[CLUG] SuSE 9.3 Review

[adam beecher]

> Yes, he obviously is a bit thick about this, which makes him 
> the perfect person to see if it's ready for mere mortals. A 
> Linux guy saying it's great for granny holds no water, 
>
Only a /stupid/ Linux user would say that though, be fair. (Although I have
to admit there's plenty of them about. Like the Linux users that were
recommending Slack and something Gentoo-like to what was obviously a n00b on
Boards.ie today. I mean seriously, Slackware?)

There's no denying that Linux isn't ready for the average user yet, or
rather it's not suitable for an average user that needs to set it up from
scratch. But I do think it's /very nearly/ there for users that have someone
who can install and configure it for them though, and I think that although
there's going to be an ongoing support element for the issues that you
pointed out, it won't be a whole lot more than for Windows. In my experience
users either get it or they don't; they'll figure it out themselves or bug
someone about it.

The distros need to concentrate more on making installation and
configuration transparent I guess. Again, I hate to agree with a Windows guy
but Jim Allchin is right, it needs to "just work". That means taking some of
the configuration steps out of the default process, and making them part of
an advanced install. Some distros, like Linspire, have done this already to
a degree. Getting Linux on the desktop by default, i.e. in Dell, would knock
this kind of thing on the head almost entirely. Dell won't want those
support calls, so it'll /have/ to "just work".

I stand by my point about yerman. If he'd said "I'm writing this article
from the POV of an average user" then fair enough, but he didn't, he
obviously had serious difficulties with the process. Installing a Linux
distro isn't trivial, but it's far from rocket science. It shouldn't be that
difficult for someone writing on a high-tech news site. But perhaps it's a
troll and I fell for it. :)

adam