I'll try to address my answer on issues not addressed by Matt Zimmerman. Fredag 28 juli 2006 17:02, skrev Katrina Jackson:
> I am concerned Debian isn't trying to meet people's needs enough. I agree with you that Debian could be perceived that way. The 13500+ program packages in Sarge could be overwhelming. It could be adverse to find the solution for your immediate needs. That said, the Custom Debian Distributions[1] projects are targeting a lot of different needs and requirements. Independent evaluations[2] shows that some of that tailor made solutions made with Debian outperform other alternatives that don't take the users needs into account. 1. http://wiki.debian.org/CustomDebian 2 .http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/3373/470 In my personal view (K)Ubuntu has done a great job making the desktop just work. It gives a good feeling for a lot of people. I have replace Windows with Kubuntu for a lot of family members and friends. But when it comes to municipality wide installations of free software on many schools, operated centrally, the Debian based Skolelinux does the job. If system operators initially have run an k12ltsp installation or something else, they switch to Skolelinux after they have experienced the need for stability. They have to do some tailoring of the desktop and services anyway, so in the school environment, the KDE 3.3 and a backported OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 with a lot of educational programs is good enough. The users also tend to be conservative. They don't want to change KDE every year. It's believe it or not the same with Windows. A lot of people don't want to change their desktop to often. They also want full support for flash, media streams, MS Word document (God forbids ;) and such in the Web browser. The Skolelinux Drift, a Norwegian based company that maintain Skolelinux installations, installs Kubuntu on the laptops and Skolelinux on the servers with support for thin clients and diskless workstations. They add inn the support for multimedia, USB-stics and such. All things plays together nicely. The biggest issue is to show the computer support person at every school to know the possibilities with educational software. They often don't know what the options are, and hard work has to be done educating the users that computers are more than office applications (that often is the case when teachers uses Windows and MS Office, and has inherent experiences from that "paradigm"). > A. Ubuntu seems like it can get hardware support immeadiatly, but > that support never seems to quickly get to Debian. I have been > using Ubuntu since Debian doesn't wok on my laptop. Suspend doesn't > work and my wireless pro 3945ABG doesn't work. With Ubuntu > everything works fine. Thats mainly a kernel issue, where (K)Ubuntu ships with a newer kernel that comes with Debian unstable. After the little I know about the new Debian release, they will ship with the 2.6.17 kernel, and it will most likely be possible to upgrade to a new supported kernel in the mid life of the new Debian version. I don't know much of the status for suspend support in a new Debian version, but i suspect that it will be on place in Etch. So the suspend issue will probably work out of the box with laptops (correct me if I'm wrong). > B. Ubuntu members not only support mailing lists and IRC but suport > user forums which are so much more user friendly and don't fill up > your mailbox. A lot of the Custom Debian Distributions has it's own user support lists. Skolelinux has more questions answered on it's user lists in Norwegian than Edubuntu has world wide. After what I've heard the German support list for Skolelinux also has a lot of traffic relevant for the users. That said, the reason for making Skolelinux in 2001 was to address a general challenge for all Linux-distributions. The distributions back then was general purpose, and not tailored for the different users needs. Back in 2001 a standard school admin had to answer 128 question to installing a Linux system on a server with network support and 5-6 services for 100 client machines. The installation manual was 134 pages for a RedHat distro. By redesigning the Debian installer the same installation is done answering 3-4 question, and the school servers is up running after 30 minutes. When making the installation tailored with profiles for different users, we could use more effort on helping people using a free software at the schools, not using all the time on configuration talk at the support lists. Ubuntu tailored the installer for their requirements, and my opinion they have done a great job making the desktop usable for average users. In some areas Skolelinux had to catch up, and others Ubuntu is catching up. They have a more glossy desktop. Skolelinux have a municipality wide architecture, tailored for central operation and maintenance. Most or all the developers in Skolelinux is deeply concerned on making free software useable in a teaching environment, and then every improvement should be made available upstream. Everyone should with as little effort as possible be able to get our translations, bug-fixes or new code, and the documentation and computer programs in their own language. So there are a kind of two campuses in that particular project, and we have to work all the time to bridge the gap between the developers and the users. Skolelinux developers work together with Edubuntu to developing new functionality and share experiences. We want to be pragmatic about this in the framework of free software. We don't want to waist time to discredit the other distroes. That will just backfire on us self, and most of the ordinary user don't understand this anyway. But Skolelinux hope that Ubuntu and other Debian brased distroes will make the patch management more upstream to Debian. > The reason why Ubuntu is more popular than you is they honestly > focus their attention on making their users happy. They actually > seem to care about people's needs. As was recently said, pretty and > nice are features too. I don't understand what the deal is. Any, > good programmers have good ideas they impliment, more then just the > ability to hack to debug. Is debian good for anything besides > Debuuging, Debugging, Debugging. Never and new great features or > ideas. The strength of Ubuntu has and continue to be their marketing effort, and the 6 month releases with support for newer hardware and a nice desktop based on Debian unstable. The other thing that is important is that companies and public sector want to have someone to held accountable*. With Canonical firms can make contracts to get someone to blame if somethings breaks. We have done the same thing when establishing Skolelinux Drift ("Skolelinux operation and maintenance Inc"). The Skolelinux got the question about accountability from the Ministry of education and science in Norway in 2002. The One Laptop per Child project have exactly the same concern, and RedHat said that they could be held accountable. * Accountable in this context is the general notion that you can call a company that will fix your problem if anythings goes wrong with your installations, and this has to be done professionally. When it comes to new feautures or ideas, the standard distro today, and I then include Ubuntu, have very little new things. In my personal view the saying "the people that don't know their history, thinks everything is new". This applies to most of software in use today. The most of the innovations done with computers we use today is already done 20-30 years ago. The only thing Microsoft has invented is the bothersome paper clip which they introduced in Windows for over a decade ago. When it comes to Linux-distroes, the innovation happens outside the distroes. It's explain it self by the fact that a distro distributes software made or innovated by all the software projects out there. The success of free software i believe mostly comes from the fact that it is built with open innovation[3] and works in the marked place as disruptive technology[4]. To be a first mover in a disruptive marked can give a commercial success that outperform the success gained by stepwise improvement of sustaining technology. The most of the business schools learn you how to survive in businesses with sustaining technology, and they learn that the first mover is a dangerous and risky path. That said, impressive amount of science shows that there could be are a more risky to work with sustaining technology ... Today the growth[5] in the computer business is happening in the free software space. 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Innovation 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology 5. http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/5663/469 Best regards Knut Yrvin Project manager Skolelinux Norway -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]