Debian could be more user friendly!

[hudson]

in my opinion Debian could be more user friendly

In my opinion users should be more Debian friendly.

+1

[GarryRicketson]

in my opinion Debian could be more user friendly

In my opinion users should be more Debian friendly.

+1

,
+1 more
If they don't like Debian, they should shut up and go back to "windows" poop.

[hudson]

reminds me of that Rolling Stones song "Get off of my Cloud"

[NFT5]

In my opinion users should be more Debian friendly.

+1

,
+1 more
If they don't like Debian, they should shut up and go back to "windows" poop.

I think that most serious converts to Debian have considered the move carefully and are more than prepared to make some adjustment. While they crop up here from time to time, people who seem to genuinely think that Debian should be like Windows, or Mac, really are in the minority.

A smaller disto won't have the power base Debian does nor the demands placed on it. So, to develop their niche, they need to customize things and make it all very user friendly.

One of my earlier points is that Debian does occupy a niche in the big world of operating systems software and thus needs to address the needs and desires not just of the current user base but that of the future as well. Debian and Redhat are in unique positions to do this.

[hudson]

A smaller disto won't have the power base Debian does nor the demands placed on it. So, to develop their niche, they need to customize things and make it all very user friendly.

One of my earlier points is that Debian does occupy a niche in the big world of operating systems software and thus needs to address the needs and desires not just of the current user base but that of the future as well. Debian and Redhat are in unique positions to do this.

Sorry to jump into the middle of this thread without reading the whole thing, but you guys are writing essays for posts and I need some cliff notes for this discussion.

But, just to clarify my point...my understanding is that Debian is a giant clog in the Linux machinery. It provides for the server market and for the derivatives...it is not end-user focused.

I totally agree that Linux is all over the place...I was just thinking today that someone (with a lot of clout) should write a "dot file intercept daemon"...any application that attempts to write a dot file in the home directory will be intercepted and that data will be written to a master database. That might be the seeds of someone gaining leverage over all the thousands of upstream developers and force them to standardize!

[Randicus]

But, just to clarify my point...my understanding is that Debian is a giant clog in the Linux machinery.

You might want to reconsider your choice of words. Cog might be better.

[mor]

Unix/Linux was from the start an institutional/corporate/academic system designed to be managed by an hieratic class of scribes called IT programmers. The system was designed to only be open and comprehensible to that class, and as obfuscating and complex as possible to the unwashed masses. The man pages are a case in point. The naming conventions are another. Not meant to be *cute* but to be inscrutable.

While I agree (well, minus the hieratic feel you wanted to ascribe to the class of programmers) with the first part, I think you went too far when you spoke of stuff being deliberately and purposefully made obscure to keep the masses out.

If stuff is obscure it is because very technical people usually speak technically among peers (because it is vastly more efficient) and also because, on average, they have been, and probably still are, bad communicators.

The world of Unix/Linux can be obscure as a byproduct of being designed by programmers for programmers, but definitely not as the result of a lucid machination.

[Deshapria]

Debian could be more user friendly is the question, but the comments move to 'Windows is the most user unfriendly piece of "pooh"'. But, who cares if Windows is pooh or not!

Debian won't be that user friendly anyway, and that opens the road to the creation of user-friendly distros made off the Debian base. There are enough around, aren't there?

[cpoakes]

..But, just to clarify my point...my understanding is that Debian is a giant clog in the Linux machinery. It provides for the server market and for the derivatives...it is not end-user focused...

I am a Debian end-user. Debian runs my servers, laptops, thin clients, and desktops. I challenge your notion that Debian is not "end-user focused". It is quite clearly focused on the set of end-users that embrace the Debian Social Contract and its ramifications. The contract is by definition exclusive. Problems arise when users don't understand and accept the Social Contract, don't understand that the "Universal Operating System" is not all-inclusive, and expect it to be something else (fewer options, preconfigured for all hardware, target newbies, bleeding edge applications).

