No. Despite your personal bias the majority of computer users do not, nor will they ever, install windows or any other opperating system on their computer. Using your experience as a basis for that of the computer using masses is naive.
What I was refering to was a situation where Gentoo was already installed. You don't see a lot of people going around installing windows all of the time. Most people have never installed an operating system at all. They just use whatever came preinstalled on their computer. What I meant when I said "encapsulating all of the software installation and configuration" was that portage is great, and that 'emerge foo' is simple. Oh, and if you were going to comment on etc-update, keep in mind that there is an accept all config file changes feature, so you don't have to deal with config files at all (if you don't want to).
Have you tried Gentoo at all? I've found that they have done a very good job encapsulating all of the software installation and configuration away from the user (if that is what you want of course). As for documentation, you just need to be open to finding answers in places other then long winded books (of which there are plenty for both Linux and Windows). I've found that for almost every problem that I have had with linux, there was someone else who had also had that problem and posted their solution to a forum. The strength of Linux is in its community. Being a relatively new convert myself, '01, I can't speak towards the "stupid-user friendliness" before then, but every experience that I have had with the community has been overwhelmingly possitve. If you want to argue the merits of IIS vs Apache or Explorer vs Firebird you will have no problem populating either side of the war. However, if all you want is help I have found that there is an abundance of people who are more then willing to provide it.
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Fair enough.
No. Despite your personal bias the majority of computer users do not, nor will they ever, install windows or any other opperating system on their computer. Using your experience as a basis for that of the computer using masses is naive.
What I was refering to was a situation where Gentoo was already installed. You don't see a lot of people going around installing windows all of the time. Most people have never installed an operating system at all. They just use whatever came preinstalled on their computer. What I meant when I said "encapsulating all of the software installation and configuration" was that portage is great, and that 'emerge foo' is simple. Oh, and if you were going to comment on etc-update, keep in mind that there is an accept all config file changes feature, so you don't have to deal with config files at all (if you don't want to).
Have you tried Gentoo at all? I've found that they have done a very good job encapsulating all of the software installation and configuration away from the user (if that is what you want of course). As for documentation, you just need to be open to finding answers in places other then long winded books (of which there are plenty for both Linux and Windows). I've found that for almost every problem that I have had with linux, there was someone else who had also had that problem and posted their solution to a forum. The strength of Linux is in its community. Being a relatively new convert myself, '01, I can't speak towards the "stupid-user friendliness" before then, but every experience that I have had with the community has been overwhelmingly possitve. If you want to argue the merits of IIS vs Apache or Explorer vs Firebird you will have no problem populating either side of the war. However, if all you want is help I have found that there is an abundance of people who are more then willing to provide it.