On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:52:49 +0100 stephane lepain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi, > > I have been reading couple of posts talking about different kind of > distros, but what would you guys suggest as the best distro for the > consumers market? There would be a need of stability and reliability. > Of course, it would have to be easy to use for the end users. > As a complete newbie to IT and Linux, I have tested Mandriva 2008, > Ubuntu, and now Debian etch and testing. I found Debian testing the > best of all: etch being not very compatible with new hardware and > software. Testing on the other hand is the most up to date distro, > fairely compatible with newest technologie (software and hardware > from the consumers market) and quite easy to maintain. > Yet, i would suppose that my opinion is quite biased and what I could > suggest as the best distro for the consumers market might not be the > case. So I would appreciate if you guys could give me your opinions. > > Thank you all > > PS: I tested all those distros on a AMD64 3800+ Ubuntu. Why? Because it works. Consumers don't care about freedom. If they did, they're all be using FOSS on the desktop right now and MS would go bust within days. Consumers want a product that allows them to access YouTube, the BBC and bittorrent/kazaa/<other file sharing network> with minimal (possibly 0!) effort. If I buy a laptop for my Dad or any other relative, I expect it to work out of the box without any questions. The new Dell Ubuntu-based laptops do this. My Dad (and indeed probably 98% of consumers) doesn't need anything more than a word processor, an email client and a web browser. OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird do this very nicely. Personally it's my belief that if you want a stable OS that you can rely on for servers/corporate desktops, use Debian/Gentoo/RHEL/SuSE. If you want a desktop that has the software you need for a Personal Computer, use Ubuntu. My £0.02, M. -- |Matthew Macdonald-Wallace |Tiger Computing Ltd |"The Linux Specialists" | |Tel: 0845 373 3579 |Web: http://www.tiger-computing.co.uk | |Registered in England. Company number: 3389961 |Registered address: Wyastone Business Park, | Wyastone Leys, Monmouth, NP25 3SR
