> I was glad that there was available a nice looking modern Linux,
> easy-to-use distro to come-to-the-rescue of non-techie users ("fluffies")
> like this. I could have installed my own distro-of-choice Debian Squeeze
> on there and everything would also be fine... but then I'd have to fiddle
> with installing a back-ported version of iceweasel to get smooth fonts
> back, and faff around getting users to log-in without a password and a
> bunch of other things to make it more usable for fluffies. This is stuff
> that we put up with but many others will not.Interesting. Personally use Debian Wheezy (current testing). I have no gripe with iceweasel's fonts, though I may be less piccy than others, standard install, straight out of the repository. Log-in without password is not hard with either GDM or KDM. And to be honest, password-less login isn't something we all want enabled by default. There are many different options. That's important. There are also a lot of software houses (both proprietary and FOSS) who have an idealised view of how the user should be working, without actually appreciating the requirements that have led to the user working the way they do. Yes, a lot of the interface hardware has been around for a long time. And much of it is very poor for interactive display terminals (for lecture controls for instance). However, it is brilliant when it comes to coding, and engineering type jobs. PLEASE can we realise, that just because there is a new way to do something that is not in itself a compelling argument for doing it. It is however, sensible to consider how we might support it, and add that support into the back-end code. Optional front-ends are great, forcing a front-end on users that they don't like will lose you both current and potential users. It has been mentioned that KDE4 was buggy. Yes, the first release was. However, KDE4 looked very much like KDE3 with some nicer artwork, and (in my opinion) a much-improved launcher (which still has a "switch to classic" option). The back-end improvements were considerable, but the front-end was familiar. That was why people stuck with it (and many didn't move until about 4.2 anyway). Cheers all, Tim B. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --------------------------------------------------------------
