Ben said (snipped not in rudeness but to keep it short): just a rant. don't be offended.
ben I did speaketh: Ben I totally understand your point. I actually do agree with a lot of what you say. Good life story as well :-) I know that microsoft makes its users dumb and preys on that. Microsoft is like a drug, it breeds dependency and sucks your money. I actually don't really use dselect at all (a few times to help get kde 3 onto my system, big thanks to Thomas Schoepf for his time and effort). I use apt and dpkg. You are absolutely right, they are all you need as a general rule. I don't pretend to know either apt or dkpg inside out, but given time I will. As to Debian...as i've stated previously I'm not going to change over to any other distribution. Debian is home. It feels right. And i'm learning heaps! I've learnt more from 5 weeks of debian gnu linux than I have from using redhat. No disrespect to redhat intended. They do drag a lot of newbies into linux. As others have said...sooner or later everyone makes their way to debian ;-) Remember i haven't been with debian for very long, so I don't know the development goals and history for either dselect and tasksel et al. All I know is what they offer now...they seem ok to my newbie eyes, but i'm sure that experienced users can point out issues that they perceive with them. That's just an ongoing cycle of improvement I think. As to developers working on tools etc to make linux easier for the average user, why not? I think along the lines of that if linux is hard to use and understand less people will swing across to it, and therefore continue using microsoft and being trapped in the microsoft way. This will continue to make microsoft all powerful in the fiscal world and will give it more and more leverage to damage open source (or at least attempt to). We don't want that. I don't want a software monopoly, I want choice. That's why I've chosen open source software for as much stuff as I can use. Being realistic as well, I know I need to use microsoft products in a lot of places in order to fit in. It doesn't make me happy..but...until the world changes. Linux is better in nearly every technical department over microsoft windows and from my eyes deserves to replace ms windows based purely on technical merit and not advertising bullshit or monopolistic behaviour. I've seen newbies come to linux and try it...and then pass cos they won't stick with it and try and learn. That's sad and I want to avoid that happening. Not everyone wants to stick with microsoft, a lot don't. But they don't want to learn linux inside out either. Agreed - it's a bad habit they've picked up from using microsoft software (in general, apple mac os and os/2 warp are partly to blame as well). I want to see linux win - it deserves to. I guess what i'm trying to say (i suck at writing lol, i'm much more eloquent speaking) is that I want to learn linux. Not neccessarily in total detail, but a fair bit of what makes it tick. That takes time. And a lot of effort and patience. Not everyone else that comes to linux is the same. It would be good if they were...but...i'm trying to think about those people as well, and keep them using linux. That's just my thoughts on this very complex issue. Dave PS i'm not complaining about curren tools, or developers or telling them what they should be doing. The main thing from a developer point of view i guess is making linux the best operating system in terms of technical merit and performance. Well it already is ;-) Keeping it there lol. I apologise in advance if anyone is offended by my email comments - none is intended -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
