[Techtalk] RH8--no gcc??

[Nils Philippsen]

[ Disclaimer: only my personal opinion and such  ]

On Sun, 2002-10-20 at 01:53, Rebecca Heyer wrote:
 
> I haven't tried to install RH 8.0 myself, but based on my roommate's 
> experience and reports I have seen on local mail lists it appears to be 
> crippled from the perspective of the average desktop user. RH's VP of 

As a Red Hatter, I cannot let this stand uncommented. What we have tried
to do in the latest release is to provide a tidied up desktop that
doesn't scare Joe Random User away. Believe it or not, but myriads of
web browsers and mail clients tend to only confuse persons who only want
to use the machine, even more so if they're listed as Programs->
Internet-> Galeon (or Konqueror for that matter). So we tried to decide
on what's the best tool for a specific job and listed it as "Web
Browser" and "Email" instead. Most of the alternatives are still there
under an "Extras" menu so the most used menus don't get cluttered up and
the user has to play hide and seek with his applications.

Yes, we have replaced most of the icons with "our own" ones, but you can
replace them with the originals in most cases(*). Yes, we even have
removed an "About KDE" entry from KDE applications' help menus (which I
consider to be advertisement and of no real value to the user) -- GNOME
doesn't have such a thing, otherwise we would have removed it as well,
I'm sure (so much for favouring one desktop over the other).

(*): The exceptions are the GNOME ex-foot menu and the KDE ex-gear menu
who got replaced with our logo. IIRC this is more or less hard-coded at
the moment -- not out of bad will but due to sheer lack of time to do it
any other way.

> Marketing spoke at ITEC Austin a few weeks ago and stopped by the Austin 
> Linux Group booth, where I was able to talk to him for a few minutes, and 
> asked about their decision to drop out all MPG3 decoders. RH's strategy is 

Thomson's (the guys who license MP3 technology) stance is a bit unclear
on free decoders (they didn't say it's ok to do that without paying
royalties, but didn't sue anyone who did either), so we decided to
"cover our corporate butt" and drop mp3 support from the distro. We
simply don't want to risk paying MP3 royalties for each copy sold _and_
downloaded from FTP. You may have noticed that you can't produce
compressed GIFs with software from us either. I guess I shouldn't have
to point out the alternatives (that are better, patent-unencumbered and
likely to cause an overall warm cozy feeling in your stomach): Ogg and
PNG.

Nils
-- 
Nils Philippsen / Berliner Straße 39 / D-71229 Leonberg //
+49.7152.209647
   nils at wombat.dialup.fht-esslingen.de / nils at redhat.de / nils at lisas.de
   PGP fingerprint:  C4A8 9474 5C4C ADE3 2B8F  656D 47D8 9B65 6951 3011
       Ever noticed that common sense isn't really all that common?
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