Re: [orca-list] Accessible Rolling Release Distro

[Mewtamer <mewtamer gmail com>]

I'm not sure where this perception that Linux users are rude comes
from, or at least I've encountered little evidence to suggest Linux
Users have more than their fair share of rude people. Unless it's the
tendency for the lack of intonation and body language you get with the
written word to make words come across harsher than intended and Linux
Users being a group one is likely to only interact with through the
written word.

That said, I do think many people coming to Linux from Windows for the
first time have such a strong bias for GUIs that they dismiss any
text-based tool as inherently inferior or harder to use without so
much as reading the intro section to a manual, yet will put up with
the frustration of learning a new GUI everytime Microsoft decides to
overhaul the Windows GUI seemingly for the sake of overhauling the
GUI. Yes, the command-line can be daunting, and yes, some cli apps
require incredibly complicated commands to do even the simplest of the
tasks the app is designed to accomplish, but there are also apps with
more "modern" text user interfaces that all you really need to do at
the command line is type the name of the program and then it's like
using many GUI apps if you are at all familiar with controlling stuff
from the keyboard, and some will even dedicat a line or two of the
screen to listing the most common keyboard commands for helping
beginners learn the ropes(The nano text editor and the aptitude
package manager both do this).

And of the OSes I've successfully installed over the years, I'd rank
Windows XP as the most difficult to install... and it's also the only
one that forced me to use a GUI Installer... Granted, coming
pre-installed on most PCs, Microsoft lacks any real incentive to make
Windows easier to install, while Linux as all the incentive in the
world.

As for doing things for free, the fact of the matter is that much of
the coding, bug testing, documentation, packaging, etc. for Linux and
FOSS software in general is done by volunteers, many of whom have day
jobs largely unrelated to their work on FOSS. Reporting bugs and
making feature requests are all fine and dandy, and are actually
encouraged in most circles, but there can be a fine line between
coming off as a person making a reasonable feature request and coming
off as a person whining about the lack of a particular feature... and
apparent refusal to even consider a similar feature doesn't help one
appear as the former rather than the latter. And this isn't an
accessibility thing, or even a FOSS thing really. In just about any
situation, someone on the production side of a product is going to
feel some level of frustration over vague, angry demands for some
feature from one of their consumers, and even other consumers trying
to help are likely to get frstrated in such a situation.

That said, if the friend in question is really so ill-prepared to deal
with potential breakage due to software upgrades, I doubt a rolling
release is going to help much, and if anything, you're probably better
off walking them through an installation process that's slightly out
of their comfort zone or walking them through what you did to fix the
problem when something does break in the hopes they'll eventually
learn enough you don't have to provide tech support than you are
trying to find them a distro you can just hand them an install disc
and walk away. Granted, I'm also guessing the friend in question has
no idea what to do when Microsoft forces a Windows Update that breaks
something.