On Fri, 2004-03-12 at 19:44, Sean Cohen wrote:This is an argument I always hear, and I always disagree with. There are so many distributions simply /because/ of the nature of open source. If someone has an idea, they fork a project, or start a new one. The fit survive, and the rest die out. In terms of evolution, there are constantly hundreds of new mutations, but only the fit survive. Witness the success of gentoo, and the stuttered development of (say) sourcerer. It's also how innovation happens, if someone can't get their idea incorporated into an existing project then they can just start their own. If they are successful then they'll either succeed or be reincorporated into something more mainstream. Think back to the gcc vs egcs debacle. Back then it was a big controversy, but in hindsight we can easily see it as a necessary step to push forward a halted project. There will always be a "few big distros" for the masses (suitable for Aunt Tillie, as ESR loves to say) and they will always walk the straight and narrow, stabilising themselves for the long term. But the real innovation - As with Linux itself - will come from the sidelines, and will become mainstream based on their success. The "Big Three/Four/Whatever" distros will make sure everything works together.
Conversely, Linux gives you the choice of a thousand different customised cars, tough as a tank, with a full set of manuals, free access to spare parts for the rest of your life,
The number of choices of Linux is a "good thing"? Personally I think that we should be standing behind a few. I am glad that IBM did not roll their own because it would not have helped but confused things further.
The spare parts are free but you have to read a manual in Swahili to use them. I think it was ESR that raised this recently about cups configuration.
Also, what ESR failed to note in that analysis of CUPS was that he was setting it up on a Fedora Core 1 system. FC1 - from its RHL roots - has a corporate desktop heritage, and as such is supposed to administrated by qualified personnel. Had he tested a Mandrake, Xandros, Lindows, etc. system then the results would have been quite different. Remember, there are three responsibilities of a distribution:
1) Installation, 2) Default Settings, and 3) Configuration.
and it was points (2) and (3) that were relevant to what ESR was trying to do. It wasn't easy on a FC1 system because it's not designed for easy desktop administration.
Anyway, rant over. I'm tired. Have a good weekend. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
