Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Sat 25th Oct 2003 05:13 UTC, submitted by Charles Krohn
Today, Ian Murdock described his recent work on APT to the Debian community. This announcement has far-ranging implications for the future of Fedora and Debian projects. Ars Technica has the details.
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No trolling here, Syntaxis. I said that there isn't a single program in a Woody installation that a typical desktop user would know how to use, or want to use. Vi is one example from among many. It's hard enough to sell people on Linux as a replacement for their Windows desktops. (Especially when the replacement is a clone of Windows and adds no new functionality. Why go to the pain of switching only to end up where you started?) Show an XP user a Wooody desktop and they'll walk away.
Yeah, I've seen lots of organization mandate use of particular programs, but the mandating wasn't done by the IT department. Any software used on the desktop as part of the daily workflow was mandated by management, i.e. the people the IT folks work for. I've also seen organizations in which IT unilaterally replaced a major component without explanation and with inadequate notice. It almost always resulted in a great deal of boardroom angst, especially from managers who saw their staff production dropping and their training costs increasing.
Aren't the Woody mail apps you mentioned hopelessly outdated? If you actually do convince someone to invest in Linux, why wouldn't they opt for an up-t0-date distribution?
Ease of use and display clarity have nothing at all to do with gimmickry like windows transparency, splash screens, and the like (although it seems many Linux advocates are confused on that point.) If the quality of the display is lacking, people are turned off. No one wants to watch TV if the picture is fuzzy. No one wants to use a computer if the display is fuzzy. And the display on a stock Woody install, using the ancient XFree86 code that comes with it, is fuzzy.
Then there's the questions of useability and design. Applications from the Woody era set the example for how not to do it.
Here's my basic point: You keep telling me that stability is the primary thing because it lowers ease and cost of maintenance. In other words, makes life easier for admins. (While, I argue, making life miserable for users.) But, what is the trade off? You force people to run outmoded software and what do they get in return?
If the only way to crank out a stable Linux distribution is to do it like Debian, that must mean that all the other modern distributions are unstable. But, they aren't. So, what's the deal?