Announcing Fedora 12 Alpha

stan gryt2 at q.com
Wed Aug 26 23:20:24 UTC 2009


On Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:44:06 +0530
Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:

> If you are reading root mails as a desktop user, you belong in a very
> very tiny niche and probably should be classified as a more
> workstation type user. If it was not clear already, I am talking
> about desktop users in general who will not read any such mails
> unless there is a more direct way to configure them as part of the
> installation process and even then will not necessarily know what the
> heck to do with those mails and not just the geeks. The fact that I
> or you will doesn't change it. There is another Unix system on the
> desktop to learn from: Mac OS X.

The only time I ever used a mac was in a programming course.  Learning
it was harder than the course. :-)  That was a long time ago, maybe it
has changed.  What exactly is it we should be learning from the Mac?  A
closed source system, developed by paid developers, with system
architects and patent lawyers maintaining rigid control of development
and turf.  I just don't see their model working in open source.  But I
would like to hear what you consider that they do better.

And what is gained by dropping the mta, in particular, and generally
making Fedora less geekish in general?  The mta already exists and is
working.  You are right, if it is dropped, I'll write myself notes on
how to set this up so that every time I install a new version of Fedora,
I do it after the install.  But I would much rather it stayed as system
knowledge so I don't have to spend time working on it.

I can see your point for the live CD.  That is designed for naive users.
Drop not only any system messages or jobs in cron beyond the obvious
like updates, but also drop SELinux (just a PITA for naive users), turn
off all logging, updatedb,  because they only take cycles away from user
experience and those users won't ever use the product of them.  Only a
single application to do everything, no confusing choices.  As a very
involved insider, you can probably come up with a dozen things that
aren't really required for the LiveCD.

In fact, to compete in that market, maybe we should give the user root
privileges so they can talk directly to the hardware.  Those users don't
care about security, only performance and golly gee.  I'm partly joking,
but if linux really wants to be appealing to them, it has to give the
same ease of use that the alternatives give.  If that means
compromising security a little, so be it.  And it needs to provide
closed source drivers out of the box.  Those users don't want to be
bothered with having to find offshore repositories and downloading
things.  They just want it to work.  Make the hardware api the same as
windows, so hardware vendors can develop just one driver and have it
run on both windows and linux.

I'm curious about the rationale for your stance?  What benefit does it
give Fedora?  What outcome does it provide that is preferable to the
outcome now?  

And I'm curious if, in your opinion, your stance reflects the general
consensus within Fedora about where the distro should go?  Is this how
the people who do all the work want Fedora to be?

Thanks for putting your ideas out here in the public forum.




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