[Lilux-help] Distro is not as important as we all think

[Eric Dondelinger]

Hi,

On Tue, 29 Jun 2004, Patrick Useldinger wrote:

> Eric Dondelinger wrote:
>
> > When the concerns have been discussed to death, and there's
> > no single answer, resp. it is essentially a question of
> > religion, I really don't see a point in continuing/repeating
> > a discussion, and I consider it a waste of time. Sorry if I
> > chose too hard a word to describe this.
>
> I certainly believe that you have discussed this to death already.

Actually, I didn't feel the need to take part. It suffices to
watch some people's ravings on Usenet for instance.

> But the problem remains one for everybody who considers trying Linux. I
> cannot believe that people who have sufficient knowledge and who have
> discussed the matter, and thus know the different points of view, just
> watch the newbie struggling, "oh, he'll be alright sooner or later".
>
> The objective of Lilux is to promote Linux, so why not help new users
> with "everybody's first problem"?

Maybe we could find some typical flamefests as archived on google
groups, and link to those. I don't really think it would be too
helpful.

I'd rather believe in the hands-on approach. If someone's
progressed sufficiently to start administering his/her system,
just show them the different approaches, from the different
distros. Have people shoot themselves in the foot and learn
from their mistakes. They'll quickly enough learn the advantages/
disadvantages of the different variants, and form their own
(informed) opinions. I don't think this is something that can
be deduced from some matrix on a web page.
If we're talking "Otto Normalverbraucher", you'll need to use
something that dumbs things down as far as possible - there,
you can throw out most distros, maybe a couple of them will
fit the bill. If the person wants to tinker around some, but
not too much, the choice gets a little wider. For pros, the
choice gets still wider, but some "too dumb" distros will
fall back out... really, it's almost a case-by-case study
each time. No simple answer.

Greets Eric