Well said!! Thank you, Ken. ciao,
Ben B "PS" - my early linux experiences were similar: I used the twenty-some slackware floppies, and couldn't get X going... in '94. Used OS/2 v2 (pre-warp) back then and didn't realize how 'nix-based it was. REXX, also, which I still see around (check freshmeat for Regina's). Then a few years later, on a system I still run, I got slackware on CD to get me going. Those were some crucial years for linux, I kinda wish I had gotten more involved back then. But then, 10 years from now, when I am a BSD (or OS XIII) zealot I could wish I'd gotten away from linux sooner. In any case, RedHat does a whole lot of good for linux! On Tue, 3 Jun 2003 10:43:21 -0700 Ken Barber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | | And now, my comment on the religious war: | | I read through all of the distro-religious-war stuff posted here | and I like what Ben Barrett had to say about it. | | When you get into a religious war over distros, remember that ALL | of Linux is looked down upon by the BSD folks. So be careful. | | I started out with Slackware in 1995 and could never get Xwindows | to launch (turned out it was a poorly-supported video card). | Finally, out of frustration I tried Red Hat in 1999 because I | figured that, being the most popular distro at that time, there | would be more people who knew how to configure it. It cost me a | marriage, but I finally got X to launch. | | I'm still using Red Hat. I tried Mandrake last year and found it | too dumbed-down for my tastes. | | Say what you want about corporations (I do NOT believe that they | are inherently evil; some are evil and some are not) but AFAICS | Red Hat and Suse are the only two who are actually DOING anything | about getting Linux onto corporate desktops -- and that is what | has to happen if we want to have any hope at all of pulling the | industry back from the edge of the cliff we're presently on. | | In a corporate desktop environment, you're paying people to keep | the computers working. You need to use your desktop support | techs' time as efficiently as possible. You can't afford to have | them sit around building systems by hand from scratch, compiling | apps on workstations, and so forth. | | And Red Hat IMO does a good job of enabling support techs to | build, maintain and patch systems efficiently. They're not the | only distro to do that, and they certainly have a lot of room to | improve. But they do make it reasonably easy to do these chores | in a standardized environment -- and they even make it easy to | HAVE a standardized environment. | | I haven't seen Red Hat destroying competitors, deploying | proprietary code to lock people in to their products, or any of | the other blatant abuses of ethics that are legendary at | Micro$oft. I think calling them the Micro$oft of Linux is | patently unfair. | | Now I have to get some work done. I actually have other things to | do besides reading this list. | | Ken | -- | "In all proper relationships there is no sacrifice of anyone to | anyone. ... Men exchange their work by free, mutual consent to | mutual advantage when their personal interests agree and they | both desire the exchange. ... This is the only possible form of | relationship between equals. Anything else is a relationship of | slave to master, or victim to executioner." | -- Ayn Rand, "The Fountainhead" | _______________________________________________ EuG-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
