A Call to Distros: Give Users What They Want

With the coming of Vista widely seen as an opportunity for both Mac and Linux to pick up market share among desktop users, there has been a lot of discussion about how to make Linux more attractive to potential adopters. These new users are assumed to be less than hard-core geeks and, in fact, there is much talk about targeting very average users and what can be done to make their lives easier in regard to installing and configuring Linux.

(Obviously this is not the Slackware crowd talking. :) )

This short article on OS News illustrates the character of these discussions, though there is a significant percentage of folks who are against this sort of thing. They would rather Linux stay the purview of geeks alone. Common themes are that Linux does not need unskilled desktop users or that installing non-free software (that not licensed under the GPL) is contrary to the principles of Linux developers.

I thought you might like to see this, in case you are thinking about desktop Linux.

Jack