Re: Back to Windows??
On Tue, 20 Feb 2001, Christopher Wolf wrote:
>
> You're talking about single releases, which Debian does very well. But I'm
> talking generally about the lifetime of a free product, not necessarily
>
> [snipped linux being bloated]
>
> of the product itself are getting harder to install and configure, not
> easier, because of the variety of minor differences.
>
erm....I looked at the kernel today and found it in excess of about 100Mb.
Hmmmm bloated.....maybe not considering theres support for god knows how
many architectures, countless device driver support, lots of filing
systems and also the hundreds of different ways you can get the darn thing
to boot. Unless I do something wrong when compiling kernels I make sure I
*don't* select *everything* and only the stuff I want. This helps me to
have a small kernel that doesn contain lots of useless stuff (eg. Novell
support which I don't use....SMP....etc..etc).
I think what you are forgetting is that the source code to linux is large.
Last time I checked you only need that one hundred odd megs to compile the
thing then you remove it. I have about 1Mb of actual kernel running code,
plus a scattering of modules.
As for the applications....grab the source, compile what you need then
delete the source and keep the binaries. This keeps the "bloat" factor
down.
> Yes. Debian is one of the better companies. Obviously, or I wouldn't be
> running Debian releases. But when we wave a purchase contract in Sun's
> face, they're at our door today, fixing the problem, because if they're not
> we'll go to someone else. There is no-one at Debian or "Linux" who will do
> that. If we can't use the new hardware, who cares how much the OS
> cost. And a company such as Sun will not spend all their time pointing
> finger at others when their product is about to be lost. I don't care if a
> well-known manufacturer is stretching the truth about their Linux
> compatability; who's there to stop them under a free software situation?
>
> And hiding behind a "proprietary" hardware shield won't actually solve
> anything. This however, is also not Debian's problem.
>
actually this is a valid problem. WinModems are the best example that a
lot of laptop users have to deal with. Want to know why we don't have any
winmodem drivers (useful ones), because the companies that make winmodems
refuse to release any information to OS developers to make drivers for the
damn things. Do you know how difficult it is to *manually* decode how the
hell you talk to something like a winmodem? Currently the only driver
development going on *is* trial and error. Dialing and negociating has
been done (last time I looked), hell theres only encoding the digital
information left.
Winmodems are not the only problem linux suffers from, lots of other
hardware manufactures refuse to release information on their hardware
unless
a) you pay lots of money
b) sign a seceracy act document (this means no GPL code also), binaries
only
c) a lot of hardware manufacturers don't consider linux seriously
(probably because it doesn't use the mouse or caps lock key)
The whole fiascio with DVD decoding is another problem, no "enthusast" is
going to cough up £50k to get legal information of the DVD standard only
to then not be able to release any of the source code.
I hope you are getting the picture now.
> Remember, customer satisfaction is determined by the customer. You can
> tell me I'm wrong as much as you want.
>
hell people...LINUX IS A SERVER (OR MAYBE HEAVY DUTY WORKSTATION)OS!!!
One thing that really irritates me about the happenings in the linux
community is that everyone tries to make linux do what
windoze/macs/beos/qnx does. Linux is a server OS!! Windoze is for word
processing, simple GNVQ style databases and games and BeOS is for
multimedia applications. Would you use FreeBSD to just run Quake?
Customer satisfaction has nothing to do with it....why the hell would a
office worker want linux on their desktop? Do they need to have
apache/squid/sendmail running on their *client* machine?
If we look at it linux sucks at multimedia stuff, BeOS rocks. Windoze
rocks for (most games....except xpilot and 0verkill) and it also has the
ease of use factor.
Enough of my bantering....just stop trying to make linux what it isn't!
Pick your OS to suit your daily tasks, if thats a problem then multi-boot.
If you need more than Linux (or FreeBSD)/BeOS/Windoze then you really
need....well I don't know!
Alex
--
Just my $0.02
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