> we want. The difference between distributions is not such a big deal as long > as the user can find the same tools on both.
That's the problem though, the tools aren't the same on both, it would be nice if they were, but they're not. Hence the difficulties for newbs. > The world of X has gotten much easier. Lots of auto recognition has been > built in to X itself and the distros have filled in the gaps. You used to I agree completely with this, but still, using SuSe 9.2, the latest and greatest SuSe release, it has troubles setting up the monitor on my 2 year old Dell laptop. Windows doesn't have that problem now, nor did it ever have that problem. > Even installs are easier for the newbie. I agree with this too, but invariably everyone says, if you're a newb use Redhat, Mandrake, Suse (including me). But when you install these they all ask a lot of questions that maybe, probably, a newb doesn't know. However, when I installed Novell Linux Desktop 9 recently, it asked very few questions. As far as software to install it asked, Gnome or KDE. That was it. I think this would be a good install for a newb. Or perhaps the big players can have a button at the beginning of the install that says "newbie" then the install will do everything based on the preset preferences. At least that will get people using the OS and get them started. I know Lycoris, or Mephis do that. That's cool. I'm just rambling here. > Desktop environments are also a great example of modular software and the > power of free interfaces. You can easily explain the difference by saying, > there's this one package that manages your hardware and another that draws > things with it. "Explain the difference" ? Whew. I had a hard enough time switching my mom to thunderbird. I'd sure hate to have to explain the differences between different packages on different distros or desktops. However, i'd probably not give her the option, i'd do what I thought was best. Which is a good idea, like i mentioned earlier. > Differences between distros has never been that bad, has it? Some of Red Not really, but I don't usually use the GUI tools. I can point to one example in something that Redhat does that I'm not crazy about. Apparently, if you use the GUI network tool in Redhat, they copy the network config files to a tmp location, then when you exit that tool (gracefully) the files get copied back to their correct location at /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts . So here I am, helping someone with their network. I need to change the config file cause, i'm not going to use the GUI. So I change the file (to a setting that I know works), restart the network and running ifconfig I see the IP has not changed. Arg. It took 15 minutes before I found another folder a few folders deep that had ifcfg-ethx files there and that those files where the ones being read by Redhats network restart service. Arg. Granted this could have been from my lack of knowledge of Redhat, but it was aggrevating nonetheless. I'm not picking on redhat here, I don't care for the way Suse does some of their stuff too. For some reason, after you change some stuff on Suse, you have to run SuSEconfig. This rewrites config files and restarts services ( i think). This I think is completely stupid for such a large popular distro to be completely different than other large popular distros. > When you get passed all of that, the feature set you get out of KDE and Gnome > is vastly superior to what you get from a M$ package. My wife does not > really care why X is broken, because it's not. She loves KDE and Mozilla > though she uses 1/100th of the applications. It works well and looks good > for her. > Linux is more than ready for the Desktop and I look forward to > people using it. I agree with this too, but I believe there are still hurdles for linux to cross before it can be truely accepted in mass. It's not necessarily something lacking by GNU/Linux either. Part of the problem is hardware support by hardware vendors and software support. Until any joe blow software writer has a way to create their software to run on Windows as well as Linux with no port process or very little port process it will be difficult for linux. I can't ask someone to run linux if they want XYZ software and can't get that software for Linux. What do I tell them? Sorry? Well at home that could work, but in my office environment that will not work. I guess if my IT dept. had complete control over computers and what's installed/used then maybe. But alas, we do not have that control, and therefore can't force people to do anything. sorry, just a bit of rambling... but I like the discusion! BB