The principal justification for so many Debian derivatives is circumventing the restrictions of the Social Contract to create simpler, preconfigured, noobie friendly distros. And this is a good thing. If you are new to Linux, don't start with Debian without reading up on the social contract and understanding the limitations and potential frustrations associated with doing so.

You don't visit Paris and expect to be served pop-tarts. RTFSC (Read the f*cking social contract).

[millpond]

M$ has its 'Knowledge Base' which covers the majority of its system errors.

What is this knowledge base? People who use Windows see the errors often enough to know what they refer to? Windows includes a help file that lists potential error messages and what to do when they occur? People who use any OS learn from experience with that OS.

Unix/Linux was from the start an institutional/corporate/academic system designed to be managed by an hieratic class of scribes called IT programmers. The system was designed to only be open and comprehensible to that class, and as obfuscating and complex as possible to the unwashed masses.

It is "complicated", because it is an open system that allows users to do whatever they want with it. Windows hides the internals from users, because users are not supposed to tinker with the system. Which one is better depends on what a person wants from their system.

The naming conventions are another.

The names for things are different than what Windows uses? Files and directories, as opposed to documents and folders? Or do you mean names of things Windows users never see, because they are hidden?

In win, the solutions are usually simple

Usually re-install. Windows users are not supposed to know how to fix the system. That is not a criticism of Windows, it is the user culture Microsoft has created and cultivated.

The average user has little interest in computer science.

So why would such people want to use a system designed for people who want to learn a little? Your argument seems to be that Linux should become another Windows or Apple so it will be more accessible to the average person who does not want to learn anything about the tool they use. Why not let them continue using the systems designed for them?

a. Having used Win since DOS 2.0, typically it does come with an exhaustive Help base, even with the inclusion of EXAMPLE code for its commands.
The Knowledge Base is often a bit confusing, but most of the time the solutions for common problems can be found there.

b. After 20+ years I still havent figured out the video driver mess. My logs tell me that me Radeon r350 driver is fully loaded successfully into the kernel, but that Nvidia glrx doesnt like it. WTF????
Linux is of course complex. Its designed for servers, institutions, cray supercomputers, and as an afterthought, Joe Blow.

c. chkdsk - a decent mnemonic for check disk. fsck?? Yes I know its a *different* OS, but the point is that it was designed to be counter-intuitive. Like the medical profession with its technogibberish, the IT profession has its own insider language. Of course the solution is to alias the gibberish, but most folk dont know about this...

d. This is the crux of the matter.
We have found a little island of freedom (that is increasingly under attack).
But even though most of the major platforms in use today are based on Linux, for the consumer it still often appears, at least to the public awareness as 'unfriendly'. We may well regard that market as the barbarian hordes, but without a critical mass we will simply be an obscure bunch of propellorheads not worth the bother of porting software to, or making drivers for.
For those getting sick and tired of virus laden spyware, unfortunately the only outwardly visible option for most users seems to be Ubuntu which is forking into a commercialized and proprietary closed system - the anathema of what Linux is supposed to be about.
There are indeed some alternatives, such as LMDE in place of Mint for typical home users, but even LMDE threatens to fork into quasi-commercialized crap.

Perhaps an insoluble problem: How to keep commercialized proprietary junk out of a platform designed for freedom and versatility. While at the same time attract the support of a consumer culture oblivous to the difference.

Unfortunately, as this is more of a PR issue than a technical one, we will be at the losing side of it for the forseeable future. The BRICS countries might offer some kind of hope, but their frequent use of the Executon Prevention technology does not portend well for the FOSS paradigm.

[spacex]

Debian could also be less user-friendly, like Gentoo or FreeBSD. Personally I feel that Debian has found the right balance. And there are derivatives in all kinds of flavours for those that need it even more user-friendly.

[millpond]

Said it before, but will say it again. Windows is the most user unfriendly piece of "pooh", I have ever seen. It was when it first came out and still is. Never used it much, and never will.
Unix and unix like systems, are the most user friendly, most of the time the system itself will tell the operator what is wrong, and if it still is not clear, reading the manuals, will explain the details,..

