Re: [opensuse] Word for all of us... [OT]

Mike McMullin wrote:
On Wed, 2007-04-18 at 14:09 -0500, M Harris wrote:
On Wednesday 18 April 2007 11:13, Russell Jones wrote:
It's not just the warm fuzzies, it's also in how the community creates
scripts for packages of non-OSS stuff or even the dread multimedia
stuff, or <gasp> Web-Cam stuff. Ubuntu is shooting for the easy to
establish desktop and use desktop, the rest of us can take a page or two
from their note-book.
I agree with this. But it's not the advice that was given to users. That was (more or less) "choose the distro that gives you warm fuzzies".
But again, it needs to be sustainable. Thus incentives for this are required beyond "look, distro X is doing Y".

Also, this is a management issue rather than a developer one. Though of course, many developers make such decisions themselves.
I've compared the stated management positions below:

What are the objectives for Open Suse?

From http://en.opensuse.org/Project_overview (with editing to break down the objectives a bit)

1. Make openSUSE the easiest Linux distribution for anyone to obtain
2. Make openSUSE the most widely used open source platform
3. Provide an environment for open source collaboration
4. Make openSUSE the best Linux distribution for new users
5. Make openSUSE the best Linux distribution for experienced Linux users
6. Simplify and open the development and packaging processes to make
openSUSE the platform of choice for Linux hackers and application
developers

So this comes under point 4. ISTM that Open Suse values ease of use for newbies more than, say, Debian, Gentoo or Slackware. Interestingly, Debian makes guarantees, rather than having objectives. Some of the "guarantees" are subjective, so are similar to Open Suse's objectives.

1. *Debian will remain 100% free*
2. *We will give back to the free software community*
3. *We will not hide problems*
4. *Our priorities are our users and free software*

We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software
community. We will place their interests first in our priorities.
We will support the needs of our users for operation in many
different kinds of computing environments. We will not object to
non-free works that are intended to be used on Debian systems, or
attempt to charge a fee to people who create or use such works. We
will allow others to create distributions containing both the
Debian system and other works, without any fee from us. In
furtherance of these goals, we will provide an integrated system
of high-quality materials with no legal restrictions that would
prevent such uses of the system.

5. *Works that do not meet our free software standards [will be
provided separately]
*

The Debian statement is targeted at existing users, and makes no mention of newbies (that I could see).

Ubuntu seem to be so popular that their site is down ;-) So I can't compare their objectives with those of the other projects.

So do you think point four should be point three, two or one? Or are the ability to obtain the distribution, its widest use and its best development more important than making it welcoming to newbies?
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