Debian testing install

[Net Llama!]

On Fri, 24 Nov 2006, ded wrote:
> <rant mode on>
>
> I'd like to state in advance, I'm not posting this to cause a flame
> war...I'm just a bit miffed as to the direction my former distribution
> of choice is headed. I always took a bit of pride that Debian was
> traditionally a bit of a difficult install, you really did have to
> know a bit about your computer and linux to get it all working and
> we all could say with a bit of pride "I run Debian". Much the same
> way one could say, "I run Slack".
>
> Well this afternoon I had a bit of spare time, and I decided with a
> new Debian release on the horizion I would download the testing
> netinstall cd and have a look-see.
>
> Frans, Joey and the rest of the installer team have done a good
> job...everything was detected and set up correctly. But, when I got
> to the desktop there was this irritating orangish looking icon
> telling me that there were updates? WTF is that all about? I'm used
> to opening a terminal, selecting my repository sources and firing up
> aptitude and going merrily on my way. What's with the hand holding?
> Has everything in linux got to become a click and drool interface?
> Is it beyond new users to say I want a better system, but I know
> going in it's going to be a bit more difficult...there's going to be
> a learning cure and then spend a bit of time reading and learning?
> It really does seem to me that a majority of the distributions (even
> those like Debian, who aren't a for pay, commercial distro) are
> pandering to Windows users. In essence it seems to be to have
> become, "I'd like to use linux...but you've got to make it look like
> windows, walk like windows and smell like windows." There's even a
> new thread on the Fedora list where someone is suggesting
> implementing YasT2 for Fedora <smacks forehead>. Been there, done
> that with Debian. Spare me.

Yea, i saw that thread, although that's actually a different issue 
altogether in so much that FC already has alot of GUI administration 
tools, and some fool wants to take the POS that is yast(2) and shoehorn it 
into FC just so that some people at a school in Indiana will pick FC over 
SuSE.  Anyone who wants SuSE deserves to have yast.

>
> If linux gets to the point that it's used by a bunch of people who
> can't format a hdd on their own or even figure out how to install a
> tarball, mplayer, codecs, etc....maybe we should start working on
> another project.
>
> To launch an old argument, but hopefully amongst friends so that
> it's just a discussion, does anyone else feel that linux is being
> dumbed down to an unacceptable level?
>
> <rant mode off>
>
> Sorry, had to get it off my chest :)

Maybe its just me but I've never seen Debian as this 'last bastion' of the 
techno-elitists as much as the bastion of the free software religious 
zealots.  The fact that Debian has a cutesy 'update now' icon isn't all 
that surprising, seeing as how there seems to be a lot of cross polination 
between *buntu & Debian these days.

As for the dumbing down of distros in general to appeal to the unwashed 
(windows) masses, that has been going on for a while.  Overall, I think 
its a good thing, as population growth is the only way to relly effect 
change.  Hardware vendors will not pay full attention to supporting linux 
unless there is sufficiently enough customers out there to make it 
profitable.  Trust me, I know first hand what a hypocritical mess Linux 
hardware support is, and the only way to fix that is for more people to 
use Linux and expect their hardware to 'just work'(tm).

If you're sufficiently annoyed/bothered by the dumbing down of Debian, 
then there are still quite a few 'niche' distros out there where only 
gurus can survive (and i dont' even mean gentoo).

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lonni J Friedman                        netllama at linux-sxs.org
LlamaLand				http://netllama.linux-sxs.org