Re: An open letter to the debian community
Hi!
Just some comments after reading the first posting and others.
My english is not perfect, nor I reply exactly to this thread.
I like Debian/Linux as it is.
It is a wonderfull distribution allowing me to get every time when "I"
want an update via Internet. (And not when others think I should do it)
Based on the Slink CD's I upgraded to Potato with success.
I'm not interested in shareware or other half-professional software.
I want a flexible system I can administrate with help of full
documentation, by scripts or in plain text files.
(Not this registry-stuff where nobody knows even what you could put in
there)
I don't need a GUI surface, the basic X-Windows system is ok. All this
CDE, KDE stuff and other things don't make me more productive.
I'm using Netscape and StarOffice, Tkdesk, fte, ae, etc..
This system allows me to choose what combinations of software I want to
use at home.
I will not install the sound and multimedia things, if I need a lot of
noise I can switch on the ghetto-blaster of my doughters or the TV.
In the office I build a firewall-system based on this distribution.
And soon we will try to copy our oracle database from a NT machine to a
Debian/Linux based system. Having eliminated the Exchange-Server and
using a D/L based system would give me better sleep. Even now I use an
old pc to examine the log files of the exchange server and our
Cisco-router. All doc- and conf-files I can print out on paper and
document the system. I have it really under control. Not somebody else
tells me that I can be shure that it's the best system.
Starting in 1976 I wrote my first horrible 10 lines program in basic on
an DEC PDP8A. 1977 I had to learn to program a 8080 or 8085 I don't
remember, school is over. In my buisness live I saw DOS, WIN 3.1, OS/2,
Win95 etc. Novell, WARP, NT Server. More and more nice surfaces more
colors etc... I had to introduce a order-processing system with
Win-Clients. I can tell you, the humans are still producing the same
idiotic letters, offers etc. as the years before. But the knowledge gets
more and more hided behind graphical surfaces, nice fonts (wysiwyg) and
overloaded functions in word processing or spreadsheet programs. Network
software is sold by many companies and administrated by many specialists
who know nothing else than MS.
And even they don't know what they are really doing, because they have
not the money to pay for all this certificates, documentation,
subscriptions etc ...
Here we have a nice Debian/Linux system, easy to administrate, if you
understand the docu, if you realy read it. For free ! Even the
mysterious RFC's you can find. Excelent HOWTO's, even for me
understandable and with a real practical background.
I learned to program our cisco router reading the ipfwadm and ipchains
docu and relevant HOWTO's delivered with D/L. I learned what means to be
a system administrator, because now I know what I don't know.
(I'm in sales, just because of my electronics background I administrate
our system, when there is time left)
If you can not find software or docu you like to have, you are free to
get it from another source in internet. Be happy not to get a black-box
system with ALL-IN.
I have a deep respect for this people who make DEBIAN/LINUX to a free
GNU system, avaliable to everybody, free of charge, against all
commercial pressure arround.
Michael Steiner
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Michael Steiner, Minorgasse 35, A-1140 Vienna, Austria
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