Deaf ears.<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 9/19/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">Andrew Gaffney</b> &lt;<a href="mailto:agaffney@g.o">agaffney@g.o</a>&gt; wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Paul J. Wilson wrote:<br>&gt; The way I see it, the problem is not about the gentoo installer, but a<br>&gt; problem of perceptions between the developers and the users. There is a<br>&gt; further division between the &quot;power users&quot; and the &quot;noobs&quot;.
<br>&gt;<br>&gt; It's easier said than done, but each side should step outside their own<br>&gt; experience. To a developer, &quot;easy&quot; meains opening VI and drawing on<br>&gt; their knowledge of hot keys and bash syntax. To the average user, &quot;easy&quot;
<br>&gt; means selecting options from a menu , or not selecting anything at all<br>&gt; to have things turn out as intended.<br><br>To me, &quot;easy&quot; means following the very clear directions layed out for you in the
<br>install guide and being able to use nano. I may be wrong, but I believe my cat<br>can use nano.<br><br>&gt; Regular, everyday users tend not to have the time to spend on the finter<br>&gt; points of linux and gentoo in particular. If the aim of the gentoo
<br>&gt; installer project is to make Gentoo more accessable to these types of<br>&gt; users, then it's not unreasonable to expect these users to reach out<br><br>That's not the aim. The aim is to make installs *faster* and more
<br>automated...not easier.<br><br>&gt; It's also obvious from the responses that some users do NOT find the<br>&gt; handbook accessable. This can't be simply explained away by lack of<br>&gt; intelligence. Again, what is obvious to some is not obvious to others,
<br>&gt; especially those who are not trained to think in technical terms.<br>&gt; Brushing off the questions of every-day users as the work of &quot;noobs&quot; is<br>&gt; a very easy and sloppy thing to do.<br><br>People who can't follow the handbook are people that can't pay attention long
<br>enough to read a complete sentence. If someone can't install Gentoo because of<br>ADD, that's not our problem.<br><br>&gt; There is a huge disconnect happening here. On the one hand, the Gentoo<br>&gt; front matter seems to state that Gentoo is &quot;all about choices&quot; and goes
<br>&gt; on to strongly imply that the distribution can be all things to all<br>&gt; users. There are a sub-set of users who 1. don't find the detail and<br>&gt; fine-point instruction in the manual helpful 2. don't have the time to
<br>&gt; manually configure everything or 3. are not computer literate. It's<br>&gt; obvious that there are large numbers of people who want to use gentoo<br>&gt; but whose needs are not being met. I have the impression that the
<br>&gt; gentoo-installer project is an attempt to meet the needs of such users.<br><br>Gentoo is not exactly targeted at *any* of those groups of users. As stated<br>above, that is *not* the intention of the installer.<br>
<br>--<br>Andrew
Gaffney&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/">http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/</a><br>Gentoo
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