[Gllug] Knoppix and similar

[Ian Norton]

On Fri, 2004-09-17 at 18:35, Rich Walker wrote:
> "FORSTER, David" <david.forster at mfi.co.uk> writes:
> >
> > IMHO, Debian is probably not the best choice of distribution to teach to a
> > "technically incompetent" user, especially if desktop usability is one of
> > your main requirements. Coming to Linux from a Windows
> 
> I suggest we're missing a point here.
> 
> Debian is designed, in some sense, for OEM installation, followed by
> auto-management. No other distro has this property - users can be told
> how to "apt-get install X" to add packages, and a cron job can pull
> security updates and do "apt-get dist-upgrade" with reasonable hope the
> machine won't ever break.
> 
> Asking anyone to install an OS on hardware is ... a bad idea. *Every* OS
> I've ever seen has been a b'r to install on fresh hardware. True, for
> some versions of some distributions of Linux, it is possible to put a
> weight on the "RETURN" key, and end up with a working system, but even
> that is rare.

Honestly!, ive done this with Debian Woody and Potato :-), 

> Now, if you want to complain about the desktop provided, I will bow out
> and leave the debate to continue. Frankly, it's well known that there
> have been no reliable intuitive systems since Zap, Draw and Techwriter
> on RiscOS3 went out of fashion, and I have no interest in opening up
> that debate (ducks, covers)

From recent experience, (university, home, work) I have found that your
users will spend less time trying to 're-discover' thier desktop if you
give them a fairly empty gnome2 with open office.

koffice has given me the entertainment of seeing someone throw a serious
hissy fit when thier work dissapears in a puff of segfaults. Even KDE
and open office have had people saying everything is slow.

> cheers, Rich.
> 
> > development/administration background I found Debian difficult to get to
> > grips with. Perhaps a different, more user/newbie oriented distribution such
> > as Mandrake or SUSE would be better to start with?

its not really the distro you need to look at here, rather the set of
common apps you give your user and how easy it would be to update stuff
when they arent looking.

you can make a sensible and fairly painfree setup that you can 'look
after' with most distros, using a distro with apt or yum can help lots.

Ian
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