On Sun, 29 Mar 1998, Mat Serwas wrote:
> The rest of this is directed toward group #2:
Oh good, that's me. :)
I think we should change the name of the list to redhat.advocacy and gate
it to USEnet. :)
> I read the comp news groups alot and can say there is as much traffic
> relating to maintaining the RedHat OS as there is for the other OS's.
Probably more. But considering that the percentage of people who use
RedHat as opposed to some other Unix is much more slanted toward amateurs
and converted DOS/Novell types. Solaris and HP/UX and whatever users are
composed mostly of "experienced" Unix admins. So you see a lot of
questions on Red Hat maintenance that an "experienced" Unix admin would
already know, plus you see a lot, a whole lot, of PC hardware issues,
which don't affect most other Unices such as Solaris, AIX, HPUX, IRIX,
etc. (FreeBSD and the other x86 Unices obviously being an exception).
> 1. Can RedHat perform tricks/routines that other OS's can not? No.
Not at a fundamental level, no; Linux is pretty much Linux wherever you go
when it all comes down to it. They include a lot of extra utilities for
administration, however, which is about as good as you can do without
rewriting the whole OS.
> 2. Does RedHat have a better selection of programs to choose from? No.
They try, that's why they bundle all this stuff with their distribution.
I think Caldera's bundle is a lot better, but it also costs more. Linux
as a whole has a well known issue with getting the "large commercial
companies" to port software to it. It is not technical problem, it is
simply a matter of inertia more than anything else. They figure "if they
won't spend $2000 on an OS, why would they spend $2000 on my program?"
> 3. Do programs written for RedHat run better than their counterparts in
> other OS's? No.
But programs designed for RedHat are much easier to install via the RPM
mechanism.
> 4. If RedHat is free, I would think there would be a stampede to it just
> get our from under the thumb of Bill [which is the reason I bought
> RedHat in the first place]? I see no stampede.
Why not? There are 6 million Linux installations in the world. A large
portion of them use Red Hat.
> 5. I like all my programs in their own root DIR. I may be wrong on this
It's not the Unix way. It is a bad thing, because a Unix "tree" structure
is much easier to scale. That's why Unix can be 30 years old and continue
to remain a top quality high-end OS, because it was designed to scale. It
runs everywhere from 386's to Crays because of it. Scattering programs
around on the hard drive willy-nilly (or even just agreeing they should
all be in one place) is not conducive to this model.
> 6. If RedHat is so great, why can't it fix itself when something goes
Well, uhm, because it just can't. :)
> I think OS/2 might be ahead on that count. "ding:,, attn user, "we"
> have
> a error msg # 20xv3847 which is "the right mouse button is sticking and
> the system believes the culprit is syrup [Aunt Jemima]. Solution is to
:) OS/2's error handling is very good.
OS/2 : You have a problem. Here is how you fix it.
Windows: You have a problem. I can't fix it and you can't either,
because I'm not going to tell you what it is.
Linux: Fatal signal 11.
Unix in general tends to assume the user is knowledgeable and can take
care of himself. There are at least three projects underway to correct
this deficiency, one of them is the Red Hat Advanced Development lab.
(Linux differs from Windows in that at least you can look up what "Fatal
signal 11" means.)
> 7. Your system crashes [don't tell RedHat doesn't]. Can you boot from
> Syquest, Iomega, CD-rom removeables to reload the OS?
Why not? It doesn't. ;)
The answer, BTW, is yes. But it usually takes a little bit of
preparation, although the Red Hat CD is bootable on systems whose BIOS's
support that feature.
> 8. Why are there so many flavors of UNIX? I really want to know.
It's historical. Every hardware manufacturer who wanted to sell UNIX
wrote their own version, and they all turned out a little different. This
was long before the days of CHIRP and POSIX, and designers just didn't
know any better (or care). Only recently has it been revealed just how
cumbersome it is.
Don't forget, for its day Unix was a marvel of portability. Everything
before then was mainframes running one version or another of DEC or IBM
software, most of which were incompatible, having different system calls
and user interfaces than other versions of that software, much less each
other.
In the modern era, interoperability has become a much greater concern, and
efforts are underway to make the systems more compatible (such as POSIX)
or even to run each other's software (iBCS, for example, allows Linux,
FreeBSD and SCO to run each other's apps, sometimes).
> 9. Right now, I am editing sectors on a disk to restore lost partitions.
Ouch.
> than backing up the MBR [which all OS's can do], what snazzy utility
> does RedHat have to facilitate this? The only reason I say this is
It doesn't. What's wrong with backing up the MBR?
> MS has/requires tons of utilities. As a matter of fact, there are
> businesses out there thriving in making maintenance utilities for MS.
> So, are they built into RedHat?
Most of the useful ones are. Many utilities (such as virus checkers) are
irrelevant under Linux. Defragmentation is handled automatically by the
kernel. Disks are checked for errors automatically at boot time. Lost
allocation units and crosslinked files etc. are an artifact of bad OS
design on the Microsoft platform and simply don't happen under Linux (if
they do, of course, the boot time check will find them). I don't think
it's possible for them to be created in any way other than an improper
shutdown (Linux cleans up after programs which die unexpectedly, whereas
Windows, basically, doesn't). Linux already includes facilities for
backup/restore using tar, ftape, and BRU. What exactly are you looking
for?
> 10. I see no difference between RedHat as an OS workstation or Server.
> Why the argument? It's just the hardware configuration.
Right. That's one of the things about Linux that is so neat.
> 11.The only man I know that could make RedHat a success is Bill Gates.
Aggghhh! Wash out your mouth. :)
> And he might just be in the market with the way things are going with
> NT, so I hear/read.
I think Microsoft's contract with SCO prevents them from making,
distributing, or really having anything at all to do with the OS end of
Unix development. They can still make application software for Unix, but
of course they don't particularly want to do that.
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