On 03/21/10 15:46, markucz%gmail.com@localhost wrote:
I don't see why one should suffer from the disadvantages of Linux just not to lock oneself out of 10% of the WWW, or to enable one's wife to plug in a USB stick and have it mounted without her carrying a notebook full of UNIX commands with her, to put it bluntly...My point is that when it comes to desktop use, NetBSD will always be trying to catch up with Linux just as Linux was trying to catch up with Wind*ws.
Well, it still is... And IMHO, it will never get a significant share on the PC market. But that's another story.
The purpose is not (at least, from my PoV) to catch up directly with Linux (or rather, Ubuntu), Windows or MacOSX (especially for the last two, with their overwhelming market share and sale force).
Personally, I wouldn't like to see NetBSD following the new Ubuntu-esque way of life as primary target, just because a clean, well thought system is supposed to be one that spins 3D cubes and has the latest fancy stuff. Most users that expect that of the OS are not users, but consumers, and the expectations are different. Not better nor worse, just different.
IMHO, the targeted audience for users are the ones interested in understanding how an OS works, generally speaking. Things should be simple and coherent, and ease immersion. Once we got such a thing right, we can move on to more complex user-friendly things. Not that it is especially hard, I have my host running a crashy Adobe Flash and can read HD streams with VLC. However, installing a NetBSD desktop requires an installation from an iso, then download pkgsrc and/or run pkg_add/pkgin. Something that I do not qualify as "seamless".
My 2 cents! -- Jean-Yves Migeon jeanyves.migeon%free.fr@localhost