hello, (not a rant) having installed many desktops,routers,wireless boxes, revived old machines, nuked plenty of windows, installing mirrors and generally spreading the gospel, even converting my old folks (german speakers) i have only one big issue: the euro. i know, first thing you'll think is: go to this or that list and get it sorted. again, having waded thru all the permutations of 'hamm' to 'sid' and having spent a lot of time at this:
what the heck is it with the euro? i can fix a compiler or 3 page long iptables without fancy tools, but i am yet to see a euro symbol on any box i installed, or indeed boxes installed by others. my old folks had to learn a lot of english and they put up with it. but this is a make-or-break issue, the language setup beeing inconsistent (at best) is something that can be overcome with a bit of training and patience. not beeing able to get the euro symbol going makes it a non-starter for many small companies or private individuals. the detailed instructions leave my head spinning. obviously, there are some postings about the tilted quake2 symbol elsewhere, but i'm too busy installing. as a technical person, i take a few nights, come to grips with it, try to remember it the next time and eventually even understand how i got there. i have no idea how any ordinary mortal is to figure out the installation, with the language/font/euro/console stuff spread out over many packages. indeed, my observation is that this stops many potential users from trying. once the basics are running, most users happily take to their debian boxes. i can imagine that this will become a bigger problem in the future, yours, zed limerick-city ireland (always a shelter&breakfast here) btw, we have a large, free of charge wireless network running on the westcoast of ireland. all debian based. and we couldn't do it without your work. .
