Of course. It's not like Debian is missing features that RedHat has..

I'm

quite amused that you think that, though.

Regards,
Cade Cairns

On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, Kevin Anderson wrote:

If I have a document to management that says something like "Then

rebuild

the kernel, enabling extended attributes, etc"

They'll ask "wouldn't XP be easier and faster?"
or
"Could you explain this to use so that we understand what is

happening, and

why?"
or
"Does this mean that Red Hat 8 is unable to meet our needs?"
etc...


I chose Red Hat because management will have heard of it.  It's way

easier

to say "I need $100 to purchase a licensed copy of Red Hat" than to

get

approval to "purchase a dozen pizza vouchers for Canberra's LUG". And

with

me wanting to avoid the need to recompile the kernel, does Debian

REALLY fit

this scenario well?  If I'm going a non-Red Hat route, it'll be

Gentoo.  And

that seems more likely with every passing minute.  The main reason I

skipped

Gentoo before is that 1.2 doesn't seem to work with Compaq's

SmartArray RAID

Controllers.  I'd assume 1.4 does, but I'd also like to see it

released

rather than running an RC version.

Kev.



----- Original Message -----
From: "timmy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2002 11:24 AM
Subject: Re: (clug-talk) <rant>

And I don't want to rebuild the kernel, cause that sort of

documentation

just blows.

I don't understand this statement. Which documentation are you

referring

to? Do you need help with regards on how to compile a kernel from

scratch?