On 7/8/07, Grant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The problem is if you focus on usability for newbies, you'll focus
> less on features and customization, or you'll have to find a way to
> hide this customizability because customization confuses newbies, and
> spending time dancing around the lesser populace is time wasted on
> doing practical stuff ( While I'll admit theres got to be a half-way,
> or gentoo will never get any fresh blood, but I'd prefer to entice
> fresh blood from people who have some potential to improve the distro
Great post Kent. I'd love to see more features to attract unskilled
users, but I'd hate to have that slow down the development of features
that I would actually use.
The main camps we seem to be divided into are:
1. we don't want unskilled users
and:
2. we do want unskilled users
and most align with #1. It will be interesting to see how it turns
out. I still think there is a huge long-term benefit to a large user
base, even if many of those users start out unskilled.
- Grant
Personally I don't think it's about Gentoo not wanting 'unskilled'
users, but that said I know I am an unskilled user in many eyes so I
suppose that's my survival instinct kicking in. ;-)
I think a more accurate message is 'Gentoo welcomes all, but as a
potential Gentoo user you must be willing to learn. Gentoo does not
attempt make *anything* 'easy or pretty' in preference to providing
complete control.' Add what you will. that's just a start.
My issues, as a low-end, non-power Gentoo user, is that there are some
applications that I'd absolutely love to run, such as mythfrontend via
a web browser, that continue to be beyond my skill set. I've worked
hours upon hours and failed. I know if I chose a different distro I
could run it out of the box. That done I'd lose portage and lots of
other things I really value far more so I forgo fun stuff to have a
really stable system. It's disappointing I don't have the skills to
make it work but I figure over time I can possibly gain them. It's
something to work toward, right?
- Mark
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