The increasing frequency of 'help help help' messages from new users who arrive at a command line console and don't know what to do next is a good sign: more people moving from doze to Linux, more moving from fedora and suze to debian. But there is a real danger of scaring them off -- and I think their plight is a sign that debian should offer a little extra help for them. What do others here think?
What I have in mind is that the new installer could rewrite the welcome text to say something like This is a new install of Debian GNU/Linux stable thisbox tty1 If you expected to get a graphic logon and desktop, please login as root and run "makemegraphic" Otherwise, run "installdone" to get rid of this message. thisbox login: _ With, obviously, a couple of scripts to either revert to the normal situation or install kde and kdm (easiest, IMHO, for beginners -- but gnome and gdm would do too, or perhaps the two alternatives could be offered by the script, with a brief description of pros and cons). I'm guessing this would be a trivial exercise, but I think it would make for a much sweeter experience for many of the growing numbers of Debian newbies. Improvements? Disagreement? Consensus? -- richard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]