[Tfug] Ideas for the ultimate "Grandma Millie" distro...

[Jim March]

>
> I think it is a little optimistic to think that Debian, or Ubuntu will
> not have those issues with usage, or updating that you seem to be
> complaining about :}
>
> Which argument in this thread made you such an optimist?
>
> _______________________________________________



Chortle :).

I remain convinced that "gentle crashing" is actually possible.

Take my recent experience when X-Window on Fedora Core 6 puked on boot.  It
was the mouse driver that choked.

Now first, nothing "hard crashed" to the point where intelligent error
messages couldn't be generated.  The messages I was getting (naming the
puking driver) gave me enough feedback to guess what was up, get it
gracefully shut down, fired it up again, no problemo.

So how hard would it have been to say something like:

"Look, something is up with your mouse, the mouse software portion of your
system ain't starting, so do you want to do a shutdown (then go check cables
and restart) or go into ultra-geeky mode and edit the driver config files in
xorg.conf?"

[button choices: shutdown / I'msupergeeky...]

See, given how this was NOT a freeze, writing something to report this is
just a matter of tweaking the existing error reporting system for X.  Hell,
it's not even a coding change, it's just a better-written existing error
text...well OK, there's a shutdown button added but how big a deal could
THAT be?

It's impossible to overstate how slick this would be, and how much it would
help newbies.

Jim