The definitive text of the Announce

[jfm2@club-internet.fr]

I am posting the following to the Linux-Announces group.

It is very diferent of what I submitted yesterday.  But I think it is
better and if I delay one day more I will begin to modify it again.

======================  BEGIN ===========================================


	     Announcing the Independence Linux distribution.

Goals:
====

We have a dream: spreding Linux between the masses.  This requires
making it easy to use.  But it also requires to start thinking in
those people who are not using or will not be using Linux as a
traditional Unix.  In those people who have to administer the box
before knowing the simplest of the Unix commands.  In those who will be
using it at home and have a different idea of fun than C programming.
It will require to stop thinking everyone is in a LAN or the box is
powered up 24h a day.  It will require to stop thinking Linux will be
used only as a server or a programmers workstation.

The high cost of Unix banned it outside many areas of use.  Linux can
go where Unix never went but fulfilling those differents needs will
not be reached by designing Linux distributions as just a cheap
version of Unix.


Legal Status
============

The Independence distribution is licensed under the GPL.  It is
developped not for profit by a small group of volunteers.  Not for
profit means we don't ourselves distribute it on CDROM but we will
help anyone interested in doing it.  Small group means you can make a
difference if you contribute.

Features
========

-Independence is based on RedHat 5.2 with all the errata applied and
with stuff of our own

-We asked ourselves how to help a Linux beginner and tried to solve
his problems one by one.  Like being unable to print and having
postcript viewers whose output is bad enough to make it nearly
unreadable.  Or being unable to ask for help due to clients unsuitable
for people using dial up.  We provided alternative ones optimized for
dial up access specially for expensive dial up access and while we
were at it we fixed the postscript viewers.

-Of course we replaced traditional cron by one who does not need a box
powered up 24 hours a day.

-We applied to LILO something we will be extending in future
realeases: having the info going to the user instead of the opposite.
RTFM is something you can say to people who learned Unix at University
not to people who have to fix problems before knowing about "cp".

-Both KDE, fonts or font servers (we ship a True Type font server) and
special widgets like neXtaW can be installed transparently to the
user.  Just restart X and they will be there.  Uninstall them, restart
X and they will be gone.  The mechanism is clean and doesn't incur the
dangers of automatic editing.

-Linux should not only be for hackers.  It should be fun and
impressive for everyone.  We tried to include software for artistic
creation be it for graphics (Blender, Moonlight, POV, GIMP 1.0.2) or
sound.  Of course we added some games.

-Too many Linux users have to reboot Windows because their software
for real life runs on the wrong operating system.  Be it for using a
WYSYWYG word processor, managing a check book or a butterfly
collection we provided stuff for doing it under Linux, and in order to
still reduce the time under Windows we included Wine.


Bugs and shortcomings
=====================

-The installation is the same than the one from the base distribution.
That means dial-up users don't get the same assistance than LAN users.

-We don't ship Gnome :-( 

-We would have liked to include every known GIMP plugin under the sun.

-Restrictions for distributing the Glide libraries precluded the
inclusion of really good games.

-Some of the additional software is not at the latest version although
we try to be up to date on important or fast moving stuff.

-It is 2.0 based but a 2.2 upgrading kit is on a separate directory.

-It is only a tiny step in a long road



Future
======

Features planned for next release include shipping Gnome, adding PPP
configuration at install time, better handling of problems of
non-Americans (like LILO automatically using the right keyboard
tables) and in making XDM the default boot mode in a safe way.


Downloading and additional info.
================================

Go to http://independence.seul.org/distribution for additional info
about the distribution and downloading instructions

========================   END  ======================================

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org