On Mon, 4 Aug 2003, James Edward John Taylor wrote:
But wasnt the point that this would be linux for everyone? that you would make your systems lovely and nice, so that people who didnt want to learn more could use them.
I don't think these are quite the people Ben had in mind: I understand he works in a school, and if it's anything like the schools I went to, not wanting to learn is severely frowned upon.
Nevertheless, I'm contending (probably rather controversially) that even Linux users who aren't willing to learn any new techniques beyond installing and occasionally running the OS (if such people exist) are making a positive (albeit small) contribution to the wellbeing of the open source community as a whole. As I said, the mechanism for this is
Increased demand for Linux-compatible hardware
-> More incentive for hardware vendors to open up drivers and/or specifications
-> Greater choice of hardware, and fewer disappointments when stuff doesn't work, for Linux users