This is NOT a fictional story.
Last Saturday I was in a bookstore , in Athens Greece, browsing web development & graphic stuff.

I had a small conversation with a girl ;she was looking an "OPENGL programming" book.She asked me questions like what do you need to use it ;book preface was reffering C++ at any platform,and I suggested Linux ,which includes C++ at almost any distro.So she took the last "LinuxFormat" magazine to get a distro,and the book.At DVD are included Gentoo and ZEN Linux distros.


She doesn't know a thing about partitioning or C++ programming

almost forgot ...she doesn't has a clue about partitioning or Linux ....

I'm missing the "who cares" option ...


Cheers,
Tink

Even If I would tell her to try linux, if she wants to work with OpenGL, I would suggest her to install windows 2000 and Visual Studio .NET, forget about partitioning or OS installing problems and work with graphics.

If you happen to see this girl again, you can also tell her she can freely download Bloodshed Dev-C++ for Windows (which uses a Mingw port of GCC) to develop in C/C++

I think her best option is to either go with Zen or she should track you down after around 3 days and scream in your face "why did you not point me at an easier distro when you could see that I was picking up Gentoo?"

Either one is good.

Interesting. Do you think it matters it's a girl? As a sidenote: giving Gentoo to a newbie is not a good idea.

WARNING!!! WARNING!!! Danger, Will Robinson!!!

Hearing that question is never a good thing... Tread carefully apogee.

I think he's safe. Statistically speaking most nerds are male,
and the thing is that even though men and women have equal
rights it would be silly to claim that we're all wired the same.

There was a very interesting documentary on that not long
ago, highly fascinating.



Cheers,
Tink

Hello, I am a Greek too

I thought that the last (Greek) LinuxFormat issue included Mandriva Limited Edition 2005...

Tink:
I agree. There's reason to believe there are inherent differences in the way men and women think, and perhaps why each gender shows a tendency to gravitate toward specific fields. There is the counterargument though, that some of these "tendencies" are actually imposed by society as a whole.

It's a hot-button topic with no substantial data either way - only anecdotal. Unfortunately, I think it will stay that way for a while. I can't remember the name, but a professor at some university (maybe even the dean; ivy league school too) got in hot water for implying there may be a difference between genders that makes males more successful in science and engineering. There was a tremendous uproar as I recall with demands for the guy's resignation. If he stated his observation as a fact, then the objections could be reasonable. If the observation was made as a potential explanation, a hypothesis, then it seems that there will be resistance to gather any related data or that a report supporting the same conclusion would be held as biased.

What a world we live in. It's no longer religion quelling scientific research as heresy, but political correctness demonizing research as biased because the results might make someone feel bad. A perfect example would be a lobbying group denouncing a study saying that blind people don't see as well as others, because it makes blind people feel inferior. Data is data, and it supports a conclusion or not. There can be differences of opinion on how to interpret the data, but political correctness and protecting people's feelings should never come into play. Wow... talk about topic drift...

This shop must get them pretty quickly - the most recent edition has Gentoo and Zen.

For LinuxSeeker

What I am writing is:
[Linux Format Magazine] ,referring to the English edition ,.
and NOT Linux Format Greek edition

For Mara

I'm sorry but you fail to understand the point of the poll.

1.The POINT is :Will a non-technical ,non programmer every day user ,install Linux or will skip frighten of say ,partitioning ???
In other words,can Linux installation be a nightmare as it was for me at 1996 ??

2.She happens to be a woman,its that simple.I really couldn't care less about the way YOU think,especially if you think that matters for me the sex of a Linux candidate user.
The answer is NO,it doesn't matter TO ME.I don't know about you

And something else.For someone that understands plain simple English, she does have a choice.

I'm only responsible for WHAT I SAY.I am not responsible for what someone understands ,or fails to understand.
About the WARNINGS ,I REALLY COULDN'T CARE LESS, okay ???

Sidenotes
#1:She got t-w-o distros and,
#2:She got those with an excellent magazine to get started