Paul Johnson writes: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On Sat, Jun 21, 2003 at 11:08:22AM -0400, Bijan Soleymani wrote: > > My mother needs to access her email. I installled Debian on the > > computer. She has no problems using Debian. However, I had to do the > > install because she has no clue about settings in XFree86. With knoppix > > she just has to press the power button and she gets logged into KDE. > > Yes, but see, this still holds true that the difficulty of the > installer doesn't matter. Debian trades off one bitch of > an installer for the ability to run on very little maintenance (which, if > you script it, you could have her box send you an email every time it > dialed up, or serve the dialup for her yourself, and do it yourself > for her every once in a while) for extremely long periods of time, and > extremely customizable to your mom's needs and what hardware you've > got to do it with.
But it doesn't have to be that way. There is ample evidence that easier installs can be created. Why shouldn't debian be a flexible, easily customized and updated system AND be reasonably easy to install? Philosophically, it's silly to require you to have massive hair on your chest just to start using the great stuff available. Also, just because I have the ability to understand every corner of my system and fix it if it's not right at the low level, doesn't mean I really want to have to figure out every detail of my system. I only have so much time in the day, and having things just work is valuable. Being able to customize where I want and need to at the same time is equally valuable, so don't tell me to just use Windows for convenience. I want both. Debian should be a platform striving to deliver all these things. I usually don't jump into these types of discussions, but I really dislike the attitude that you should be an expert just to get started. Jerry Quinn -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
