"For much of its history, Debian has been the major noncommercial, philosophically free distribution. Now, as Debian developers and users have deserted the distro for Ubuntu, does Debian have a purpose any more? Debian 4.0, which was released this week, represents a collective effort to answer that question. The philosophy behind the release is best summarized on the home page for the Debian on the Desktop subproject, which states, 'We will do everything we can to make things very easy for the novice, while allowing the expert to tweak things'."
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Member since:2005-07-06
If you read what he said, he said that the distribution is not only aimed at those who have the knowledge, but those who are willing to knuckle down and learn something.
The problem as far as I see is that what we'll have the future are people who simply 'know' how to point and click, the net result, you end up with the same ignorant people which plague the Windows world resulting in the mirrad of security issues we see today.
I'm not taking the elitist view of 'you must know computers inside and out before using one' - what I am emphasising is that there is a certain level of understanding to actually use a computer and a willingness on the end users part to be willing to learn through experience and reading books.
It isn't about turning the end user into a 'computer guru' but giving the tools to the end user as to allow them to help themselves, so that when they do face difficulties they have the tools at their disposal to track down the issue and correct it themselves. If it does get too big (require programming in C), they can then push it forward to the distributor as a bug to be fixed.
In the end, a knowledgeable end user improves their productivity and benefits the distributor in that it allows them to have quality bug reports that pin point the problem rather than it a series of double guessing as to what the real problem is and where it lay's in the system.
Member since:2006-09-26
Yea, but it only takes a few knowledgable folks to catch the vast majority of flaws (Anyone have that link that shows a sharp decline on 'ROE' after 5 testers?).
Point, click, work - simplicity in setup & operation hurts no-one. I don't care if it requires zero effort to work: Actually, that would be nice, as it'd take less effort on my part to keep the folk's and siblings systems running.
What would bother me is if I couldn't get down and dirty with the system myself. Have the slickest GUI you want, I need my console and 'tinker-tools'.
Thankfully, linux distro's provide such... my poison being Gentoo, and Gnome/KDE have both come so far that I can setup for room-mates/family and let them go. Best of both worlds.
Member since:2005-07-08
The problem as far as I see is that what we'll have the future are people who simply 'know' how to point and click, the net result, you end up with the same ignorant people which plague the Windows world resulting in the mirrad of security issues we see today.
I'm going to continue the theme of some of my recent posts and suggest that this "idiot user" syndrome is a holdover from a time when computing was far less central to our lives than it is today. My 9-year-old cousin complained that his dad's laptop was acting weird, so he started the task manager and killed the antivirus program, which solved the problem. I was very impressed!
I grew up without a computer, and I got a Windows 95 box right before high school. But to the younger generation, operating a computer is just obvious. When free software distributions like Debian or OpenSolaris become mainstream, this generation will be ready, and they will love the flexibility and power these platforms provide.
I've been negative on Debian in the recent past, but IMHO, Etch represents a turnaround for the project. It's not the result of the turnaround, but the evidence that one is taking place. I believe that with free software, power and simplicity doesn't have to be a compromise--both can be offered by the same distribution project. Etch is a nod to simplicity without forsaking power. I look forward to Lenny being a step further towards a eradicating this unfortunate compromise.
Debian is the great supermarket of free software, whether its developers like it or not. But apparently they can still roll a fine release... if they have to... eventually. ;-)
Member since:2006-12-16
Well said. The problem is that people want to have their bums wiped, their hands kissed, and food given to them on a table without having to have worked for any of it. This is the crowd that Microsoft have developed for, and you can see that in order to make Windows easier to use, something has had to be sacrificed - security and reliability.
I see a lot of people who lack very very basic skills - like some customers I tell 'can you go to our website please', and instead of typing the URL into the address field, they do a google search (you won't believe how common this is). This is something that's very basic. I have a fair number of customers who have no idea how to stop/cancel print jobs. Again, not hard. Most of them don't want to learn, they want to be able to pick some smart bastards brains whenever they feel like it, to make up for their own lazy asses, and lack of desire to actually learn something.
The old analogy that I've used for some time now is that you just don't let any person drive a car, they have to *earn* it. They have to prove that they are fully capable of driving the vehicle. Using a computer is no different, you should be forced to show that you are capable, to a certain level, of using a computer competently.
This is half the bloody reason why the net runs like a dog these days - idiots without brains that end up getting viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, and so on and so forth, and this means more traffic on the Internet, congesting the bandwidth. That's just one example of what happens when you let anyone use a computer...
Sorry for the rant, but it's something that really pisses me off. I worked my butt off to learn computer basics - I asked lots of questions, read magazines from cover to cover, tinkered with my computer (both software and hardware) to become competent.
Dave
Member since:
2005-09-25
Recently, the goal of many distributions seems to have become to be a free version of Windows for users without much understanding of their operating system. Debian counters that trend. Instead of accepting that users prefer to be ignorant, Debian 4.0 treats users as students -- as people who may initially lack knowledge, but who are capable of learning. It's a bold approach, and one that's needed badly enough that Debian may just have found a new purpose -- and, with it, a guarantee of its survival.
It's a little strange that aiming at the computer-literate is now considered a 'bold approach' for a linux distribution to take, but I'm glad that Debian are taking that approach all the same.
I've found Debian a joy to use on the desktop - a nice balance of power, reliability and freedom to choose how cutting-edge you want to run; personally, I pointed my sources at testing and got myself off the 6-month reinstallation treadmill of some of the other distributions.