LL Sisters Thread

[Vera]

My question is, what parts (knowing each distribution is different) do you consider more aimed at males? This information would help me and probably any other developer. Another question, is it programs or themes that are effecting a sort of negative attitude? Any criticism is constructive.

Wow! Such a great question! As a female I'd like to have a go at answering this question too.

I tried out a few distros from live media but the only one I fully installed was Linux Lite. With that limitation in mind (i.e. I've not tried out a bunch of distros), there were some distros that were off-putting, but possibly not for the "maleness" in terms of design that you might be thinking of. What did put me off one of the distros I was considering (which I will not name here for fear of starting a distro-war argument) was its forum, which was full of people saying stuff along the lines of "if you don't do it my way, you're an idiot". I figured that whatever distro I picked, at some point I'd have questions, and I'd like to be surrounded by nice, reasonable, people in the forum. In that sense I think that is perhaps more of a female requirement - to be influenced strongly by social factors.

In fact, [member=6925]RandomBoy[/member]  was an excellent ambassador for LL on Diaspora (where I first asked ppl for recommendations for what distro to use). I had never heard of LL before that. He was a voice of sensible reason, and I thought, hey, this distro seems to have some good people in it. I should really look into this distro, it might be sensible and balanced like the people.

At the same time, I don't want to downplay the excellent technical abilities of LL. As nice as everyone is on the forum, I wouldn't pick a distro solely based on that behavior if it didn't fit my technical needs. But LL supplied everything - in fact, it stood out compared to others that I tried on live media, because some others were packed with extra software that I didn't need. While LL clearly came with everything I needed and nothing that I didn't. I figured anything else I wanted to install, I could do so later down the track, but all the basics were there, and it was easy to use.

The other thing I cared about was release schedule. LL was one of the few that had a clear release cycle and support end dates posted. I don't know if that's a particularly female perspective or not, but I felt, I don't know, kind of "safer" with a distro like that, like it was clear that it was run sensibly and professionally.

I don't know if that completely answers your question, and I don't know if my answers are typical of other females or not, but that's how it is from my perspective. It was awesome that you asked that question, BTW.