Goals, methods and needs

[jfm2@club-internet.fr]

It is our belief that for making Linux easier to use a perfect
installation is not as importent as adapting Linux to a new situation.
Commercial Unixes were expensive and ran in expensive hardware, therefore
they were used in Universities and offices by people who had received
previous training.   Never at home by self teaching people while cut of
outside help.  Therefore an intuitive user interface was never needed.

But Linux is used at home by people who have to face system administration
from first minute, who power off their computers when not using them, who
have dial up access to the Internet.  In addition expanding Linux use to
new kinds of users will require to meet different needs and areas of
interest.  No longer programming or physics but budget management, playing
with graphics or gaming.


Therefore it is important to provide software suitable for this new
situation and for these new users.  Therefore we created a repository
of ready to use software who is either easier or more suitable for the
home user, small office.

We don't want to reinvent the wheel so we want to base on a RedHat 5.1
and improve it by integrating new software and improving the installation. 

We are now hacking the RedHat 5.1 installation for integrating the
software we have on the site or at least the part of it who can go
on CDROM.  For now lack of space will force us to put up a "differential"
installation were the standard software comes from a RedHat CDROM
provided by the user.

Future plans cover writing linuxconf modules for the additional software
we include, allow novice users skipping the shell if that is their will,
improve documentation and specially access to it: in many cases Linux
distribs rely on the user going to the doc when the doc could go to the
user.  A tip at login, an X configurator who tells "Hey this card is
unsupported but this version is old. You should upgrade" could do
wonders for Linux usability.

We also plan for a reform of installation aiming to solve the fdisk problem,
networking in dial up contexts and automatic selection of a nearly optimal
kernel so kernel compiling becomes something you do for sport.  We will
never get litterature professors to use Linux as long as we tell them:
they have to recompile the kernel.  And as long as we don't get litterature
professors, lawyers or Joe Users to use Linux then Linux will remain a
system for a minority.

What we need:
-Software discoverers (like the talent discoverers in spies novels:-)
-RPM builders and mantainers
-Translators
-Propagandists: Answer news group questions by pointing them to
our site (the site was created to help people).
-Gurus
-Programmers
-Web designers
-Testers
-Anything you can think of.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

Project Independence: Linux for the Masses
http://www.independence.seul.org