[Python-Dev] RFC: Including PIL in 1.6

[Mark Hammond]

[Guido]

> Not to say that I'm against this kind of thing, but warning that even
> in the best circumstances it can be a hurdle for newcomers...
>
> Which is why there's a market for packagers like Red Hat.

And even _then_ it is hard to get right.

My experience similar to this was with debian, and its xptselect package.
I was a Linux newbie, and the entire installation went pretty well until I
was asked which packages I want to fetch and install.

I was _soooo_ lost.  I found the interface a complete mystery.  It appeard
to make random selections of stuff I didnt want, then randomly de-select
stuff I didnt want.  I had no idea how to search for anything, and the help
was less than useful.  Sometimes it wanted to download nothing, other times
it wanted to download 400MB to complete the install!!!  I only just
resisted the temptation to go and buy a bunch of MS stock <wink>.

Of course, within a week, I understood what was going on, and the sofware
was indeed functioning correctly.

But it took me that entire week to have a Linux system with everything I
wanted installed and working correctly.

The point I am trying to make is that for stuff that should be considered
"core", the bar is very very high for these auto-configure applications.
The usual audience will be _complete_ newbies.  In my example, it was clear
that a complete linux newbie was never let loose on this program while
sitting in the same room as the author or the marketting team ;-)  But I
expect those with reasonable Linux experience quite like it, and themselves
would not be happy with the complete-newbie version.

The-included-batteries-were-the-wrong-size-ly,

Mark.