[plug] ComputerBank meeting Tues 24th 7:45pm

[bob at contact.omen.com.au]

In <37BB94EB.AFBE84C at global.net.au>, on 19/Aug/99 
   at 05:23 AM,(+0000 GMT)
Christian <christian at global.net.au> said:


>Gary's point was that Debian *may* have a hard install but since the
>install is going to be done _for_ the end-user, this hardly matters. 
>Once the machine is setup and configured, the majority of the work being
>done by the user will be installation of new software - which Debian's
>APT makes about as easy as it ever could be - easier than the other
>distributions I believe.

But in a lot of cases we're not going to be installing, the end user will
be doing that as part of the training were going to be giving. So you can
see that we want to see some consistency between what we're teaching and
what is being used.

>Installing Slackware would be just plain STUPID.  If you want to KISS
>then I wish you good luck in explaining to these complete newbies "First
>you untar the .tar.gz or .tgz file.  Then you read the installation
>instructions.  They might be in README or INSTALL or something else
>completely different.  Then you need to check to see if you have the
>requirements mentioned in these files - plus any other implicit
>requirements that aren't mentioned and should be obvious.  If you don't
>have the requirements then......."

The instances where Slackware was considered usefull is completely
different  to the above ie a 386 with 4Mb of ram and minimal HDD _and_
where the machine was purely for end user use, not to be included as part
of the training exercises. As far as I'm aware Slackware is the distro of
choice in this situation ( although I'd be happy to be corrected on this).

>Personally, I'd rather be telling them "You type 'apt-get install
>program'."

Not if we want to do as we intend and produce more that "just another user
that doesn't have a clue".  Obviously although lots of the people going
through CBs doors are going to end up being "users" we need to have the
ability to extend the training available through to the point where the
newby can make reasoned choices for themselves and that will mean that we
will have to have a series of steps that lead up to that. The easier we
can make those steps in the begining the better the CB "client" will be
able to make progress (and in some cases there is going to have to be a
fair amount of ego building to get them to attempt these new and
frightening things) the more confidence is built and the better the
outcome all round.

The problem comes down to there is no one answer to the needs of CB's
clients, we are going to have to remain flexible enough to answer those
needs while trying to stop from drowning in minutiae.


>Regards,

>Christian.



-- 
/-- Bob Ogden  bob at contact.omen.com.au --------------/
/  -... --- -...   --- --. -.. . -.       Finger  for PGP key -----/

Does your system break in 134 days?