Hi Robert, On April 3, 2003 08:11 am, Robert Spahr wrote:
[snipped] > Educate the companies.. do not dumb down Gentoo! Nothing personal Robert but your comment here was something I simply could not restrain myself from commenting on :). It never ceases to amaze me how adding a nice installer and hardware detection front-end to Gentoo and other such things is considered by many to be a dumbing down of Gentoo. Honestly. I just plain can't understand it. Having such things would make Gentoo much easier and more consistent to install for those who want to just get it working. While if one wanted to tinker, and configurate, and manually get their fill of the command line, they could just as easily skip the automated installation and use cryptic switches and other manually wonderful trinkets to their hearts content. How would adding something like an automated install and hardware detection dumb Gentoo down? The command line and the opportunity to install things manually (aka the hard way to do things) would still remain available. If by dumbing down we mean that Gentoo will not challenge one's to rise to the vigarous exercise of learning how to tinker, and configurate, and pull their hair out once in a while as they learn the intricacies of "power use" then it seems to me that to not give people the chance to skip some of that is to limit their choices. Something that seems contrary to the whole spirit of open source and GPL. Namely choice. As it stands now people have no choice in this matter. It's either gut it out and spend tons of time working through all kinds of Gentoo quirks and idiosyncracies or go to another distribution. When I first came to Gentoo I was absolutely incredulous as to how one's reported having to restart their installations of Gentoo up to 10 times!! I don't mean to be blunt but that's ridiculous. It shouldn't have to be that way. I can't wait to become an expert on Gentoo and to have the time to create my own distribution based on Gentoo. That will take the best of Gentoo and add a healthy dose of what I call "ease of use" based on what Redhat and other distros are doing. Please don't take what I am saying personally Robert. It's just so frustrating to talk about ease of use with so-called "power users" sometimes who defend the complexity that is Gentoo as if defending a religious dogma. I honestly don't understand it. Especially when anything having to do with making Gentoo easier to install and use is seen as "dumbing" down Gentoo. Ease of use in my thinking is not equal to dumbing down a distribution. As if everyone using such ease enhancements would be a dummy. I and many others who are no dummies, would use such enhancements for the simple reason that they save time, add consistentcy, and allow us to get the most out of Gentoo quicker. As well as "sell" it more successfully to our bosses or our customers. Granted! This might be a different use for Gentoo than many might use it for. But it would definitely enhance Gentoo in the sense of giving everyone a greater degree of choice over why and how they want to use Gentoo. I hope I didn't come across too strongly Robert. Carlos www.internetsuccess.ca -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
