Igor Nestoroviæ wrote : > I am talking about newbies, from the Windows world, who used to have > programs for playing audio and video files INCLUDED in the OS. Huh!? Don't tell me you can play DivX, ogg, RealAudio on Windows _without_ downloading any additional software? I haven't actually used a Windows based computer since the Windows 98, and at that time it wasn't possible to play _anything_ with the base OS, not even uncompress .zip files... people have told me it has since changed, but when I see people complaining about the lack of "out-of-the-box" features for a GNU/Linux distribution _compared_ to Windows, I find that almost insane. > I am saying the following: can we strech a bit and give help to people > like Matthias to compose that EXTRA ISO to be downloaded, not from Red > Hat, so they can stay clean, but from somewhere else? I've been thinking of doing that for some time, but as my packages evolve quite a lot, and constantly, ithe ISO image would be quickly mostly obsolete. > Red Hat should do two things: > 1. Include the information that this CD exists, but that they have > nothing to do with it, etc, both on the site and in the Desktop > somewhere, like they issued that "Red Hat Speaks On Multimedia" for the > Psyche release. Hmmm, I don't really like that idea. Red Hat Inc. supports already _all_ the bundled applications of their distro, and including such information would have some users expect full compatibility, ease of use and support of the same level... which isn't the case. > 2. Present something like yum or apt bundled in the Control Center (it > could be called "More Programs", or something), Internet oriented, with > wast database of all sorts of programs, ready for download from > we-all-know-which-sites. Nice warning "We don't have nothing to do with > the following steps, and it is not supported in any way." notice would > have to be included here. Then some day a disaster occurs, and 3rd party packages blow up some users systems... then blame Red Hat Inc. claiming they installed everything from within the distribution itself and thought is was part of Red Hat Linux. For me this feature is a clear case "no", and I support the current situation. > The point is: when newbie, or Windows convert tries Red Hat, he/she > would not go away scared/frustrated because it doesn't have this or > that. He will have an EXTRA ISO to choose from, just insert the CD and > pick programs (audio, video, etc.). Advanced users (and newbies) can go > also to Control Center and pick more programs, unsupported by Red Hat. > The important thing is that the choice exists! See my comment above. IMHO you get much more to play with when you install GNU/Linux than Windows. Put a newbie (_computer_ newbie, non techie) in front of Windows... and watch... you'll get nothing. At most you'll see a game of solitaire. Many people don't realize how used to Windows they are, just like many of us don't realize how used to GNU/linux we are, and just know where to go grab this and that in order to watch or listen to something or achieve a certain task. Matthias -- Clean custom Red Hat Linux rpm packages : http://freshrpms.net/ Raw Hide 20030526 running Linux kernel 2.4.20-20.1.2002.nptl Load : 0.21 0.62 0.93
