Installing and newbies

[Derek Broughton]

Neil Winchurst wrote:

> After eighteen months with Edgy I did a fresh install of Gutsy last
> week. It went well though I had a lot to do once I had restarted the
> computer.
> 
> I set numlock to turn on at boot.
> I changed the mouse to double click for icons.
> I had to add a user since I did not get the choice to do so during
> the install.
> I had to set up my printer. It was turned on during the install but
> was not found.
> I had to play with kmix to get sound to work.
> I made konqueror the default file manager instead of dolphin.
> I commented out the reference to the install CD which was in
> sources.list.

They're all fine choices if that's what you want, but why do you feel they
should be default?  I've been making Windows use single-click since before
Windows officially supported it.  I use numlock so rarely I couldn't care
less.   Konqueror isn't the KDE file manager any more (personally, I think
that's a crime, but it's a choice that the KDE developers - not Kubuntu -
has made). And the install CD _should_ be in sources.list by default.  Yes,
printers should be automatically discovered, but printer manufacturers are
_so_ bad about providing drivers that it's a miracle _any_ of them work. 
It's not Ubuntu's fault.  The kmix problem is similar - most soundcards
work out of the box, but if manufacturer's won't properly support Linux,
it's not Ubuntu's fault.
> 
> The following programs were not included with the install so I added
> them afterwards :-
> 
> firefox, thunderbird, opera, gnucash, kedit, kdf, mysql, gimp, Sun
> java, flash.

Not a single one of those _belongs_ in a default install.  Konqueror is
KDE's browser, Kontact is it's PIM, kedit is a crippled little brother of
kate, mysql is a full-scale RDB (how many _geeks_ even need one of those),
java _wasn't_ free (iirc, it is now, but still may not be redistributable
from Canonical servers), gimp isn't even a KDE app, and flash is just evil. 
kdf has _some_ value, but I'm still not sure it belongs in the default
install.  I use it rarely.
> 
> OK, so some of those were personal choices, but I was
> very surpised that FF, the Gimp and Thunderbird were missing from the
> install.

All of those were personal choices.
> 
> And the point of all this? Well, after my experience with Edgy and, in
> all, six years using Linux all the above was simple. But for someone
> new to Linux I think they would need some hand-holding to get
> started. I still feel that more needs to be done to get newcomers to
> feel confident with Linux.

And, as always, I insist that's true of Windows too.  How many people
install and configure Windows themselves?  They either buy it with Windows
installed (and often never even add a single program) or their corporate IT
guys configure Windows.  If you bought a system with Linux installed,
things like the bundled printer, the wireless and the sound would all be
working.
-- 
derek