>I believe that it is up to the people to do things like generate
>packages and value-added distributions on CDROM and/or ftp sites.
>NetBSD is just the OS.  The frills are the responsibility of the
>people. If someone wanted to create "The penultimate NetBSD OS"
>with X11R6, TeX, Gnu*, Perl, Pine, Elm, MH, etc, then I'm sure
>it would be well received by people.  However, I don't believe it's
>the responsibility of the core.

I'm not a member of core, but I am a "port master".  So I would
really like to see NetBSD be used by more people.

I'm also in a position to recommend NetBSD to many undergrad students 
wanting a ?nix on their "home machine".  I don't know of any of those
students with NO prior experience with unix administration who
successfully installed NetBSD.  Most of them did get Linux installed.
Also, in talking with students who are using Linux and trying to
tell them that NetBSD is better have usually responded with two
comments/questions: Does the standard distribution come with X and other 
pre-compiled packages?  What is 4.4BSD and how is it better than Linux.
These students usually can't understand my reasons that NetBSD is better
than Linux.

I believe that NetBSD (to the "average (i386) user") will not be
attractive until someone does make a "penultimate NetBSD OS"
distribution with a simple installation.  While it will be the 
FREE OS of other architectures because of a lack of another free OS,
it will remain the i386 OS the people who want 4.4BSD and are willing
to "roll their own".

I also don't think this is the responsibility of the core group, but
I do think they could do more to encourage such a distribution.
A good step would be an easier i386 install that is more resistant
to errors.  I just tried to do a fresh NetBSD-1.0 install on a machine
of a friend and ran into big problems.

In any case, I'm extremely thankful for all the work that has be done
on NetBSD and I'm going to use NetBSD as long as I possibly can.

--Phil