New linux based OS

Quote from dcraig:

You clearly aren't aware of the Linux software packaging systems such as employed by Debian, RedHat, Fedora, Suse etc etc. Linux software packaging is not perfect and neither is Windows with the abomination that is called the Registry being mangled by all sorts of malware at will.

There are some very good reasons why a lot of open source software is distrubted as source. One is portability ie the ability to run on different operating systems and processors. Installation of most software distributed as source requires the mind bogglingly difficult sequence of commands

# ./configure
# make
# make install

Most humans believe it or not can manage this.

Wiith Gentoo linux (my favorite) all you do is:

# emerge program_name

It's actually much, much easier than installing something in Windows.

--opm8
 
I don't think most human can do that. More than half of world population cannot even use keyboard.

Some people cannot even find Terminal. Sometimes the simplest copy-n-paste task is clueless to newbies. :p I know because I used to work as an computer administrator in a company. Everyday, employees rang and asked me to do the simpliest tasks for them.

You should distiguish ordinary users who use word, excel, powerpoint, and email from the power users who can configure their own computers. You can't just throw "a list of command" for ordinary users to execute.
 
Quote from opm8:

Wiith Gentoo linux (my favorite) all you do is:

# emerge program_name

It's actually much, much easier than installing something in Windows.

--opm8
gentoo (and portage) rules. :)
 
Quote from ktmexc20:

It seems you like all plug N play. Best to not expand your mind/horizons, huh.
I'm talking in a general way, not just refer to my experience with Linux. :) Most people like doing simple thing in a simple way, not to bug them with a full page of instruction just install software.
 
Quote from brandnew:

I'm talking in a general way, not just refer to my experience with Linux. :) Most people like doing simple thing in a simple way, not to bug them with a full page of instruction just install software.
I think that's a misconception that is increasingly changing as the populous becomes more informed. There are distros for the customized minded, and now, many that are indeed as simple as "plug n play".
 
I can't offer any since I jumped in head first a few months ago with gentoo, the most customizable distro.

But I'm sure someone will offer some of the names that are available; for those who would not be able to work with the command line at times.
 
Thanks anyway :D I hope there is such a distro I can recommend it to my friends. Hey, there are a lot of people here who need free OS.
 
Quote from brandnew:

Then show me a distro which I can install most applications without bugging with shell script or terminal.

So which is more difficult:

# apt-get install some_package

or typing in some wierd activation key ?

Even worse having to ring up MS and waste a substantial amount of time obtaing an activation key.
 
Quote from dcraig:

You are seriously misinformed if you believe MS invented the windowing GUI, or even produced the first commercial implementation. The original research work was done by Xerox and the the first PC style device was the Apple Lisa (Jan '83). The first incarnation of X (The predominant UNIX windowing system) was in 1984. GEM from Digital Research also dates from 1984. As with much that has come from Microsoft, there was nothing very original about MS Windows.

The success of MS Windows came from the fact that it ran on cheap hardware (IBM compatible) rather than having any real merit it its own right and the incompetence of Digital Research in marketing GEM. A little later the UNIX wars did no service to UNIX as a possible desktop contender. All versions of Windows prior to NT are completely laughable compared to contemporary versions of UNIX.
If I may add,
Between 1990 and 1995 they were nowhere in development tools. They had an unimpressive kind of assembler for their DOS and they sported MSBasic. BTW, their Basic also came from a cheap buyout ot some kind of a startup company - Basic itself existed since about 1960 (Darthmoore U - GE?). Borland was the absolute leader in IDE integrated development tools, C, later C++. MS started up a frantic effort and cobbled their 'Visual' tools together with their infamous ubiquitous MFC, patterned after Borland.
Another frantic catchup was in Internet. Chairman Bill had failed to see its importance. This finally gave us Internet Explorer craftily intertwined within their NT and under scrutiny in the antitrust case.

One other aspect is the dumbness of people like IBM, DEC and Sun to grasp anything at all about opportunities lying ahead in the market. IBM gave the microprocessor software development to M$ for IBM DOS and later the infamous OS2. Sun sold a lot of overpriced hardware to the eager subsidized university crowd without bothering about much else and profiting from the low cost availability of Bell Labs' UNIX. Much later they got riveted by M$'s success and tried to clone some kind of MSOffice/MSWindows solution running on Sun boxes. They worked hard on it but it never came to anything useful. They also started later work on their UNIX clone: Solaris and the Java approach. BTW, Java, often presented as open source is in fact tightly controlled by Sun. OpenOffice is another remainder of the earlier fixation of Sun with MSOffice - also tightly controlled by Sun.
DEC, an even much shinier early knight than Sun got unceremoniously gobbled up by iron box maker Compaq. Later hp bought them to the regret of many hp insiders. Interesting to know is that M$ got its NT from what remained at the West Coast from DEC. They hired a group of high powered software developers working on a new future DEC OS and put these to work on NT.
Is IBM any wiser today? They just sold their PC business to China. We'll see. You know, China is very hot on Linux, they apparently hate monopolists.
 
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