[Gllug] Linuxemporium - Pink Tie

[Mike Brodbelt]

On Fri, 2002-11-22 at 15:13, Mark Lowes wrote:
> On Fri, 2002-11-22 at 02:12, Mike Brodbelt wrote:

> > The technical knowledge "barrier to entry" is higher for Debian than for
> > many other Linux distros. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the
> 
> However it's not insurmountable, I started on slackware and then
> migrated to Debian, both of which didn't have pretty install systems at
> the time.

Indeed. I'll admit to actually rather liking the debian installer - it's
great for setting up a server without X and stuff. I've got a coule of
boxen with ICP RAID controllers - I fed the debian installer the module,
and all was well. I was particularly impressed when it left me with a
kernel and initrd that worked, and booted with a root partition on the
RAID card. I'd fully expected to have ended up with a non-bootable
system, needing a boot from floppy and a kernel rebuild before it's
work. It also installs a very nice minimal system, so I don't get crap I
don't need. Using apt-get makes it easy to install stuff thats needed.

<snip>
 
> Mandrake is getting there, I just find it painful to use and dislike
> some of it's assumptions about what I want to do.

Yes, I've never likes Mandrake's assumptions either. That's probably

> > >  windows is not easy to install.
> > It's easier to install than Debian. Windows looks at your harware, and
> 
> However you start tossing windows something which is a little odd and
> you can have a multi-day fight on your hands where redhat/debian drops
> in as if nothing is wrong.

Definitely true. However most joe-user type people installing Windows
have bog standard hardware, so it usually works. If you've got a self
built machine with a few odd bits, it might never work...

> > Actually, most people do care what OS they run. That's why they run
> > Windows. If they genuinely didn't care, they automatically choose the
> > technically superior system, and Windows would die. People want to run
> > Windows, because they want/need/are forced to run MS Office/Quicken/IE/
> 
> Nope people don't care, they generally want what they're told they need.

When I said people care, I mean that in the loosest possible sense. They
need certain apps (ar at least think they do), so they have to "care",
in that Windows is often their only choice. If pushed, many of them
won't even know what they're running. It has always surprised me that a
huge number of people, when asked "What operating system do you have?"
answer "Microsoft Word". Depressing....

Mike.



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