Re: SEUL: User Profiles (?)

[Greg Bell <winston@atlantic.net>]

Jeffrey S. Dutky wrote:

> I have trouble with 4) for two reasons: First, LINUX doesn't
> have any NEED for a "cutting edge" computer. Second, this will
> rule out the vast majority of users. While the PC market is
> growing rapidly there are still a lot of 486 class machines
> out there. This is true in the Mac world as well where many
> users have old PPC601/Nubus based PowerMacs. In either case,
> since LINUX will run quite nicely on either a 486 or a PPC601
> we should target those machines as the base model. Anyone who
> has a better machine will just get better performance.
 
Valid points your making here and I must admit I was aiming at a "<NEW>"
computer user/owner.

> With the above critique in mind I would adjust the hardware
> profile like this:
> 
> 4) Intel PC                  PowerMacintosh
>    486-66 or better          PPC601 or better
>    8 MB RAM                  (what is the MkLINUX minimum?)
>    VGA or better             (what does MkLINUX support?)
>    VGA monitor               (see above)
>    300 MB hard disk          (what is MkLINUX minimum?)
>    3.5" floppy               N/A (all Macs have standard fd)
>    IDE or sound card CD      SCSI CD
>    pointing device           N/A (all Macs have standard mouse)
> 
> This configuration should cover a large majority the prospective
> users and has the advantage of actually being pretty speedy as
> a LINUX system (The Intel PC setup is pretty similar to what I
> use right now. Its not the fastest thing in the world but its
> not painfully slow unless I'm doing a kernel compile)
> 
> > 5) has little or no experience with programming
> > 6) doesn't know what a command line is or what a shell is
> > 7) just wants to play around with the new OS and see what
> >    it does
> >
> > Now as for the second outline, what features should be installed:
> >
> > I know from my own experiences that when Linux is first
> > installed the user is presented with a hodgepodge of options
> > (meny of which he has no knowledge of what they do).  Let's
> > just look at a 'normal' installation (for this I am going by
> > memory of my last install of Slackware).  During installation
> > the user is presented with weather or not to install 3 versions
> > of C, TEX, Emacs, VI, JOE, JOVE, Fortran, Lisp, ADA(?) in other
> > words the user in inundated with selections.  How about a
> > 'directed' installation.  For example, if the user wanted to
> > program install C, with the option to install Fortran, pascal,
> > et al. This idea is not fully fleshed out as of yet (mainly
> > because even after 4 years of playing with Linux I still don't
> > know/remember all of what is included with a distribution) but
> > I think that you get my general drift.
> >
> 
> If we are aiming at the end user I think we can assume that they
> won't be wanting to program in C. Similarly, anyone who will be
> writing C programs can probably handle a more complicated and
> involved installation process.

Here I would have to diverge, one of the reasons that I first looked
at linux was a little blurb I had seen about it being a development
system for programmmers and as I was trying to learn/relearn/comprehend
C programming at the time so I grabbed it and got hooked, all of this
aside
though, linux is being touted as the "FREE" system that includes C et
al,
which I think is the main drawing point for linux because who wants to
pay
upto $1000 just to see if they would like to program??  

> 
> I think that we should settle on a small set of basic tools
> (editor, news reader, mail reader, web browser, shell, etc.)
> and not trouble the user with choosing one or more: The user
> doesn't know what the hell any of them are and doesn't care
> so long as they can use the machine.

This is true, a workable system is better then one that has 
everything available but is, shall we say, somewhat unusable.
I guess my vision just exceeded reality.

               Greg


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simple End User Linux Mailing list
To be removed from this mailing list send a message to majordomo@txcc.net
with the line
unsubscribe seul-project
in the body of the letter.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------