Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on August 31, 2003 10:16 PM
I don't think so.
The range of distros available is in some ways a weakness for Linux (different distros have different ways of doing certain things so users and developers sometimes find themselves having to adapt to this) but also a strength because it provides choice and a selection of different versions of the same great OS, each most suited to a different type of user or a different purpose. Linux for the home user and small office (Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE), Linux for the corporation which wants a certain amount of third-party support (Red Hat, SuSE), Linux for the hobbyist (Debian, Gentoo), Linux for the serious network admin or 'power' home-user (Debian, Slackware) and so on.
'Crummy fonts' is not an issue nor are 'washed out colours'. Linux can make use of Windows fonts and Microsoft 'fonts for the web', which Microsoft released on the Internet many years ago and with a powerful font rendering engine like <A HREF="http://freetype.sf.net/" TITLE="sf.net">FreeType</a sf.net> those fonts appear identical to how they do in Windows. It's not difficult to install FreeType or to install new fonts from Windows in Linux, if you have 5-10 minutes to spare. If you don't like the colours in Linux you need only customise the interface - most Linux GUIs are highly customisable, particularly the two desktop environments which should look familiar to Windows users: KDE and GNOME. KDE and GNOME both feature more configurable interfaces than Windows XP or any earlier version of Windows.
Admittedly, there's a big difference between allowing computer users to choose between many different distros of Linux and allowing the citizens of California to each pick their own version of a state program - so don't take the open source software/open government analogy too seriously.
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Re:Governor Linus
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on August 31, 2003 10:16 PMThe range of distros available is in some ways a weakness for Linux (different distros have different ways of doing certain things so users and developers sometimes find themselves having to adapt to this) but also a strength because it provides choice and a selection of different versions of the same great OS, each most suited to a different type of user or a different purpose. Linux for the home user and small office (Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE), Linux for the corporation which wants a certain amount of third-party support (Red Hat, SuSE), Linux for the hobbyist (Debian, Gentoo), Linux for the serious network admin or 'power' home-user (Debian, Slackware) and so on.
'Crummy fonts' is not an issue nor are 'washed out colours'. Linux can make use of Windows fonts and Microsoft 'fonts for the web', which Microsoft released on the Internet many years ago and with a powerful font rendering engine like <A HREF="http://freetype.sf.net/" TITLE="sf.net">FreeType</a sf.net> those fonts appear identical to how they do in Windows. It's not difficult to install FreeType or to install new fonts from Windows in Linux, if you have 5-10 minutes to spare. If you don't like the colours in Linux you need only customise the interface - most Linux GUIs are highly customisable, particularly the two desktop environments which should look familiar to Windows users: KDE and GNOME. KDE and GNOME both feature more configurable interfaces than Windows XP or any earlier version of Windows.
Admittedly, there's a big difference between allowing computer users to choose between many different distros of Linux and allowing the citizens of California to each pick their own version of a state program - so don't take the open source software/open government analogy too seriously.
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