Re: Is Linux Unix?
On Friday 23 July 2004 03:59 am, Ryo Furue wrote:
> machine, the company makes the costomer buy one. (The sofwares so
> expensive that the cost of a lowly Windows machine is nothing.)
>
> Unfortunately, uniformity and community efforts don't come together.
That *is* true. Linux is hell as a target for commercial software. Part of
that is by design, I think. We treasure diversity and choice, and we
treasure open source software. If everything is open source, diversity is
not a problem. That's what package maintainers are for.
But it's true that there's a whole realm of software nobody is likely to
develop for Linux because of the diversity. I had to sit by and watch my
father build a network of Windows NT boxes because I couldn't write and
THOROUGHLY test the software he needed for the cash registers at his
workplace.
It causes problems with hardware too. Some vendors are hell bent on keeping
their sacred little details under their collar. While there are some
relative success stories, like the NVIDIA drivers, there are many more
situations with winmodems and winprinters and the like that create pure
driver hell for anyone not running Flummy Linux 1.2.3. This even affects
people running Flummy Linux 1.2.4 or 1.2.2. Binaries-only drivers suck!
Ultimately, however, I don't think we can have our cake and eat it too. There
*is* a price to pay for running Linux, but Linux wouldn't be Linux if all the
was to it was a new version of Red Hat every four years.
--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan <dmmcintyr@users.sourceforge.net>
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/
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