Linked by Andrew Davis on Mon 22nd Nov 2004 20:12 UTC
I admit that I'm a geek. I use Linux. I use Solaris. I use FreeBSD. At times, I use Windows. And without a doubt, I download and try almost every Linux distribution when they come out. Over the last few years, I've tried all of the RedHat/Fedora releases, 2 different Lindows/Linspire releases, Mandrake, Gentoo, Xandros, Suse, Ubuntu, and the list goes on.
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Well, but don't many people love Mandrake, especially many newbies? I think here's no doubt about that. Mandrake also has fine goals, like newbie friendly ease of use. But many people have often been put off by the amount of bugs and other such problems in many Mandrake releases. Prejudice not based on facts? Well, if Mandrake is really so extra stable, why have they shipped their official distro releases with unstable test versions of kernels, for example?
It's been similar policy with other software often too, Mandrake - and many other distributors - want too much to be the first in town to ship with some bleeding edge versions of software. Maybe it is the fault of geeky users and their geeky needs too to some extent... Leave the most bleeding edge unstable software to developers, testers, or to those who are not serious users but just want to play with software. And concentrate on stability and reliablity more.
If Linus says that a kernel is not stable, a responsible Linux distributor believes him and don't want to distribute/sell bugs to their customers, right? This kind of reliability is something that every distro maker and user should consider more. Linux is not just a hobby OS for geeks anymore.
Linux distributions should be more like Debian (and many derivatives) in this sense: install once and basically you will never need to do a clean reinstall again, not even after many years of use. I don't know how well Linspire manages in this sense, but it is based on Debian, so at least the basis is good.
Even if a stable and reliable distro were a bit more difficult to install and configure, most users would be more than happy after passing those first hurdles if only that distro proves to be reliable enough for daily use, and for years to come too. Now, and in the end, isn't that what true ease of use is too?