SEUL: The outline of an end-user distro

[Dennis Leeuw <adl@casema.net>]

IMHO, a distro for an end-user should be plain, simple and always the
same. This might be obvious, but anyway...

I think we have two different kinds of end-users. First there is the
home-user and second we have the office-user. Both are two differnt
types, with different wishes. To name a simple difference: the home-user
expects a simple PPP configuration, while the office-user wants a simple
network connection.

Next I feel we have to stay close to the standardization efforts that
already take place:
FHS: http://www.pathname.com/fhs/
LSB: http://www.linuxbase.org/

I won't start commenting right now. I first like to know your opinions.

Ofcourse there will be the distro fight again. I could name lots of
arguments why I would prefer Slackware, I already saw yours on Red Hat
and Debian, and we probaly could fight a lot more :) But I am not
planning to (not yet atleast).

A more healthy discussion on this point to me is the following: Since we
seem to agree on GPL, and non-commercial, how do we feel e.g. QT from
Troll and the KDE desktop?

In my opinion we should not make an end-user suffer, because of some
principles. I feel that the License of Troll is close enough to GPL to
justify the presence of KDE on a distro.
The idea I had for LED was to give the user (at install time) the option
to choose between KDE, GNOME (with enlightenment), and Window Maker (I
would name it GNUstep, since that is the actual project)
For your refernce:
KDE: http://www.kde.org/
GNOME: http://www.gnome.org/
Window Maker: http://www.windowmaker.org/
GNUstep: http://www.gnustep.org/

The idea behind this scheme is that you shouldn't give the user too much
options (it confuses them, all modern electronics are made with less and
less options/buttons), but on the otherhand you should give them the
possibility to choose 'cause that makes Linux so wonderful.

My last remark for now:
I have written some documentation for LED. I feel although a user
doesn't want to read, you should try to educate them. Only an educated
user can and will make the right choice (for Linux, not M$).
I will dumb the writings in a sub-directory at my provider. Be warned I
have just started. You can hopefully find them at:
http://www.casema.net/~adl/led/help.htm

Let's overcome our differences and fight M$ (sorry)

Dennis