Mark Knecht wrote: >However, look at it a different way, if you would. Just choose a >really basic set of USE flags. Something safe. Enable things that are >known to be quite stable. Stay away from everything else. (Heck - >isn't that pretty much what's in the install documents anyway?) Give >that set of flags to a newbie. They build their machine. It works. >They don't need to change things. End of story. > >
>From what I've seen, most problems that newbie users run into are of the "how do I get my fooznuble to work with linux". Newbie (home) users just want to be able to plug in their digital camera or usb key, print, email, browse, do online banking, etc,etc,etc. So as long as the 'safe' flags didn't prohibit the things that a newbie is going to want to do, before they realize what the USE flags are for...then yes, they could be better off. Of course, a debate on what subset of flags are known to be 'safe', 'quite stable', and necessary for basic operation might never end. ;-> >I contend that many people, say an office worker who doesn't >administer his machine, could use default USE flags pretty much >forever and it would probably be just fine. > Yeah, I wasn't looking at it from the perspective of the office worker. I agree that they wouldn't care (or even want to know) what a USE flag is. They just want the system to work, play their music files, make the screensaver display pictures of their children, .... But I think you would probably agree that the administrator(s) of those boxes would then find USE flags *very* valuable. So, maybe USE flags are really only important to the administrator. I know that when I am 'using' my computer, I don't really care what USE flags are set. The only time I really care is when I am 'administering' the box, installing software, or fixing a problem. -Richard -- [email protected] mailing list
