RE: tlug: X resolution / color depth

["Jonathan Byrne--3Web" <jq@example.com>]

>what questions do you think that it 'shouldn't' ask?

I think you should not need to enter your monitor sync rates, how much
memory your video card has, or any of that other stuff.  On a Mac, you
don't.  On Windows, you don't.  A lot of Mac and Windows users today
wouldn't even know where to find that information.  There are very few
monitor drivers for X right now, so telling it your specs is almost a given
for many people, I think.

I think what there may need to be at some point is two install options for
Linux: one that does everything for a person automatically and more or less
invisibly, much like Windows does, and a second that shows you everything
it's doing and lets you do things manually or confirm them, like current
installers.

Moving a little farther afield (and maybe people are working on this?),
installing a software package should also add it to the menu of your window
manager, assuming it has one, like what you get under you-know-what.  Right
now, the only way to find out what packages you have is to start Glint and
check.   And even then, most of them are neither on a menu anywhere nor on
your path, so there's a lot of work involved in trying them out to see it
they're things you want to keep, or things you want to reclaim the disk
space from.  I know that's a big order because of how many window managers
there are and because some are more menu-based than others.  But these are
the kinds of polish that Linux will need to make it in the mass market.  You
don't think I'm the only person who will always say "But <this other OS>
does it automatically," right? :-)

Windows and Mac OS may not be technically superior to Linux, but they still
offer considerably more polish, and that's some of what people are buying.
We've got slick X features like having a virtual screen bigger than your
monitor that people may love, but they to have the ease-of-use things, too.
X is nice, but people are going to want the polish.  Converts are also going
to want it to work as much like their old computer as possible (This is an
issue for the people who write FVWM, though.  They need to make it work more
like Windows 95 in some areas, IMO).

I may be an annoyance to a lot of people with my harping on this stuff, but
really, I firmly believe it's where Linux needs to go to be more than a
professionals-only and hacker OS.  It's where we need to go to penetrate the
mainstream and grab the market share.  And when that happens, developers
will notice and hardware vendors will notice, and start writing a lot more
software and a lot more drivers for Linux.  And once that starts to happen,
it starts to snowball.  That was key for both Windows and the Mac.

If Apple succesfully gets Rhapsody out the door and it's everything they
claim, it will be a real "Mac meets UNIX" type of marriage.  It's still an
OS aimed at the developer and server market, but it's something that a
person with some knowledge could run at home if they wanted to.  If it's any
good, you may see a lot of G-3 Macs for individual users being ordered with
Rhapsody.  Linux could be like that too.  Big, ambitious goals?  Sure.  But
it we all really wanna take over the software world, we gotta think big :-)

>I'm rewriting TurboXconfigurator right now... so now is a good time to
>make suggestions :)  This one, I think, will actually test your X setup to

I've got one.  If you choose Custom for your monitor specs under
CXconfigurator or the TL installer, it should let you actually type in your
numbers.  While I think people shouldn't have to type that stuff, we need to
assume that anyone who does choose Custom knows their monitor specs and may
want to type in the exact ones rather than choose from a range.  I want to
:-)

Jonathan


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