Please excuse my hangover, catching up here..
My post may not clearly have made it's main point, which Chad has drawn out -
By settling on a standard set of tools (the best deducible) & deepening the knowledge of them, CLUG would spend less time moving in circles.
Sharing a pointer from Jim last night, if I remember correctly, the GCC compiler tools were attached to "Linux" development *because* they were - & remain - the best available. The GCC compiler is a GNU product.
Bet on it not being outcoded.
Chad wrote:
InfoHelp wrote:
We start people out on Mandrake or SuSE (currently under debate), and this
used to be RedHat. The rationale for the transitions needs to be made
clear, as part of people's training, and for its future clarification.
From Mdk/Suse the capable new users will progress to Gentoo.
Thats overly broad I think many users just stay on those systems if they're not particullarly fused and just want a system that works and is easy to use. I'd describe the CLUG in general as being unusually "mobile" in their choice of OS.
I do not think theres any real order people move around with distro's. People choose what they want after deciding what they want to do with there computer and run it.
Debian seems to be the domain of those who don't mind a somewhat tricky setup because they'll never really have to bother with it again apart from to run the ocasional update and what an extremely stable machine often as a server.
Gentoo's for those who have the machines (theres no way it can be installed and maintained upto date on a 500mhz or less) and the time to customise, fiddle and a desire to learn more about linux as well as prefer cutting edge software.
While Mandrake/Fedora/SUSE are for those who don't want or who's computers aren't upto compiling gentoo but still want the latest and greatest software. Or simply because they like how the company produces that version.
LFS is for the real hardcore those who want to know every thing possible about linux and GNU and who have the machines and time todo so.
While the BSD's are for those who prefer to go even more UNIX than Linux or want extremely secure systems.
Is this Mdk/Suse-Gentoo-Debian trail real? - *Yes*. Is it the end of the
trail? - *No*. Beyond Debian lies BSD, MacOS, and our best guarantees of
keeping "Linux" OSS *free* against the pressure of the RedHat- Novell-
Xandros.. -M$ commercial dynamic. This is important, it is why we have
"Linux", and it is best targetted, imho, by acknowledging the GNU/Linux
flag. GNU/Linux offers the best roadmap to developing both the programmers
and the software essential to a *free* future.
As for MacOS X it's not helped Apple too much (probably because it's ppc rather than x86 and expensive (hardware wise)) and I note that Apple sold more iPods last year than computers. If any thing there seems to be more of a make Linux like OSX than move to OSX trend happening.
hm with the recent news.
MacOSX "borrows" all sorts of stuff from small companies. Then linux borrows the user interface ideas from MacOS X.
GNU/Linux User Group is precisely to bolster the efforts of this Gentoo
core. For the past year they have borne most of the organising work of CLUG
as a sub-group, & they urgently need help if "Linux" is to progress
locally.
More like those users who always were core to the group and pushed things because of there interest in linux etc moved to gentoo because it offered them a resonable compramise between MDK/SUSE and LFS. No doubt the rest of us should help more but gentoo's got little to do with it I think.
Let us dump our "Linux" prejudices post-haste, and acknowledge GNU/Linux as
the most market-ready & variegated FLOSS necessary to ensuring the future
of 'free computing'
As for GNU, Linux makes use of GNU tools the compiler and various other utilities and FSF ideas. But much of the OSS software (Kde, Gnome, OO.org, TheGimp) seems to have been developed firstly for Linux rather than GNU and should linux not have existed I'd doubt much of that software would. Linux would still no doubt exist with out GNU (after all there are other compilers and tool chains and any one can produce develop a licence (eg GPL theres enough of them after all and some are older than GPL)) but would GNU still exist or at least be as mainstream if it wasn't for Linux?
Chad
Rik
-- GNU/Linux Users - charting the course prototype1: SuSE/Fedora-Debian/Gentoo/LFS-BSD/Hurd
