On Monday 28 January 2002 1:22 pm, Jim Crumley wrote: > I use Debian and haven't tried any thing else in a couple of > years and Debian is definitely not targeted to newbies, but I > still think that most of your points don't hold for Debian (and > probably not for Red Hat, Mandrake et al. either). I must ask; why don't you at least try some of these other distros? A couple of years is a long time in "software land". Get a feeling for what these other developers are pushing on thier ftp sites and I will do the same since I have not yet tried Debian. Deal? I have heard many on this list expound on the "Debian" advantage. I'll see if it holds true for this highly inexperienced Linux user. > > 1. The default menu layout is "function based" i.e.. Internet, Music & > > Movies, Pictures & Photos, Productivity, System Management, Development > > etc... > > Debian's menu system has done this for at least 5 years. But Mandrake and Red Hat have not. Take a look at the default install menu of Red Hat 7.2 in KDE. It's messy. Mandrake in fact just released a little press release that included this line: "New task-oriented menu". Maybe Debian was ahead of it's time! > > 2. I updated my entire distro online from version 43 to 44 using the > > Update Wizard without any problems. > > Apt-get has been making updates a snap for quite some time and > Debian and Debian has a huge amount of number of official > packages available. Apt-get is definately a nice tool. No argument there. > > > 3. It includes a My Linux System folder ala Windows My Computer and a > > Network Browser similar to a Network Neighborhood. No configuration is > > generally necessary. I was able to browse and share files with my > > Windows box by simply "clicking" my way though the "Network". > > This is nice, but as others have said automatically setting this > up without asking is not a good idea, especially for newbies. Security is at issue here. I agree samba should not be defaulted to start unless requested by the user. > Anyway, I guess I just don't see why having several options for > crucial tasks would be a bad thing. Heck, Windows 95 had > Wordpad, Textedit and DOS Edit all installed by default I think. Jim, Windows 95 is nearly 7 years old! I have had the occasion to talk (via email/forums/lists) to many new Linux users. Because there is a "gaping hole" where documentation should exist, many newbies are confused about the many hundreds of applications for Linux. Take for example these names: mutt, mozilla, kooka, komba, samba, xine, vi, emacs, webmin, etc... Put those on a system menu and have a newbie try and figure out what the hell they are...better get your lunch cause it'll take awhile. Most people utilize one application for every task at hand. Including only the most popular applications by default may solve some initial confusion. Remember, Lycoris does include more applications on the cd set, just not by default. > I know Real Player isn't standard on Debian since its non-free, > but at least some of the others would be default for a newby > workstation profile. And I think that all of them would be > installed and work fine with the menu system (though I'd never > heard of aKtion or Kooka before). I'd be surprised if the same > weren't true Mandrake and the other desktop distros. The Lycoris menu usually does not list the application name because so many are simply not descriptive. Kooka for example is a scanner application. In the menu its "use a scanner". Xine is "DVD/DiVX Player"...simple. > > 8. There is an automount feature for removable media. Inserting an > > audio cd will either bring up the correct app or automatically begin > > playing. > > I think this is available, but I haven't set it because I don't > like auto-run - its too abused in Windows. This is a huge contention with new Linux users. They cannot understand why you would need to mount and unmount a data cd. The whole idea is completely foriegn to them. Supermount was completely broken in Mandrake 8.1 (It was more a kernel issue I believe) and devfs was really a mess thus many new users were ticked-off because Mandrake 8.1 was touted as the best distro for newbies . It would seem these little details (java/automount/flash) go a long way to making happy new Linux users. > Being like Windows is useful for helping people to _transition_ to Linux, > but if it leads to some Windows pitfalls being transferred to Linux, its > very debatable whether its worth it. It'd be to spend the effort > on making Linux usable in original ways than to clone the > mistakes of the past. We are in agreement here. I would also prefer to avoid the many pitfalls of Windows. Thanks for your comments Jim.