On Thursday 12 August 2004 10:26, Andrew Graupe wrote: > A lot of it was first-time config, I will admit (such as ALSA, X.org, > Printer setup). Afterward, you have to admit that doing an emerge > world, and all the etc-updating that entails, isn't easy by any > stretch. Not to mention trivial tasks such as mounting a USB mass > storage device (easy once you know how, but still annoying, especially > for the average user who probably wouldn't like the command line).
ah. gentoo. see, gentoo is NOT an "average users desktop system". SUSE, Mandrake, Linspire, Xandros, Libranet, Sun JDS, Red Hat etc. are closer to what we should be talking about. Linux based OSes can take on many forms, and gentoo (esp self-intalled) is not an appropriate a form for a basic user who is expected to be self-supporting. > I'm talking about the person that just buys the $499 Dell and uses it > for word processing, internet, mail, and basic games like solitare and > minesweeper, or the average person who does these things in a business > environment, all networking aspects aside. yep, and this person should buy a pre-installed machine. something that comes out of the box with Mandrake, SUSE, etc... that way there is no configuration of the hardware, just setting up printing and networking which are handled nicely with first-time startup GUIs. they make that task nice and easy. > I agree. For linux to beat windows, it needs to make the conversion > painless. This should include a "Windows" setting which does all of the > things windows would do (automount, autoplay, driver setup, automatic > music playing/picture copying/etc... from inserted device). this is how many general desktop use oriented Linux OSes come these days. > Remember, > just because we don't mind mounting that digital camera as a USB mass > storage device and copying everything from the commandline and renaming > it, doesn't mean the average user feels the same way. i do mind mounting it and copying it from the command line. which is why i don't. i fire up konqi and look in kamera://, or use one of the included digital camera applications that uses kamera:// in the background or go into the devices area where it shows up when i plug it in and copy them that way. you know, just like in Windows or on the Mac. this is here now, this is in use by a lot of our users. that said, hotplug device identification sucks in Linux right now. Novell is sponsoring development to help fix that in the kernel, however. hooray. > >that said, there are (large) segments for which Linux is quite ready for > > daily use. > > To be clear, I think that linux is a daily-use-ready system for anyone > with a moderate level of computer knowledge (i.e. a basic understanding > of how the system works, and no fear of the shell or text files used for > config). ... or people who stick solely to the GUI and use a Linux based OS optimized for such usage. which, for as good as it is, isn't Gentoo. -- Aaron J. Seigo GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43 _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
