> Keep all the packages up-to-date Probably not a popular opinion but it makes more sense to keep most of those packages one version behind the cutting edge in your official distributions. All you need to do is look at what's going on right now with RH7.0 to see that being on the edge can spell lots of trouble. If you're going after the Windows user you can't have things crashing and being incompatible as they just aren't going to buy into the "download this and compile" model. > Add cool new programs to distro Here there's a tradeoff between what the computer geek wants and what you want to support. Most computer users aren't going to understand that a lot of these programs aren't supported since you're the guys distributing them. > get rid of junk progs (WE NEED YOUR HELP HERE!) You know what I think? I think you need to change the way you divide up the installation options. You're doing a really good job of letting experts select what they want installed. You do nothing to allow non-computer saavy people to do this. v7.2 seems to even drop the "normal/developer" option from the basic installation. In one way that makes sense why can't a less-than-expert person decide whether they want games on their machine or not? > Make instalation and usage easier Lots of stuff that could be discussed here but it seems that with 7.2 you're moving in the right direction. > Support more hardware Adding CUPS and gimp-print as install options is a significant step forward in my view. Being able to set up adsl is nice too. What's REALLY lacking in Linux right now in terms of device support is the lowly, everyone's got one, non-scsi scanner. I've had several people get completely turned off to the idea of Linux when they find their scanner isn't supported and these have been people who seem to understand the problems with winmodem and are willing to buy a new modem. > Improve documentation In my view the LM manuals are among the best I've seen. From both a marketing and user satisfaction point of view, however, you probably need to make better distinctions between software you're including that other people must document and the stuff you're supplying that's truly Mandrake-supported software. For the first category, it would be nice if some web pointers were provided to get that support. > Faxing > USB, DVD, scanners, digital cameras gPhoto does a pretty good job for most digital cameras. I noticed that it's part of 7.2. Sure would like that scanner support though. > wine configuration. This would be nice but at some point, probably soon, the Linux community is going to have to decide whether they're going to promote the creation of Franken-windows ports or true ports of popular software. > not uniform enough One of the things I find "odd" about the Linux community in general is that application installation isn't standardized. The notion of paths and things like /usr/local/bin were designed into UNIX to permit a standard installation of application software such that people wouldn't have to go chasing all over the place looking for applications. The /usr/local concept also allowed installation of apps on a separate partition so that clean installations of the OS could be done (including partition reformatting) without destroying those app installations. What we see in the Linux world is that an rpm installation often dumps the app into /usr/bin or worse into its own directory that isn't part of the standard path (eg - Acrobat rpms put acroread into /usr/local/Acrobat4.0. I doubt you have control of that much but this stuff needs to be standardized if rpms are going to be the mechanisms by which we install software. > Too many programs doing the same thing Certainly true and a result of the geek approach and richness of the Linux world. But the "Do we drop kedit, emacs, xemacs, vi or vim?" sorts of questions aren't ones I'd want to answer. Better up front choice ability is probably a better solution. > Config programs do not tell you what they do. In attempting to answer questions in [newbie] I find that GUI tools are a double-edged sword. People want to use them because they don't know how to do simple edits in the config files. But this leaves them as ignorant of what's going on as Windows users are. Sometimes this makes them happy; sometimes this leaves them confused. It might be useful to figure out what it is that's confusing them and fix that rather than dealing with trying to educate them. One example that comes to mind is the use of those config tools to edit fstab. You can do it and it even works sometimes :-) But let's suppose a person wants to change the name of their Windows partition from win_c to primitive. They jump into their GUI tool and change the name. Then they come to [newbie] asking "I changed the name of my Windows partition from win_c to primitive. Primitive seems to work but win_c still exists but none of the files are in it any more. Did I do something wrong?" > Publish upgrade-packs instead of new distros. Do they really expect that you can put a shrink-wrapped box on a shelf for less than $30? I just don't understand this view. I've purchased 3 Mandrake distros and the sum total has been cheaper than a single Windows upgrade. This is EXACTLY why the latest Windows upgrade is so much cheaper than its predesessors. > I hope I didn't forget anything important. I'd like to add one thing. I think Mandrake has made a BIG mistake with their recent issues of 7.1 distro (the ones with Star Office 5.2 in them). You've slapped a whole bunch of GPL software into an envelope that says "Don't open this unless you agree to the single use license we're asking you to read here." You've done this because you've put some proprietary software on that same disk but this stuff is just bad business in the open source world. Cheers --- Larry
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