dep, I would say that my point is that if they fail, they should do so harmlessly. mg On Sunday 27 April 2003 14:44, dep wrote:
begin Ben Rosenberg's quote: | Yes, I think there should be a section in YaST2 for people who | depend on YaST2 to do what they need as far as system | administration that lets one decide what services are run at boot. | I know there is a run level editor but I'd say that 10 out of 10 | newbies wouldn't know what a run level even is. So maybe renaming | the run level editor to something like "services editor" or | something like that might work for the OSX and Windows people who | come over to SuSE...since that's what it is under those platforms.
i'm not sure that this would be enough, because the whole idea of services is a mystery to a lot of those people (and to an impressive number of linux users, who still think that you need to be running ftp as a daemon in order to be able to ftp files from the internet, or sendmail as a daemon in order to send mail). it is here that the desktop/server border is extremely confused under linux, and where proper configurators/documentation could go very far in demystifying linux. it's a little puzzling for the new user who is told that he doesn't need a mail server to send mail, but he does need a video server if he is to use a gui. who is being served is an often overlooked issue.
| My point was that hardware scan and the rpmchecker are two things | that people seem to like. I heard NO end to how Mandrake was better | then SuSE because it did a hardware scan at boot and configured new | hardware automatically. Newbies seem to love that silly crap...I | however would rather just have hardware scanning as a function in | YaST2 or something like that. I'm not much of a fan of auto | anything..with certain acceptions.
i don't think anyone is criticizing the *existence* of such things (except insofar as they malfunction, which they do at a rate of >0), but instead seeking to make it easy to disable them, right up front, first thing. they can get in the way, especially when they encounter something unexpected, or when they themselves are unexpected by, for instance, upgraders who are simply seeking newer versions of stuff that can be problematic to get some other way (such as a non-backward-compatible glibc).
| After years of hearing complaints from various sections of the | population about this OS or that OS..that app or this app. I've | come to the conclusion that it's not Linux that isn't ready of the | unwashed masses..it's computers. I even hear complaints about OSX. | *shrug*
do you think this then raises an issue with the way distributions are marketed? or with the tools they provide? i think back to the horror stories when plug-n-play first came out (especially as regards irq conflicts). we have seen pure hell erupt in all its malevolent glory with pcmcia, usb, acpi, and so on. i wonder if competitive pressures force this stuff to be shipped before it's soup, before the standard has really been established.
| I think what it boils down to is that computers are not VCR's as | people expect. I think most don't want to be bothered with truly | learning what they are using...10% seems to be enough for them.
and sometimes it is. what distributions need to sort out is how to provide for both. there has been traffic on this list in the last couple of days which asserts (unless i read it wrong, which is possible) that one cannot on a suse 8.x system download and build the latest xfree from cvs, install it, and have it run. if my reading of those posts is correct, that is in and of itself a very troubling turn of events, because those who have bothered to learn some stuff have had yet another skill rendered not just useless but potentially harmful. it seems to me that it is possible to create a system which makes allowance for inexperience without locking out those whose knowledge is somewhere between the 10 percent you mention and 100 percent.