[Mageia-dev] Release cycles proposals, and discussion - messages from the forum

Fri Jun 17 19:38:40 CEST 2011

by *wobo 
+<https://forums.mageia.org/en/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=77>* » 
+Jun 17th, '11, 18:50
+Several points jumped through my synapses reading Trio3b's post.
+
+A thought I had many times before: are the users ready for such Linux 
+distributions? I do not mean any technical skills, no user is supposed 
+to learn how to create scripts and configure things by editing config 
+files any more. But I often see that users lack the mindset, the way of 
+thinking which is required by administrating your own *nix system. One 
+nice example was the KDE switch to 4.x which Trio3b described as fiasco. 
+But was this fiasco not really caused by the users demand for "the 
+latest" although KDE stated that 4.0 (and a few following versions) were 
+not for userland? With the proper mindset users without development 
+skills would have stayed away from KDE 4 until it was declared as 
+"userland-ready", which was with 4.2 [1]. This is just one example but 
+could also be ported to other "fiascos".
+
+As often said, Linux is a system which forces the user to be a sysadmin 
+as well - but as a sysadmin you think different than a user does. IMHO 
+this is one point which is not communicated enough to the user. Of 
+course, marketing would have a fit seeing the question "Are you ready to 
+be a sysadmin?" all over the portal site of our Linux distribution. But 
+isn't this really the question here when we talk about backports, 
+updates, rolling releases and all the rest? These are expressions and 
+tasks for a sysadmin, not a user.
+
+In business we do have IT departments and sysadmins who care for those 
+things - your average Dilbert in his cubicle is not supposed to care for 
+updates. But for the user at home we see this dual personality with the 
+different mindsets to be a given fact. Is that so?
+
+As you can see, I did not aim at a certain conclusion here, I just let 
+my thoughts roam free (could well be an exposé for a editor's article).
+
+[1] Of course, for the real "fiasco" we have to blame a certain 
+distribution as well which could not wait to be "the first to offer the 
+new KDE!" and thus caused other distributions to follow.
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