[vox-if] How'd it go?

[Christopher James McKenzie]

Bill Kendrick wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 24, 2006 at 10:25:44AM -0700, Christopher James McKenzie wrote:
>> You would be adding a machine with the assumed responsibility of loading 
>> on Fedora Core, Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, and Mandriva ***whenever there 
>> is a major update***.  Also, you would need to sync with someone like 
>> me, who has the installfest media - or you would have to take over that 
>> also. It is of no use to demo a *version* that you do not actually have.
> 
> I'm not sure the Installfest (where time is limited, and installs can take
> a while) is the best place to be demoing flavors of linux.
> 
> At least, not to the people who have RSVPd and brought their hardware in.
> Maybe we could have a machine up for non-RSVPd people to play with,
> hands-on, without any assistance from the busy installfest volunteers.

I don't know if you get the point of the idea here, Bill.  I think the 
general idea is so that people can get a feel of what they want.  I 
contend that people either don't care, or if they did, this will 
probably not be an effective solution.

I once described distributions through an analogy as grocery stores (to 
someone who thought that a Fedora ELF binary couldn't work on his Debian 
install)  In brief, all non-specialty grocery stores carry almost the 
same exact products.  They just choose to place them in separate places 
and in different quantities.

Any traveling shopper can walk in and get what they would have gotten 
from their local store.  However, things are in different places.

Believe it or not, most people are perfectly happy getting linux on the 
machine and being about to use it.  Just as many people are fine 
wandering around the store to find the items they need as long as they 
have them in the end and then leave.

Very few shoppers will demand that soda be on the left hand side of the 
store facing west.

Realistically, if you are trying to get work done - it doesn't matter 
what distro we put on the machine, as long as it's some major one like 
Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva, or SuSE.

I feel like a fascist saying this, but giving people the options with 
that much information in front of them is a mistake.

> 
> Then they can RSVP and come again, to the next month's installfest, to
> actually get something installed.
> 
> 
> <snip>
>> Perpetuity requires sustainability.  Therefore coming up with the lowest 
>> overhead solution is the best option.
> 
> SERIOUSLY. :)
> 
> 
>> If you are trying to address a problem that I do not see, which is 
>> "which distribution do I pick?" then I am sure there are plenty of brief 
>> easy websites that discuss the major ones and what their benefits are.
> 
> And I'm happy to link to as many of those as you'd like me to,
> on the IF webpage. :)
> 
>