[Cumbria] CUMBRIA LUG -- Red Hat cp SuSE

[Ken Hough]

>
> Ken Hough wrote:
>
>> With regard to 'vi', this does seem a bit OTT for modifying a line or 
>> two in a small script.
>
>
> On the contrary, it is always worth being familiar with vi as you are 
> pretty much assured of it being installed on every box you will come 
> across. And after the mild learning curve (for 'mild' read  'forget 
> what you know about every other editor') editing a line in a script is 
> just as straight forward as every other editor. The current LUG 
> webpage was created completely in vim, and is updated remotely with 
> the same. Far easier than "Edit - Save - FTP - Test - Repeat..."

Good point! vi is always there. I've just got used to small snappy 
editors. If I am doing any serious text editing, then I go to something 
like Kate.

>
>> I don't accept that new major distros should be allowed to have 
>> (serious?) bugs. Of course this will happen, but SuSE v8.0 is fairly 
>> major and seems to be pretty good -- I haven't managed to rubbish 
>> anything on it yet! Any major distro today must be pretty good on 
>> release or it's going to get hammered.
>
>
> Every .0 release of the major distributions always incorporate a few 
> major changes, and due to the nature of the distributions there will 
> always be bugs. And most of the hammering for RH 8.0 was about the 
> desktop so the rest of distro can't that bad then...
>
>> Why should Red Hat 'b*****' about with KDE and Gnome when the rest of 
>> the Linux fraternity concentrates on getting the distro right? 
>> Probably for selfish (commercial) reasons.  I believe that if this 
>> attitude proliferates we'll end up with a lot of different versions 
>> of Linux (etc) as happened to Unix.
>
>
> They are doing it to present a 'unified' desktop to the users. Users 
> (especially new ones) do not really care what window manager or 
> desktop environment they are using and would simply prefer things to 
> work. They also don't expect that if they are logged into a KDE 
> session and fire up a Gnome based application that they will display 
> differently.

Some prefer KDE, others prefer Gnome and on lightweight hardware 
something like icewm is more appropriate. But that's one of the nice 
things about Linux --- Choice!
I am finding that the more that I try Gnome, the more I like KDE3.

>
> 'the rest of the Linux fraternity concentrates on getting the distro 
> right'? That doesn't sound much like the Linux fraternity - not enough 
> in-fighting... :)
>
> Red Hat were never going to make everyone happy with their strategy, 
> but look at this way - they are trying something different, whilst 
> other distros carry on with their 'favorite' desktop environment and 
> seemingly bundle others as an afterthought. At the end of the day, as 
> KDE and Gnome are open source, they can do what they like with them. 
> If people don't like it they can use something else.
>
> Whilst we are 'distro-bashing', aren't SuSE tools like YAST 
> proprietry? Why are they so special? 

Yes! The installation tools are proprietry (that's what we pay for), but 
Linux, or rather GNU/Linux is not and I hope will remain so.

>
> Ah, flame wars. Always keep you warm on a cold winters night... ;) 

Nothing like it!  But, a meeting of differing opinions can be very 
constructive / educational  -- as long as we don't take it too seriously.
I've always been a bit 'up front' in the way I explore things (probably 
something to do with my Scouse background) --- never would have made it 
as a diplomat!

Ken Hough