[Opencd-devel] Email, links, and "advanced" software

[J A. F. <jaa...@ya...>]

--- James Shuttleworth <ja...@di...> wrote:
> And for my last effort to kill mouses (mice?), how about links as a 
> browser?  I like it.  I don't use it all the time, but if I know I want 
> just the information and none of the crud, it's amazing.
> 
> That's my contribution.  I understand that people new to open source / free 
> / powerful software might get a little scared, but maybe we could have an 
> "advanced" menu (or page if you go with the HTML thing)?  If people don't 
> use it, fine.  I do think, though, that many people will think "I'm 
> advanced" or at least "Wow, if I've been paying for software that is less 
> powerful than this stuff and it's not even in the advanced section, haven't 
> I been well and truly shafted?".  Or something.
> 
> James

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think links is only ported to cygwin, not native
win32.  I love links, use it all the time, but I dont' think it should go on
the initial CD we're putting together.  A good email client though, now that's
important.

A note about "advanced" software:

Look, the first thing that goes on any windows machine I use is cygwin. 
Followed by xemacs, gvim, and mozilla.  I don't know how I ever worked on
windows before them.  However, including "advanced" software like xemacs, gvim,
cygwin, compilers, and any command line related utilities like pine or links I
feel would be deterimental to the CD.  Remember, we're attempting to offer the
best in open source software for the *average* windows user.  The average
windows user thinks that hiding the command prompt back under
Start->Programs->Accessories is an improvement.  Including advanced software
could very well backfire, leaving windows users even more convinced that open
source software is just for geeks.  The OpenCD should showcase a few well
written, extemely user friendly applications.  I should be able to give this CD
to my mother and just let her run with it.

At least, that's my thoughts on the main CD we should be working to produce
here.  There has been talk about producing several CDs with each CD targetting
a slightly different type of user or containing a different mix of application
types.  I really hope we can eventually do something like that, but our initial
focus should be on producing a very user friendly introduction to the open
source world.

In fact, with so many people suggesting so many good OS applications for
windows, I was thinking that perhaps someone eventually needs to put together a
"distribution" of OS software for windows.  That's not what this project is
aiming at right now and maybe this could eventually be incorporated into the
OpenCD project or maybe it should be a project all on its own.  Maybe something
based on cygwin and includes just about every open source app of decent quality
out there, and would have a unified installer that loaded it all very nicely
onto your hard drive.  Yeah all this software is out there (most of it is
included with cygwin), but then all the parts of RedHat are out there too and
I'm not interested in going out and collecting them all each time I want to
install linux.

Anyways, I'm sorry about the long rant and perhaps I misunderstand the goal of
this project, but I feel to be successful, right now we should focus on just a
few top quality applications and maybe sometime down the road we'll be able to
put together and "advanced" CD.  If anyone else has any thoughts on this, I'd
love to hear them.

jaaron

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