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"Debian not for the average user"The title is from article available at http://news.softpedia.com/news/Debian-4-0-Not-For-the-Avarage-User-51480.shtml For long time now it seems that the notion of Debian as a distribution which is too hard for novices and, now, even a distribution too hard for an average user is rooted deeply in lots of heads, so people are eager to say it as a given fact. This comes strange to me as my first contact with Linux was Woody, and now I could say that I'm somewhere around "average" user, in sense that I aim to know just the basics of the system administration and whatever else is important for doing all the other tasks on my computer efficiently. Debian, especially the newer versions are especially good at this. The concepts some find difficult for beginners to grasp (shell and it's tools, monitoring your system, knowing more about kernel/modules/... e.g) are something which pays off abundantly at a later stage. This is not something essential at the first contact though. Then, there is the Debian package system which is really straightforward to use and when this is taken into consideration along with the vast multitude of applications at their disposal it is clear that people who encounter Debian first benefit from the versatility of the platform from the start. It seems to me that those who benefit from upholding the "Debian the scarecrow" picture are only the competing distros. Bookmark/Search this post with: 
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Average folks don't use Debian
Anyone even thinking of trying Debian or any of the other Linux distros is probably not an average user. It takes a person who is just a little different to look past all the MS advertising, web sites that cater to MS IE, windows media player, off the shelf pc's with windows already on it, schools using windows and so on to even consider giving Linux a twirl.
Average folks don't use Debian
Yes, but I was not talking about advertisements. I think Debian is ripe to be used as a starting distro for everyone who considers investing time in learning Linux. If I was a beginning user sick of formatting text in Word, gradually decreasing performance of Windows, constant serious security threats and generally tired of always having limited options, and I see Etch, with all this fantastic tools( e.g for text-processing Lyx), much more efficient desktop environments (virtual desktops! blessed may be who invented them!)and simply having alternatives for every common computer task, I would definitely invest time into learning a few tricks.
Not to mention that Debian is driven by a noble idea.
Average follks...
I agree with you but I also acknowledge the constraints of reality. I have twin brothers - not identical though, one's a democrat and one is a republican. The republican says that Linux is ABSOLUTELY not an option for him while the democrat is interested in trying Linux, but is put off by who knows what exactly. I live over a thousand miles away and cannot actually install it on his hard drive, but I did create and mail him a knoppix cd, but he cannot figure out how to make the pc boot from the cd.
Also, I couldn't agree more with you about the noble idea. The Debian folks are some of the world's best.
I happened to see this article on The Register this morning.
How did we all end up with Windows?
http://tinyurl.com/38b3tm
Not for the regular user?
It seems funny as anybody who is using Windows tries to stay with that just because it's comfortable.
I don't dispise them, but it's like staying with the same car for all your life. As some point I guess everybody has the same feeling as I do. That is to try the newer model, bigger, better equipped, or even a new brand.
I hope not everybody is self-sufficient as somebody said in the topic, but I agree that in the past Debian wasn't very easy to deal with.
Three years ago when I started using it, I knew nothing about. And after every succesfull install I had to boot at least once with a knoppix CD to correctly detect the video settings, to have a correctly set up fstab file with all the partitions etc.
Since then a lot of progress has been made towards simplicity. But what needs to be changed is human perception, and that ... takes some time.
As an example, my office colleague wanted to try linux for a long time. He has been using Cygwin lately, and fancied passing to a complete Linux environnement. So I helped him in installing Debian on a laptop with a dual boot. The very next day someone else needed Linux. Because he is also the IT responsible in our office ( :)) ), he went to the guy and did it all by himself.
Now at least 2 people know that Debian can be compared to Windoze in terms of install. It leaves us with 1.something bilions others to convince.
"Debian not for the average
Interesting article.
Haha, I also have two brothers who are not using Linux from principle - it does not support 3D gaming. Poor Linux became even more unpopular with them when they saw ASCII RPGs like Zangband.
Well, people are afraid to spend time on something new by default. There's nothing new about that...
Windoze has one major advantage for the novice...
It comes pre-installed. If people had the choice at wally world then I think they would choose Debian.However I don't see anyone in the open source world investing in sweat shops anytime soon.
toaster users
One of my customers refused to have a computer in her house until I agreed to install and maintain it. (We're both volunteers for a local civic group.) She's absolutely not technical. I made a bare desktop with a popup menu to start the modem, start Iceape, and shut down.
After six months she asked me for a word processor and I added Abiword to the menu.
She's doing fine. I've repaired her printer, and once her cat peed on her external modem and fried it. She never would have been able to cope with MS-Windows or even Ubuntu. Too complicated. But her Debian toaster is just what she needed.
debian is for average users
Debian offers user-interface consistency which is much easier for new users to grasp than the clunky, inconsistent interface of windows and proprietary apps.
Package management in Debian is so simple, too.
Installation is getting much better.
Administration of even windows PC's is too complex for the average user.
"Debian not for the average
I know what you mean. My mother used to be like that. Even now, when she's writing articles she spends about 50% of time writing and 50% of time formatting text using Spacebar and Enter. Styles, tabs, what are those things? But, I don't blame her. Majority wants to make only that amount of effort which will bring them just over the non-usability barrier for the software they use. So, in general, the less amount of different things you need to worry about in software the more people will use it (as long as it provides decent enough output of course). I think Debian, once installed and set up, could provide this kind of usability to an ignoramus. They do not need to check their antivirus&spyware systems, system won't deteriorate with time, the environment for their work will remain the same.
A bit of levity on this subject
I just happened to find this article
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/04/27/1211211
and thought it would fit into this train of thoughts.
Seriously though, I wonder if there is a split whereby conservatives choose windows and lefties (liberals are people like Walter Mondale and I mean something a bit more potent when I write lefty) are curious about Debian.
Communists liberate OS for the greater good.
Do you think Uncle Joe would have used Debian to run the gulags?
The Chinese communists, just as Uncle Bill, steal from everyone so they have their choice of any system.
Linux will be top dog on the day it's the most pirated OS in Red China.
No chance
Not a prayer the Joe Stalin would have used Linux. He was about as conservative as they come, and if my proposed conservative-lefty divide holds he'd have gone the microsoft route.
As for the Chinese; my experience is that they are the most empiric folks around. If something works they'll adopt it and if the pressure to start paying for windows stuff rather than pirate it actually comes to pass they'll switch over to Linux.
Dell is about to release some Ubuntu pcs
This may be relevant.
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/11748/532/
(just saw that vees beat me to it, thanks vees;)>
Punctured
Yeah, that does seem to puncture my assertion that conservatives wont use Linux. Especially since Dell is one of the biggest contributors to gw Bush.
On the other hand though it could just be recognition that Vista is a bigger stinker than anyone could imagine.