That is typical Debian attitude, Users get what they deserve. No wonder you are struggling to attract new users. I could turn that back, people who use Debian get what they deserve, a half working system, that is difficult to install and get up and running. As I said, I have used just about everything and nothing compares to Debian, and that is not a compliment. You said that Debian works for most systems. I would argue that, but grant that it is stable. It is still an ideologist's distribution and not a general distro that I could recommend. That has always been the case and now it is even more so.
The problem is that Debian 6 was supposed to be a turnaround, at least if you believe the hype from the Debian folks. It was supposed to be more user friendly and the best ever. The whole thing backfired IMO when they stripped the kernel of proprietary blobs. You can do that, but there is a cost attached. You never get something for nothing. In this case the cost is lack of functionality for many users. In some cases that may not be a problem. But in my case, no internet meant inability to get the missing parts and therefore I had to take a pass. As for GNOME Shell, I have used it, although not day to day, mainly because I find that it tales twice a long to get anything done, more mouse clicks and greater cursor distance. However, I like the idea behind it. It is just that it is before its time. New users are not likely to take to it because it is unlike anything they are used to and established users are set in their ways. Either way it is going to be short term pain, either for users who will take their time warming up to it or for GNOME developers whoa re likely to be discouraged by users turning away. Kudos to them though for serving up something so radically different and with tons of potential. I could say the same for Ubuntu's Unity. Too radically different and way to much work, but slick in many ways. You will never attract people to Debian with an attitude that people get what they deserve. They get what you deliver and they deserve to be treated with respect. They should not have to fork over money to buy parts that work with your distribution. In my case, I bought a brand new computer (HP) with Windows 7 pre-installed because I could not find a similarly priced computer without W7 and anything that was off brand was hundreds of dollars more. I tried to find a Linux only solution, but I am on a pension so cannot afford the luxury of paying more to get what I wanted and cannot buy parts to suit every distro that I try. I do not make the market rules and must respond as best I can, like most people out there. Roy Using Kubuntu 11.04, 64-bit Location: Canada On 19 April 2011 10:16, Chris Miller <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 4:19 PM, Roy <[email protected]> wrote: >> Debian 6 would not work for me. I installed it, but it would not >> recognise my ethernet card and therefore had no internet connection. >> They did not provide a driver that worked on the disk and since I had >> no internet connection could not get one. Debian 6 is the ONLY >> distribution in over ten years that I have tried where this has >> happened and I have tried hundreds of distros in that time. Currently >> I have LMDE, Kubuntu 11.04, Fedora 14, Magiea and openSuSE 11.4 >> installed and only Debian 6 is a dud. I have owned five computers >> since I began in Linux and never had a problem connecting either wired >> or wireless with the exception of Debian 6. >> c>> Say what you will about it being sta(b)le, but if it does not deliver >> basic functionality then it is useless, IMO. > > I never said it had driver support. It's stable. If Debian will boot > on a machine, then it can and will run until the hardware fails. (Or > until the admin, usually me, does something fantastically stupid). > > If you're running on finicky consumer desktop hardware, on which > Realtek components are popular, well, you get what you deserve. Grab a > cheap 3Com NIC and it'll work fine. > > And about gnome-shell... gnome-shell is probably the best and the > worst thing to happen to Gnome in the past decade. I love how they're > changing the way for interfacing with the system. The Gnome panels of > 2.x were fundamentally broken. I would log in, and then all my things > would be magically re-arranged into the most ass-backwards random barf > imaginable. Not to mention their whole UX scheme was of the school of > "the user is terrible, let's punish him/her as much as we can!" Then > they jumped aboard this whole Mono ship. With developers able to > leverage more modern tools, the quality of the individual applications > improved. But the core desktop was still FUBAR. gnome-shell is a good > step in the right direction when I tried it. It's sad because it's > fundamentally broken on Ubuntu because the Ubuntu team are a bunch of > morons trying to push their own Ubiquity bollocks (or whatever it was > called... that might be their installer). As if they can concurrently > create something as complex as a desktop shell! GNU/Linux teams have > consistently failed at that task for two decades, so what makes them > imagine that for a second they can deviate from the normal? ** > > Either way, I use Linux in server environments and OS X for my > desktop. But gnome-shell (well, the Gnome 3 suite) is a good step in > the right direction. It's taking UX design to task again in a way that > only GNU/Linux can. I mean, people kept telling me that Linux is great > because it "reinvents" the desktop, and then I looked at it and they > were recycling all the worst UX features of Windows. Rubbish! I was > very disappointed (and still am!) in KDE 4.x, and Gnome 3 makes me > happy. Maybe someday they'll make graphics drivers for Linux that > don't suck (shut up now. They ALL suck), and then Gnome 3 will be > useable in a work environment? Then again, while I'm in pie-in-the-sky > mode, I'd like a million or so US Dollars and a pony. > > ** Think: KDE 3.0 was terrible, and it only goet good around 3.4. KDE 4 > sucks massively. Gnome 2.x sucks massively. XFCE is terrible. > Enlightenment just adds more terrible to already terrible window > managers. Sturgeon's Law really applies in the Linux world. And all > too often the O'Dell corollary applies, too, so essentially it's all > crap (which is the arrival of the Myers corollary to the O'Dell > corollary). (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SturgeonsLaw) > > -- > Registered Linux Addict #431495 > For Faith and Family! | John 3:16! > fsdev.net | 0x5f3759df.org | chrismiller.at > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users Group. > To post a message, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] > For more options, visit our group at > http://groups.google.com/group/linuxusersgroup -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Linux Users Group. 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