Will Redhat Become a Division of AOL Time-Warner?

[Thomas Ward]

Lol! That is funny. Actually, Red Hat 7.2 by default loads the gui, and when
you log in you are dropped on a Gnome 1.4 desktop which is nice. Since my
family likes the gui on start up I leave it that way.
However, a alt+control+f1 sets me right, and gets me into a bash prompt to
get some work done.
So it is no big deal if Linux os's such as Mandrake 8.1 or Red Hat 7.2 it is
set to runlevel 5. One key stroke and you are in bash.
I think you are right though. Linux is at a critical point. Big companies
like IBM are taking Linux serious, and many of home users are peed off at
they way MS puts in their security for XP.
Now is the time to start proving the os for what it can do. However,
Mandrake and Red Hat are good distributions for the average home user. After
most of them can't even reinstall MS Windows which is easy. How could they
even think about Slackware which requires a little knolege of system files
etc.


----- Original Message -----
From: Adam Myrow <myrow at eskimo.com>
To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 3:24 PM
Subject: Re: Will Redhat Become a Division of AOL Time-Warner?


> I can hear the advertising now.  "Redhat, so easy, no wonder it's number
> 1!"  They'll be showing a grandmother on TV saying "my grandson sends me
> email every day and I can actually reply with AOL for Redhat."
>
> In all seriousness, I don't think they could take out the command line.
> After all, that's how Linux works.  They could make it start up in X, and
> people wouldn't use the command line, but it's still in there.  Even
> Windows XP has a command line if I understand it correctly.  I just think
> it's funny that AOL is interested in Linux.
>
> What this shows is what I've believed for a long time.  Linux is at a
> critical point in its history.  It's powerful enough to run serious
> servers, but it's starting to grab the attention of the public because
> they are finally starting to get tired of Windows crashing and excepting
> that this is not normal behavior for a computer.  So, they are looking to
> Linux because it has a reputation for stability, but they see that it
> isn't Windows at all.  They want Windows without the bugs, and the Linux
> users want something other than Windows.  So, we have word processors
> under the GUI, ICQ cloans and such under the GUI, and development tools
> running at the command line.  Redhat is clearly trying to attract home
> users with its Plug 'N Play type install while Slackware is staying with a
> "do it yourself" approach and other distributions seem to be somewhere in
> the middle.  Linux is going to go one way or the other.  It's really up to
> the users to decide which way it goes.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>