When beginners have beginner questions they are generally treated to ritual abuse, for not knowing the language and the culture.
Like RTFM.

Pooh, that is not entirely true, usually when a beginner demonstrates they have at least tried to read the manual, but do not understand a particular part of a manual , many are quite eager and happy to try to explain. Telling someone to read a manual, and sometimes even taking the time to post links to the manuals that are most relevant, or sharing links we save, for reference,
is not abuse or any kind of "ritual abuse", it is the best advice one can give.
......
After all said and done, if you windows lovers like your so called "user friendly" malware so much,
just keep using it. And ask your inane questions on the MS forums, if you consider linux, debian, or any other unix like OS, "user unfriendly", or don't like it , nobody cares, we are going to keep using the OS we like, if it changes to much and becomes to much like MS mal ware, no big deal, I still have all my older Linux versions, as well as Wheezy, and Jessie on DVDs and CDs, I will keep using what I like.

As I run Linux mostly from CLI with a desktop somewhere in the background nothing is more frustrating than to call a program and have absolutely no response. Always need to have a rooted terminal to see if its a permissions problem. SOmetimes there will be a response indicating what the problem is, sometimes not. There are no standards. Also its rather typical for me calling gui progrms from the terminal to see a myriad of errors, and then go scuttling off to fix them, only to find that they are false positives generated by software that the programmers left in the code figuring they were not important enough to bother about. In short, there is alot of slipshod in Linux, much of which is unavoidable considering that after all, you get what you pay for.

Or so the theory goes. On my win machines I have replaced most proprietary apps with Open SOurce, usually Sourceforge apps. I use them simply because they are better. For Office apps, I use LibreOffice but still prefer Excel and Powerpoint because I did not want to take the time to learn different conventions for doing simple, and what should be obvious tasks that were clear as mud in the comparable apps.

Vuze is a bloody monster, but its the only one that will reliably bind to TUN. Ktorrent was supposed to, but somehow such an essential element of any p2p program was never correclty implemented.

Win is a virus, but it was designed for the consumer market, with I/O built into its core. With Linux its an afterthought. Imagine trying to get a someone who is not a computer geek to edit Samba files just to get a freaking printer working becuae some systems wont autodetect network printers. This has never happened with Win. If it cant find a driver it will present you with a usually working alternative.

This is not saying Linux should become Windows. But only that there should be more emphasis within the community itself to focus less on what 3d widget to add to some new fangled Window Manager, and perhaps more time to making the use of the desktop functions comprehensible. I'm still confused by some of the 'features' of KDE, and even Mate/LXDE/KDE/Xfce here. And its an annoyance that I cant just turn off the caps lock once, and be done with it. If I want pretty in a desktop, I would stick with Mandriva.

One of the distros, possibly even Debian itself, has a spin for children, based, I believe on Sugar. I have never installed it, but I would presume its installed apps would be usuable by, well.. children.

Whats really needed is a spin for Win users and tablet toys. The idea is to introduce Linux in its real form as Debian, rather than the corrupted Ubuntu fork. The *most* important thing in such a spin would be the option in time to become pure Debian - to permit and encourage a learning curve.

I know professional IT people who know a helluva lot more than I do - who are scared away from Debian becuase of its perceived compexity. One is a master programmer who uses Ubuntu.

The odd part is that what is needed is probably already out there, but few if any of us here would even bother to search for it. Like a small youtube course in Linux from the ground up, with a careful and detailed explanation of the arcane language used. Like difference between desktop environment and window manager.

I've been doing some research also on systemd, only coming to the opposite conclusion - like why on earth any program should need as a dependency the script that starts it??? If Debian is going to be init agnostic, it should damn well make a requirement that what it accepts should be also.
Especially even when Lennart himself said that systemd was not appropriate for Debian....