[BadVista Advocate] Vista owners

[Jacob Maynard]

You mention Debian in this message, and I need to stress again that it
needs to be one of the systems that is easy to use. When I first started
with Linux, I used Red Hat 9. Very simple. It has carried on to Fedora,
but I can understand that some people don't want to go with Fedora. Since
Novell and MS have become friends, I agree that we shouldn't use SuSE,
though it is very simple. Debian and apt-get is not a good example of what
would be user-friendly.

Our own distribution would be helpful, but the complications of it are
pretty staggering. I could understand not wanting to do it. But we have to
make it very simple for the user.

Anyway, that's more of my two cents.

Jacob

> On Sat, 28 Apr 2007 15:12:22 -0400 (EDT)
> "Jacob Maynard" <indymaynard at maynard.homelinux.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm for it. I would be willing to bet that with all of us chiming in
>> on wanting to help with the BadVista site, BadVista wouldn't have any
>> problems helping out.
>>
>> I see you have already defined your position in this effort. That's
>> outstanding.
>>
>> We need to cover some basic areas on this one:
>> 1. Games - Cover the games that are out there and which run natively
>> on GNU/Linux, and cover which ones run with WinE. But this is going
>> to be the toughest selling point because there's not a huge push for
>> games on GNU/Linux with the same reputation as major video games on
>> Windows and the XBox/PS.
>
> A section about console emulators (PS, NES, SNES, GameCube, XBox, etc)
> would be interesting too.
>
>> 2. Productivity - Obviously OpenOffice.org is on the list. We can
>> include StarOffice, if anyone thinks it is worth mentioning while we
>> are presenting it to the users. The biggest thing that we need to
>> focus on is agreeing on standards. Thunderbird or Evolution for
>> e-mail, even though I think that most of us use Evolution. GNUCash
>> should be included, too.
>
> IMO StarOffice shouldn't be included, it isn't FLOSS.
>
> For email, claws mail would be on the list too.
>
> And please include (La)TeX and The GIMP.
>
>> 3. Multimedia - Our distribution should have
>> support for all of this already, or an easy place to download a
>> binary codec package. This is almost as big as the games, if not more
>> so.
>
> Video edition software may be another big point.
>
>>
>> More advanced areas we can work on may include the command line. You
>> don't want to start off with the command line, though. That's where
>> people say, "Umm, I have something else to do." I know that most of
>> us can't live without the command prompt, but your average user is
>> intimidated by it. Sorry, Yasith. You can't just open them up right
>> off of the bat to this.
>
> If there isn't already one, an introduction to all *n?x shells (or
> maybe one introduction per shell) would do it.
>
>> So I guess that the question should come up; are we intending on
>> creating a distribution of our own that includes all of this support,
>> or are we going to decide on a distribution collectively. I've heard
>> gNewSense, and from the short amount of reading I've done on it, this
>> is creating our own distro. Can we clarify and take a vote on this?
>> This should come second to the website, though.
>
> Something which is lightweight, fast, and includes only free software
> (and, if needed, open source software - I don't know what would be the
> FSF position about this, since OS is not the same as FS), the free
> software we specify here, will fit.
>
> But some technical decisions must be taken. The work of building a
> distro from zero and widespread it implies building package
> repositories and a compatible and lightweight package manager.
> It is easier to pick an existing package system and use it (Debian's
> system and apt-get, Gentoo Portage and Paludis, &c).
>
> --
> Nuno J. Silva
> Lisbon, Portugal
> Homepage: <http://njsg.no.sapo.pt/> & <http://palpatine.hopto.org/>
> Registered Linux User #402207 - http://counter.li.org
>
> Using Claws Mail 2.9.0
>
> Gentoo Base System release 1.12.9
> Linux 2.6.17-gentoo-r7 i686 Pentium II (Deschutes)
>
> -=-=-
> “In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had
> to worry about where the next meal would come from.” -- Peter S.
> Drucker, who invented management
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