> I'm not saying to make it inherently difficult for people (rather the > opposite, look how much energy I'm investing into this!) but to help > them focus on the right spot and if this makes more people fail early > rather than a few tens of emails down the road, well, I'm doing both > them and ourselves a favor.
I'm generally supportive of the idea of a source only distribution. However, in my experience, the hardest part of using something usually comes right at the beginning when you know nothing about it, and can imagine some being somewhat bamboozled (confused, worried) by the stacks of information that flows past the screen during the build process. Would you put any effort into simplifying the text-output of the build process to avoid new user information-overload? Maybe a -verbose=false or something like that? > The result: lazyness will force them to leave everything inside and > they will not know the ability to build a customized version of their > stuff. moreover, it will make it harder for them to become cocoon > developers and come here and help us! Had I started with the system you propose, I would have found the process of getting up and running more gruelling, but would have started working on the source much sooner. I found the idea of downloading from CVS and building quite frightening at first. It would have been easier if I was already familiar with the build process. But I don't know if I'm a 'typical' user. I agree with whoever it was that said that this needs to be approached as a psychological issue, not so much a technical one. Regards, Upayavira
