by *wobo
<https://forums.mageia.org/en/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=77>* »
Jun 17th, '11, 18:50
Several points jumped through my synapses reading Trio3b's post.
A thought I had many times before: are the users ready for such Linux
distributions? I do not mean any technical skills, no user is supposed
to learn how to create scripts and configure things by editing config
files any more. But I often see that users lack the mindset, the way of
thinking which is required by administrating your own *nix system. One
nice example was the KDE switch to 4.x which Trio3b described as fiasco.
But was this fiasco not really caused by the users demand for "the
latest" although KDE stated that 4.0 (and a few following versions) were
not for userland? With the proper mindset users without development
skills would have stayed away from KDE 4 until it was declared as
"userland-ready", which was with 4.2 [1]. This is just one example but
could also be ported to other "fiascos".
As often said, Linux is a system which forces the user to be a sysadmin
as well - but as a sysadmin you think different than a user does. IMHO
this is one point which is not communicated enough to the user. Of
course, marketing would have a fit seeing the question "Are you ready to
be a sysadmin?" all over the portal site of our Linux distribution. But
isn't this really the question here when we talk about backports,
updates, rolling releases and all the rest? These are expressions and
tasks for a sysadmin, not a user.
In business we do have IT departments and sysadmins who care for those
things - your average Dilbert in his cubicle is not supposed to care for
updates. But for the user at home we see this dual personality with the
different mindsets to be a given fact. Is that so?
As you can see, I did not aim at a certain conclusion here, I just let
my thoughts roam free (could well be an exposé for a editor's article).
[1] Of course, for the real "fiasco" we have to blame a certain
distribution as well which could not wait to be "the first to offer the
new KDE!" and thus caused other distributions to follow.
