On Saturday 26 January 2002 9:42 am, you wrote: > Can't speak for the others here, but Linux is on all my home > desktops, and that's about all the growth I care about. Does this mean you do not want Linux to gain in popularity? I could understand your feelings here, but do you think Linux will be "polluted or diluted" by bring new users onboard? Most would be previous Windows users. > Based on what I've heard about them, the newer distros don't really > sound like they have much on the Red Hats, Mandrakes, and Debians > aside from easier installation, primarily by way of better hardware > detection. Well, I would disagree here. Most new distros I have installed (Elx, Lycoris, Mandrake and Red Hat) have made the process very easy. What we need is OEM's preinstalling Linux. I would argue that OEone, Lycoris, Elx and soon Xandros, are improving the actual ease-of-use (or is it learning?) for everyday users by including many features now found in Windows. There are more than I can list but take for example all the "eye candy" found in KDE. Windows XP is also filled to the brim with it. People at home enjoy a good looking desktop. Also, automatically configuring samba networking and including a Network Neighborhood. Home users may likely have a Windows PC and sharing files has never been easier. You won't find any reference to samba in Lycoris...it's working behind the scenes. > 2) Some of the neodistros may be creating proprietary tools and > enhancements, but a lot of the additions will be in the form of > improvements to existing, already-Free code, and the existing > community will be more supportive of neodistros which Free their new > code as well. This will make the worthwhile parts available to more > traditional distros as well. I'm in total agreement here. > While I lay no claim to the mantle of guruhood, I think that trying > to duplicate Windows will probably help market share in the short > term, but is ultimately a bad idea. Windows is not the world's > greatest user interface. Period. (No, I don't claim to know what > the best UI is, I just know it ain't Windows.) It is the most > _familiar_, which is why the common consumer will be more accepting > of a Windows-like interface, but I think we would be better served to > focus on designing a better UI rather than trying to achieve > bug-for-bug compatibility with Microsoft. Again I would agree. But I see a lot of similarites being developed on the newer distros which emulate functions within Windows. It's not the best gui but familiararity goes a long way to gaining new users. > > And lastly, have others on the > > list tried these new distros? > > Nope. No real interest in them. Understood. But I have seen many newbies who do not understand why so many different distros exist. They are not programmers and don't realize how and OS can be customized. It causes confusion when trying to chose for themselves. > Yes, bad GUI configurators are a pet peeve. Mine too. Thanks for your comments Dave.