On Fri, Dec 05, 2003 at 08:38:45AM -0600, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote: > > Depends which *people* Debian targets. Myself I think the Debian install > method is just about where I want it, I must be one of the *people*. > > First as a newbie you do RH and KDE. Then you see that is way too much > and without finetuning. Then you get to Debian and FVWM and you get to > run a finely tuned machine that is just where you want it. > > Remains one serious dependency... The Debian organization... >
Is Debian an 'organization' of a 'community', or what? Try, if you can, to treat this as a serious question. I'm not close enough to the center of Debian to have an answer, but the Woody installer gives some clues to what it was. It seems that in the recent past, Debian was guided by a group of sysadmins, who wanted to share and automate the work of administering a small local Linux shop. The install process was good enough to get started, and didn't get in the way of administering a working shop. In particular, it was good enough to allow new people to join, and progress to the point that they could become maintainers and help run the show. But a user of Debian is never really treated as a customer. The mindset seems to be that others on the list are themselves sysadmins, or, at least, aspire to be serious power users. Now, distributions that have a business model that sees users as customers are having financial problems, will Debian change, and become more 'user friendly'? The core organization of Debian doesn't, it seems to me, really need tag-along users like me. They do need to proselytise, so that they maintain their own ranks. But beyond that, I don't see much beyond altruism driving the public face of Debian. Thanks, Debian maintainers. -- Paul E Condon [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]