Linked by John Collins on Wed 4th Jun 2003 15:23 UTC
There seem to be many reviews on Red Hat 9.0, but all seem to be written by Linux junkies who really know their stuff. What about the MS Windows Convert? They say people like the first thing they use (i.e. if you learn to drive a manual transmission, you prefer it over automatic). If this is true, how does Red Hat 9.0 introduce a novice pc user to the world of computers? I hope to answer some of those questions in this tiny review.
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Interesting review - right on the mark. It's refreshing to see someone look at a linux desktop product as a "fresh" windows convert would.
Basically, (this may be oversimplified) a user want to
a) surf the web
b) set up their email
c) set up their dial-up account - if on cable...dhcp is pretty straightforward so they shouldn't notice any issues.
d) INSTANT MESSAGE - whether they use Kopete, gAIM, or Kit the user wants to instant message - they especially want to CAM conference as well. Just like they do in yahoo messenger and msn messenger - they will be disappointed when they find out that in most cases they'll not be able to cam with their yahoo, kopete and kit open-source counterparts. THIS IS A KILLER. You're welcome to try to convince them to using Gnomemeeting..lol..right. I've used it and liked it. But good luck trying to get someone to convince their msn buddies to convert to it...anyways....
e) Finally, IMHO, users want to be able to not get a migraine when installing software. I'm a debian user all the way and I've turned a lot of folks onto the apt-get way of doing things. I love it. Should people be able to unpack a tarball, probably, should we expect they ever learn it ? (ABSOLUTELY NOT), and they shouldn't have to.
By a fantastically huge margin, Knoppix has been the most user-friendly distro I've seen that a windows convert would take to. It's great. These live-eval cd's coming from the major distros are also the right direction. This is truly the best way to expose linux to the masses. You may not care personally whether the masses use linux or not. I personally do.
good day-
Dave Clark