Why Indy

[JF Martinez <jfm2@club-internet.fr>]

The following text states Indy's goals.

		    Why Indy
		    _________

Many Linux users don't fit in the traditional model envisionned by
distribution makers and that means their needs are not covered by
traditional distributions.  That is why it is time Linux users, take
charge and make a distribution designed by them for them.

We Linux users are different from Unix users.  Many of us cannot call
a system administrator to solve our problems and we don't have
instructors to teach us as people using Unix in large organizations
(small ones or individuals couldn't afford it) used to have.  From our
first minute of Linux use we have to face _all_ the maintenance and
adminitration of our Linux computers at a moment we don't even know
such basic commands as 'cat' or 'cp'.  That means that cryptic
utilities or lack of configuration tools are not acceptable when users
have to value by themselves from minute one like it happens in Linux.
Abandonning people at the end of installation with an unsecure box or
a suboptimal kernel should be treated as a shooting offence since we
are dealing with people who will spend months before knowing enough to
fix this kind of problems. 

Reading a one thousand pages book just for configuring sendmail or an
over two thousands page book of HOWTOS is only possible when you have
nothing to do except system administration.  In a big organization
where hundreds of people are making money for it having an employee
doing a non directly productive work is not a problem but a three
person medical cabinet obviously cannot afford an additional employee
doing little else than reading docs.  If we look at individuals a such
"learning overhead" means the user would be let with little time for
real work.  And we don't think filling our heads with every detail of
sendmail configuration is the highest thing we can do with a computer.
This means that Linux distributions should come with sensible default
config files and if at all possible provide turnkey configurations for
common usages.  It also means that we cannot assume that the system
adminitrator is a well of science and accept a distribution who breaks
in face of the slightest mistake performed by the system
administrator.

Linux could go in small companies but pressure of traditionalists have
distributions shipping server software like sendmail who is an
overkill in small organizations and in addition tend to be
difficult to configure, resource hungry and unsecure.


Now that Linux has games, office suites like Star Office or Koffiice,
high quality free multimedia or graphic tools like Blender, Gimp or
Broadcast2000 we feel there are many more uses to Linux than web or
file serving.  Every distribution configures the Ethernet card at
install time but we are abandonned at end of installation with
unconfigured sound cards, screens under X who waste 1 inch wide at
each side of screen or defaulting to use of fonts bad nough to make
our Wysywyg word processors nearly unusable.  And no distribution
comes without Samba or DNS servers and no user guide fails to document
how to configure them but little or nothing is told about using the
Gimp and many cool multimedia tools are left out of distributions.

We want to use Linux at home where Internet access is different than
at office but few distributions give the same treatment to dialup or
ADSL users they give to people on LANs or make the trivial changes
needed for making connections shorter (thus cheaper) or mail being
automtically sent when the connection is established.  And few
distributions include the kind of software from games to personal
finance you would like to have when the computer is not working for
your boss but for you.


All these deficiencies need to be fixed and we believe that the best
people for understanding and fixing them are the people who suffer
from them or at least those who have some sympathy for the "sufferers"
and strongly want Linux not being confined to the geek realm.  However
don't think that Indy will be able one day to fulfill its objectives
and be able to do something for you if you don't do something for it.

-- 
			Jean Francois Martinez

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