On 11 Dec 2004, at 11:16 pm, Josselin Mouette wrote:
Le samedi 11 décembre 2004 à 23:12 +0000, Tim Cutts a écrit :If Debian tries to be too rigid, we run a serious risk of consigning
ourselves to history, because people just won't install Debian any more
if it doesn't work out-of-the-box on most hardware - and the time is
pretty much already here that most systems contain at least one
component that loads firmware from disk every boot.
"Most systems" ? Come on.
I don't think it's the case today, but I think that it will be soon. It's the way the world is going.
Furthermore, compromising our ideals just to run on more hardware is not
a good idea. When there are technical solutions to run Debian on this
hardware without such a compromise, this becomes completely stupid.
But they are technical solutions that cause a great deal of effort for the user, and like meeting people, meeting a new distribution is very much a matter of first impressions counting. If the new user, especially a relatively non-computer-savvy one, finds that their shiny new Debian install doesn't work on their network card, they'll just try again with a different distro, or go back to Windows.
I don't know what the answer is here, but I think this problem is likely to get more acute, and could seriously degrade Debian's ease of use -- which is already not something it has a fantastic reputation for -- and thereby its popularity.
Tim
-- Dr Tim Cutts GPG: 1024/D FC81E159 5BA6 8CD4 2C57 9824 6638 C066 16E2 F4F5 FC81 E159
PGP.sig
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
