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[ossig] Kiddies' Linux ?
the original enterprise linux thread was really long. too hard to resist....
ok lah.. this is my small experience with a home pc - essentially for my
4 year old daughter.
xandros personal edition (1 cd which i got from apc magazine)
- not enough stuff for a 4 year old: took some time for vcd to
auto-mount (i think something to do with my lg cd-burner), no kiddie games.
- ok for a standalone: the standard installation is pretty good and easy
to use, recognised all the stuff on my pc, installation of additional
stuff can be a little of a mystery (no messages to say if the
installation is ok or ko), 'official' updates is via annual subscription.
- good for a small home network: nothing extra to configure from the
standard installation, recognised all the stuff on the network, some
utilities to help out along the way (e.g. setting up networking, dial-up
internet access, sharing files).
- documentation and help is obscure: probably there but need some
searching around for the right topic.
- overall: good for no-brainer soho network use.
suse professional (5 cd + 2 dvd + manuals which i bought for rm120)
- simple enough for a 4 year old: vcd auto-mount and opens kaffeine, 5
cute games for kids, my daughter gives it a 5 star rating (anything that
can get my daughter's attention for 1 hour deserves 5 star).
- good for a standalone home pc: installation and detection of devices
is good (except for my onboard modem), audio and video is very good
(even with 'cover' vcd), a lot of stuff on the 5 cds.
- ok for a small home network: needed to configure for samba, ok
start-up times, did not recognise my modem automatically, 'official'
updates is free.
- documentation is good but help is ok only: what you see on screen and
what you see in help is often different, almost everything is 3 or 4
clicks away (rather than 1 or 2 clicks away).
- overall: good enough for a family home pc out of the box, the
'professional' is for configuring everything else including as a soho
server.
conclusion: xandros is more intuitive. suse is more 'pro'.
any other distro for pre-school kids ?
Raja Iskandar Shah
http://riscniaga.netfirms.com
On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 05:02:54AM -0700, Mukhsein Johari wrote:
> I didn't mean for this to get into a FC/Debian
> yum/apt-get religious debate - but of course, I
> shoulda known, huh? :-P
Yup. But then, you're probably one of those brain-damaged vi users,
right?
> What I'm getting at is, is the "way of debian" somehow extra
> conducive to distro specialization in some way? Is it really *that*
> flexible? What gives it this quality that other 'base' distros do
> not have?
My guess is that the *perception* of Debian as the "hacker's distro"
means that those hackers who are motivated and skilled enough to put
together clever projects like Knoppix are also those who are drawn
very strongly to the "Debian Way" - but there's a hidden third
category you're not mentioning.
First, why Debian and not RH? I count four Major Distros: Slackware,
Red Hat, Debian and SuSE. Historically, their niches have been:
Slackware - hardcore DIY minimalist old-skool Linux
Red Hat - for corporate and new users
SuSE - for corporate and newbie Germans (Roter Hut!?)
Debian - more mainstream than Slackware, less mainstream than Red Hat
The Debian userbase is traditionally scornful of the RH GUI way of
doing things but at the same time very supportive of the custom Debian
tools - it is a very large and very close user community. The
archetypical Debian user is one who's gotten pissed off by some aspect
of the Red Hat GUI/EZ-CONF philosophy, and who wants to move to a more
hands-on distro. A small number will convert to Slackware, but
Slackware users by-and-large tend to skip the Red Hat phase
altogether.
The type of Linux user who's likely to put together something
radically new (c.f Knoppix) is more likely to be the type who's
attracted to Debian rather than the type who's attracted to RH. RH is
mainstream, Debian is "subculture". Also, until recently, RH
development was much more closed than Debian's. The Fedora project
might go a long way towards changing the attitudes of the user groups
- but OTOH perhaps RHEL will further polarize things.
But the "hidden third group" of projects is probably the largest. You
have: (1) those based on RH, (2) those based on Debian and (3) those
not based on ANY distro. Those who are not religious or who don't
like Debian for some reason will go with a hand-rolled Linux (c.f.
Tom's Boot/Root Disk). The reason you see more Debian-based projects
is is that the group of hackers who create new projects but DON'T
hand-roll their projects will probably fall into the Debian camp
rather than the Red Hat.
--
% You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
Christopher DeMarco <cdemarco@fastmail.fm>
PGP public key ID 0x2E76CF5C @ pgp.mit.edu
+6013 389 5658
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