On 2012-06-20 03:18, Dan Mashal wrote:
If you wanted to make it easier for "novice users" then why
do novice
users have to do so much work out of the box to get stuff working?
This is such a minor fix for "novice users".
We are not where we want to be yet, but we are all working very hard
each release to move forward to spread free software via Fedora to more
and more people. Just because we haven't gotten there yet, I don't think
we should give up and start walking backward.
"Novice users" use Ubuntu. Think about why. I understand that Ubuntu
and Fedora have different "religious" philosophies but this is
reality
without getting too in the the actual "religion" of FOSS and the 4
foundations of Fedora.
Novice computer users do not use Linux, and even worse, the vast
majority of novice users do not use free software, not even Inkscape on
OS X or Windows. I believe everyone is entitled to free software,
especially those who don't have access to proprietary tools that could
make their lives better for example, economic reasons. I and I believe
many others in Fedora would like to help these folks enjoy software
freedom just as all of us privileged users are able to. The bar should
not be set so high as it is right now.
Quote "Without release number? what if you have both Rawhide and 17
installed?
I think it should be Fedora $number"
So a "novice user" would have Rawhide installed? :)
A novice user would not have Rawhide installed, but novice users are
not the only people using Fedora. Novice users by default would not see
GRUB on their system because it is not displayed by default - you have
to hit either esc or F2 i think to see it. However, novice users *will*
see 'Fedora 17' or whatnot when they try to boot their Live USB key
because they have a timeout built-in so the boot menu always displays. I
believe the same code that displays the name of the kernel in grub2 does
so in syslinux (What's used for the live usb bootmenu) as well, so I am
pretty sure they should be consistent across boot loaders.
Having taught some pretty bright high school students how to use
Inkscape and Gimp using a classroom full of Live USB booted Fedoras, I
can say from experience there are a lot of pitfalls to making the
bootloader screen anything but simple if we want to make Fedora
accessible to a more diverse community.
A novice user just wants it to "work" "out of the
box".
I mean it's really that simple.
No, it's not. Because every user has a different thing they are trying
to do. Say user 1 wants to do "X" and users 2 wants to do "Y". If you
make "X" work out-of-the-box, then maybe "Y" necessarily cannot work
out
of the box. (example, X = printing to a network printer without hassle,
Y = not getting hacked because you have no firewall and having important
data stolen.)
~m