“One of my first heroes (and a nominee for my Dweeb Hall of
Fame) was a guy I ran across on Bix years ago. His name is Roedy
Green. To say that Roedy was sensitive to poorly designed software
installation would be to say President Bush is sensitive to
suggestions his administration should have known the 9/11 attacks
were coming. Green wrote scathing criticisms of various products —
applications or operating systems, it made no difference to him —
where the installation had been given short shrift. He knew what he
was talking about. Green had an absolute gift for breaking down the
most complex or technical aspects of personal computing into chunks
of words and images that anyone could understand.“Why do I mention Green now, 12 years later? Because in most of
the columns I’ve written about Linux distributions over the years I
have spent a lot of time on the installation process. That is
thanks to the influence of Roedy Green’s commentaries.“This installation of Mandrake 8.2 on my laptop was a 20 minute
no-brainer. The first time, that is. It took about twice as long
the second time, but I’m getting ahead of myself…”
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
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