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Since when is having a full-fledge, working GUI the "antithesis" of a programmer's paradise? Why is a CLI interface suddenly the "holy grail" of teaching kids about programming?

Not all programmer's want to use vi. Not all programmer's want to tinker with the basic configuration of an OS.

Some just want a system to boot to a nice GUI, and provide them with the tools they need to start programming. Like a nice GUI text editor linked with a terminal app linked with a compiler linked with a debugger.

Debian works well for those types of programmers, who just want to get into the programming, and not the OS tinkering.

I've messed around with the RPi emulator using the Debian build and I really like it. I'm still going to use Arch for my own projects of course, but at a school I think I'd rather they used Debian or Fedora. Kids, and especially teens, tend to have short attention spans and would surely benefit from being able to jump right into a familiar interface.

Oh for crying out loud, can you not f--king read?
At which point did I even imply anything which you're accusing me of? At which point was Linux distributions humanised and referred to as a person rather than object? (ie where i talk about "who" and "people" when making my point and where I suspect most people have jumped to the wrong conclusion)

I've repeatedly stated I wasn't passing comment about Debian but instead about users who are not interested in tinkering. I never even suggested that those kind of users are typical of Debian.

Please excuse me if I sound unnecessarily arsey, but I sick and tired of having idiots like yourself twist my comments into some anti-debian bullshit - particularly when I'm actually a great fan of the distribution.

So, for the love of god, learn to f--king read before jumping on the defensive.

</rant>

edit: and yes, I know there's no need for language like that nor personal attacks, but to read a reply where someone is accusing me of bashing Debian / GUIs when that very posted you're replying to is a comment I've made stating I'm not even discussing Debian nor GUIs - well it's more than just a little frustrating

Edited 2012-03-06 21:21 UTC

No they aren't. The Pi designers themselves have said they wanted the Pi to be an affordable basic computing alternative for people as well.

I wish people would bother reading everything the foundation has said before they post. There's so much misinformation and false assumptions about the Pi it's almost sickening.

Exactly. It's not like the RPi foundation is going to ask everyone buying the device what they are going to use it for anyway. If I wanted to buy 1000 of them to make a cheap render farm, they would still get their cut and wouldn't ask any questions.

Actually I have read a lot of what they've posted and been a regular to their site and still missed that part. So I think part of the blame must lie with them for sending out mixed messages (which all in all, is such a minor complaint given how commendable their achievements have been).

Anyhow, thanks for the clarification

Edited 2012-03-06 21:42 UTC