Re: Working Within the System

From: Martin Ling (martin@nodezero.org.uk)
Date: Tue May 02 2000 - 17:53:22 MDT


On Tue, May 02, 2000 at 06:23:57PM +0100, Charlie wrote:
> On Tue, May 02, 2000 at 04:35:09PM +0100, Martin Ling wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, May 02, 2000 at 08:13:53AM +0100, Charlie wrote:
> >
> > > Note that this was a comparison of a generation #1 product with a
> > > generation #5 product. And the generation #1 product was in the same
> > > ease-of-installation bracket as MacOS.
> >
> > As a brief point (maybe I'm jumping ahead of Michael here), it's
> > probably not quite correct to say Corel's is generation #1, being built
> > on a good deal of Linux development in general, and specifically being
> > derived from Debian.
>
> Iffy point. Corel took Debian 'Slink' and turned it into their own distro.
> Along the way, they wrote their own installer -- the standard Debian one
> is (cough, cough) not exactly user friendliness personified -- and then
> bolted KDE on top of it. They filed a lot of rough edges off of KDE (I
> suspect their usability testing experience came in very handy) and bolted
> some extras into the distro.

Yes, I know - but since all the software it incorporates and builds on
goes back varying periods of time up to at least 16 years, it's very
iffy to say it's a generation #1 product even if it is the first release
by that company (it's a *distribution*, remember).

Anyway, as I pointed out a little earlier, the 'generation' analogies
are very ambiguous and are probably a terminology for us to avoid.

> What I think is worth noting is that the quality of their installer
> improved noticeably between successive non-public betas and the final
> release; the early betas couldn't even cope with a PS/2 mouse! That's why
> I characterise it as a release 1.0 product; the kernel and command line
> stuff certainly isn't, but what everyone's judging Corel by is the quality
> of their installer and desktop integration, and _that_ is definitely still
> a bit fresh. Although their 1.0 beats SuSE's 6.0 into a cocked hat, IMO ...

Ew, ew, ew, comparisons of version numbers...

Remember when MS jumped Word from version 2 to version 6, so people
would think it was on a par with WordPerfect's 6.0 release?

Little pet annoyance of mine.

Martin

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