[NTLUG:Discuss] Desktop Linux - From Open Source

[Robert Pearson]

On Jan 31, 2008 9:03 PM, Mike Hart <just_mike_y at yahoo.com> wrote:
> PCLinuxOS is by far the favorite. It has been #1 on
> distrowatch for some time (8 months?) and for good
> reason.
>
> http://www.distrowatch.org
>
> Out of the box, it handles everything except encrypted
> DVD's, and they are easily handled with synaptic and
> searching for 'codec'.  It doesn't get any easier than
> this. Synaptic has something like 7000 packages in the
> list... They have every program I could think of
> except maybe enemy territory (which I have the .gz
> version of already....)
>
> The only downside is that the base install disc is now
> about 9 months old, so the initial 'update' after you
> do a fresh install is about a 500meg download.
>
> There are rumors of a 2008 version soon, which should
> reset the update time. Also, due to the overwhelming
> popularity, expect to have to retry to connect
> synaptic to a server several times.  there are
> different servers listed in the repository list.
>

I believe I should have said, "Within my personal experience".
My reply was also pointed at Package Management systems.
Microsoft takes care of that for you in Windows.

Many people report good results with PCLinuxOS when migrating from Windows.
I was migrating from Unix so I did not try PCLinuxOS. For me, with my
background, any Linux is better than Windows.
Debian was tried because everyone raved about the Package Management system.
Since I have written Package Management systems, and was not too
impressed with the offerings (lack of integration),
I decided to try Debian. I was impressed by everything except the
User_Friendlyness. YaST is a lot more User_Friendly.
Some people love cryptic command line interpreters (CLI). I don't.
Never have. I'm a visual person.

It takes at least 10x the code to produce visual results. If all the
libraries were written and in place for use you could do
visual code with a short main program. Unfortunately there is no
standard outside of "X-windows" for visual libraries.
With Java code and "fresh" minds everyone writes their own version of
the presentation layer for their shop.
My experience is from the time when code was written once on a
development platform and "ported" everywhere.
Even the Presentation Layer.
Someone was talking about that in another post. The lack of graphics
for Management tools.
I have seen some incredible Presentation Layers done with Curses and NCurses.

For me the best part of "The Linux Experience was discovering Open
Office and making the commitment to use only that.