Travis Riddle wrote: > most home users could care less about FOSS I would argue that 5 years ago 99.99999% of the entire human population didn't appreciate the value of FOSS at all. And i would argue, that the advances FOSS has made getting installed and used, can be attributed just as much to efforts to educate people as to why there IS inherent value in FOSS, and not just because FOSS solutions have been technically better. I would argue that the technical gains FOSS has made is an effect due to educating people as to why the openness of FOSS is inherently better than proprietary solutions. To me, the hurdle isn't so much building an 'easier to use' product aimed at the home desktop user. The hurdle is in fact, educating the home desktop user, that caring about FOSS, is important, and finding ways for the non-technical user who does care about FOSS to contribute back to the process in a way that matters to them. I believe an easy to use home desktop linux will come, as a result, of encouraging the home desktop users to be actively engaged in the FOSS movement, instead of the home desktop product coming first. Reap what you sow...reap what you sow. > You also can't go to your local Computer Store and buy any piece > of hardware you want and have a 99% chance of it working first > time with the drivers that are included with it. Windows users > can. Hardware makers bend over backwards to make sure their products work with Windows. I doubt a number of hardware makers spend equal manhours on working with the linux kernel developers to make sure their hardware works with linux. That's a chicken and egg situation. You say desktop users need better hardware support before they will choose linux.. But hardware vendors are not going to provide better hardware support for linux until there is a large market of linux user worth their time....But users need better hardware support first...but hardware makers need more users first...but users need better hardware support first.... This argument goes nowhere, without first educating both hardware makers and users to value the inherent advantages of the FOSS development models. Again its about educating people to value open source, not because it has better technical solutions...but because its a better development process...with the POTENTIAL for better technical solutions. > I am on this list because I would like to see Fedora succeed. It > won't do that until certain things change Name those certain things... Name the certain things that are SPECIFIC to Fedora Core. rhel pricing, while a compelling navel gazing thread for a general discussion about "linux", its certaintly well outside anything that can be address as part of Fedora development, or by the Fedora community at large. -jef"we need t-shirts"spaleta
