On Sun, Jun 24, 2001 at 12:24:10PM -0700, Jack Pryne wrote: | Greetings all, | | I'm totally new to the list, and I'm not even running Debian yet, but I have | an idea that I'd like to bounce off the group:
[suggestion for community-wide sharing of config info and experience] This all sounds like a nice idea, but consider that we already have most of that. There are projects like LinuxDoc, NewbieDoc, and others that provide lots of good information about how to install and setup various portions of a system. Also just listen on debian-user for a while and you will learn alot about different hardware configurations and how to get them to work (or which ones just don't work well). It would certainly be convenient for non-techies to have a single GUI application that will run their computer (and make breakfast <wink>) but all the info that is needed is already present. Install Debian for yourself and you will see that the installer, while not "GUI" based, is quite easy to use and works well. (I managed to crash the RH7.0 installer a few times myself) The package management system works really well and will (for the most part) keep a working system working (if you don't take the jump and dist-upgrade to "testing" or even "unstable" you will have no trouble at all). The main technical hurdle with your suggested program is the auto-detection of hardware. Some (many?) things just can't be auto-detected, and even then they may not report themselves correctly. In my experiences it is best to have a person report what the hardware is and how they want it to work. Sure this isn't trivial for a non-geek to do, but Unix isn't really designed for non-geeks, it is designed to work <wink>. The best solution would be to have Debian pre-installed (such as MaD dUCK's proposed method) by a geek who knows what they are doing. In addition, users can join this list and tap into a vast supply of knowledge and experience and learn more than they ever thought possible about setting up a working (and useful!) system. I think your idea is nice, but is a "technofix" for a social problem. The existing documentation efforts and debian-user already solve that problem for those that want it solved. -D
