Michael Pobega wrote:
Ken Heard wrote:
If GNU-Linux is going to make any serious inroads in the BDU market
(BDU=brain dead user) which Microsoft dominates faute de mieux, there
has to be documentation which the average BDU can understand. In the
distros about which I have had personal experience (Red Hat 8 --
before RH abandoned the BDUs -- Debian Sarge and now Etch) such
documentation seems to be an afterthought. [...]
Ken Heard
Toronto, Canada
Very good writing Ken, I enjoyed reading it. I agree with you that to
appeal to the BDU market the Debian community will have to band
together and create easy to follow documentation, but the question is
do we really want it?
I know that bringing BDU people to Linux is an awesome idea, but the
influx of BDUs would bring a "stupidity" to Debian, one that is often
associated with distros like Ubuntu (Note: I have nothing against
Ubuntu personally, it's just commonly known that most people frown
upon Ubuntu users). In my experience Debian requires you know nothing
about Linux to install it, but rather just how a computer works. As
much as I'd love to have my mother use Debian over Windows, I'd rather
give her a Fedora or Ubuntu disc before I'd ever give her a Debian
installer.
Personally, I found the Etch installer easier then eg the Win98
installer. I think that the reason why the Debian installer is perceived
to be more problematic is that nine time out of ten you do not do a
straightforward install to a blank hard drive. You usually want to do
difficult things like non-destructively shrinking partitions, creating
partitions manually, dual-booting etc.
Although, I am interested in helping to bring more people to Debian. I
know that everyone is a BDU at one time, down to both you and me. If
you need any help e-mail me at this address with anything you need done.
Perhaps there are enough contributors to this thread who are interested
in producing "BDU" documentation that we could make something happen?
--
Chris.
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