My Debian exam.

[Rick <rickya@siservices.net>]

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I think Jean has a good idea.  We should all be able to demonstrate our ability
to be objective when it comes to our distro of choice.

I've been using Debian exclusively for over 2 years now.  Although it is
obviously my distro of choice it has many problems that make it prohibitive for
people like my mother, father, sisters, and daughters.

Installation:

Installation does not include partitioning.  A user has to have his partitions
setup before he boots the install disks, or has to repartition his drive
loosing his other OS(s) and all data.  I don't think it is explained to the
user prior to this point unless s/he read the redme at the archive the disks
were acquired from.

So if I were to mail a set of install disks to my father I'd have to explain to
him how to repartition his drive, before he can do the install.  At that point
he would decide not to bother.  Admittedly, I've never installed Debian via
CDROM but don't expect that install to handle the partitioning for him either. 
The difference would be that I wouldn't have to write the process down for him,
he could read it from the disk.

At that point he would call me and ask me to explain it to him, if he didn't
give up already.  Then he would give up because it's too involved.  Note that
we haven't even booted the installation yet.  The other members of my family
would give up at different points during the install process.

Working on install with my sister would most likely go the farthest.  We get
the installation menu up and get the root partition and swap partition
initialised and mounted, after explaining to her what that means since the
installation just says it has to be done and not why.

Let's skip to the setup since the installation is nothing more than copying the
base onto the root partition.  Network setup.  What is an IP?  What is a
network device?  What is a network address and mask?  Where is the dunc setup
like Windows has?

Skip to the first boot.  Dselect pops up after login.  She goes through and
looks at the multitude of packages, after reading the help on using Dselect. 
There's a lot of stuff already selected.  She understands the part that says
"required" let's look at this optional stuff.  What the hell do I need all this
for?  If it's optional why is it selected?  I have no clue what it all does so
what am I supposed to do?  Oh, games.  That game sounds good.  She selects it
and a dependancy menu pop's up.  This requires that and suggests this and
conflicts with the other.  What does all this mean?  What am I supposed to do
now?

After blundering through, or asking me for help, she gets back to the main
selection screen and decides she hasn't got a clue and just hits return and
starts the install.  Now, what?  Dselect complains that it has no place set to
install from.  She gets to the install method and selects FTP.  There's an
example.  She doesn't know any different so selects the defaults.  Hey that
went good, back to install.  Can't connect to ftp.debian.org, server not found.
 Frustrated, but determined, she figures she needs to exit and setup the ISP
connection, which is stretching the ability for her to figure out what really
went wrong.

She exits dselect...

Setup is now complete.  Have fun.

        localhost#|

What do I do? 
        localhost#dir
        . ..

What?

        localhost#win
        bash: win: command not found

What is bash?
        
        localhost#help
        bash: help: command not found

        localhost#setup
        bash: setup: command not found
        
        localhost#bash
        localhost#

The hell with this.

        localhost#format d:
        bash: format: command not found

I could go on with this forever, but she wouldn't have made it that far.

Let's say she has a CDROM and gets is setup.  Let's say she actually knows what
hardware to put in those questions.  She has a pristene Debian install with X
up and running.  What next?

She wants to surf the net so, having figured out how to left click the mouse to
get a menu, she goes to apps/network and sees a bunch of apps she has no idea
about and FTP which she vaguely know about.  She selects FTP since she
remembers that she saw that in Netscape and IE and gets an xterm and FTP
prompt.  She closes that and tries again one at a time until she runs into
lynx.  This seems to be a web browser but it's not like Netscape or IE and she
can't even understand some of the web sites.

Surfing the web is out, how about this doom game.  Ok something she gets
something out of.  Now it's time to write a letter to her insurance company. 
She stumbles across emacs.  It seems to be a word processor of some kind but
she can't find any way to format the page.  Oh well, she finishes the letter
and saves it.  Then she goes looking for a fax program in the menu again. 
Nothing.  I'll check that dselect program for a fax program.

She finds and installs mgetty fax.  Need I even bother explaining what kind of
problems she will have figuring out how to use it?  Faxing is out, I'll just
print it and mail it to them.  She opens the file and hits print - nothing, or
it's printed from one side to the other without a page break, running across
the end of one page to the other.

She manages to find printer options.  What the hell is lp?

She sits back and stares at the monstrosity I keep telling her blows Windows
away and comes to the conclusion I'm nuts.  There's nothing in the menu but
terminals, debuggers, source file editors, calculators, network statistic
programs, plenty of bland screensavers, a program to look at pictures if she
ever figures out how to get any to look at, some things called shells, logo's, a
file manager, and configure scripts that she has no idea about.  All the things
I thought Windows should have, that you can now get for it, and nothing she
used in Windows.

She wants desktop publishers, browsers like Netscape and IE, word processors,
chat programs, voice communications programs, programs like powwow,
activeworld, onlive traveler, ICQ, Cu-Seeme, photoshop or photostyler (gimp),
GUI faxing software, games like Starfleet academy, Kings Quest, Flight
simulator, etc.

We can't provide some of these things because of licensing and the fact that
commercial vendors just don't see a future for them in Linux.  If we provide
what we can it will make them take notice.

Debian is primarily for programming and network/website administration.  There
is nothing there to interest the "user" only the "manipulators",
hackers/sysadmin/programmers/netadmin.

The user doesn't care if latex is is more versitile than a word processor if
they have to memorize cryptic commands to use it.  Make a latex word processor
that has menus to do everything "they" want to use it for and they will come to
that conclusion on their own.

Linux is like assembly language and Windows is like Javascript to them.  They
don't care if it does less than assembly can when it's easier to use.

I actually skipped quite a bit in the interest of keeping this short.  We have
to keep in mind that we need to get the stupid (perhaps an exageration) people
using Linux and they aren't about to use it if they have to memorize anything
or spend hours reading "HOWTO's" to get something to work right.  Even
some netadmin will lean toward NT, with it's limitations and bugs, to avoid the
hassle of Linux.



- ---
Rick Jones
rickya@siservices.net
I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading on,
so I woke up from sheer boredom.



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