🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <f69799.rt7.ln@news.it.uc3m.es>,
Peter T. Breuer <ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:
>In comp.os.linux.help J. Bruce Fields <bfields@login.itd.umich.edu> wrote:
>> Couldn't you get the same effect from installing different versions of
>> proprietary operating systems? Where does "freedom", of the sort that
>> Linux offers, come into it?
>
>In deciding exactly what packages go in, what stays out, in configuring
>the system, the packages, in changing the code, in throwing out their
>choice for yours.
>

So it's the configuration that's the important step, not the initial
installation?  And don't, e.g., Windows and MacOS offer some configuration
options also?  (I only use GNU/Linux at home, so I honestly don't know.)
Certainly there are large bodies of software available (if not as cheaply
and conviently available) to install on both OS's, that being their main
attraction.

I'm still thinking of the long-lost person who gave us our subject line
('which linux to get'), who I'm imagining (perhaps unfairly) as someone
pretty clueless about this stuff.  It strikes me that a lot of the choices
they're faced with during installation and configuration will appear
fairly irrelevant and confusing. Should I have 2 partitions or 20?  Which
of the following 1000 software packages that I've never heard of should I
install?  Better to just get this stuff over with and start actually using
the system.  You can always change everything later when you understand
the significance of the choices.

---Bruce Fields