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Message-ID: <3B3D117F.9A7457E3@etr-usa.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 17:38:39 -0600
From: Warren Young <warren AT etr-usa DOT com>
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To: Cygwin-L <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Re: My analysis of some recent discussions.
References: <80575AFA5F0DD31197CE00805F650D7602CF57 AT wilber DOT adroit DOT com> <3B3CBB32 DOT D6308294 AT beamreachnetworks DOT com>
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"Eric M. Monsler" wrote:

I agree with everything you said.  I have only one comment:

> The current state of cygwin, with the setup.exe and the current
> documentation, is sufficient that many people in the second category are
> able to use it successfully.  

I think you could blame setup.exe for many of the emails that hit this
list.  I don't wish it to go away -- I just think that there are a whole
lot of people who, if they're given an installation wizard, expect an
idiot-proof installation process and a drool-proof package when the
installer finishes.

In other words, setup.exe's [relative] polish belies the incomplete
nature of the product it installs.  

This same sort of thing happens with Linux, by the way -- you get a
pretty installer with most distros, but Linux isn't a perfect Windows
replacement yet, so a lot of people who try Linux go away thinking
they've been cheated with fancy wrapping around a broken product.  This
is just a matter of perception, of course, but Cygwin is a whole lot
more "broken" in this sense than Linux is.  This is perfectly
understandable: Cygwin is a magnificent hack, in every Jargon File sense
of that word.

I don't intend specific criticism by these observations.  It's just my
assessment of the current state of things.

-- 
= Warren -- ICBM Address: 36.8274040 N, 108.0204086 W, alt. 1714m

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