"Linux is just Red Hat"

[Eric Dunbar]

> In the future large majority of Ubuntu users will be people who are not
> having their operating system as a hobby. They are not spending hundreds
> of hours learning their system just to be able to fix possible problems
> they might encounter some time in the future.

Magic. Magic, I tell you. Ideally the operating system ought to make
functions appear as if they are magic. The user ought not need to know
the first thing about security, cron jobs, python scripts or sudo.
They should be able to sit down with a minimum of training or
experience necessary to turn the computer into a tool -- and, given
the ideal of "freedom" affiliated with OSS, one aspect of that
"freedom" is to ensure that people aren't alienated because they lack
the skills needed to use OSS.

> Perhaps some people on this list have forgotten how much time they
> themselves have spent to aquire the computer skills they have. Hundreds
> of hours? Thousands of hours? Why would it take any less for these
> newcomers to aquire such skills. And generally they don't want to spent
> endless hours just to learn Linux internals - not because they are lazy,
> ignorant or stupid, but because they have other things to do.

God, how many 1000s of hours have I spent in front of a !!@#% CRT!
(>1h/d*365*20 = WAAAY TOO MANY) Of course, I suppose there are _a lot_
of people out there who've spent more time behind the non-interactive
CRT variety called a boob tube.

Eric.