[Lancaster] Help me select a distrob

[mp]

On Thu, 2006-04-20 at 18:04 +0100, Ken Hough wrote:
> mp wrote:
> >>I note that many of the reviewers have switched to SuSE. That must say 
> >>something.
> > 
> > 
> > Like 1000s of billions of flies eat shit, or people like to watch Jerry
> > Springer - what does that mean, mewonders?
> 
> I won't bother commenting.

that is a comment in itself.

> >>SuSE WORKS and WORKS very well. If, like me, you want an easily 
> >>installed/configured system that (contrary to comments made previously) 
> >>is easy to reconfigure, then it's up there with the best. It's a very 
> >>professional product.
> > 
> > 
> > Yea, it is a professional product, but more importantly, for me, it is a
> > huge corporate project of a company that makes hundreds of millions of
> > dollars on it, which is my reason for NOT wanting to choose it.
> > 
> > Ubuntu helps Debian, which is a community project that intersects with
> > other social movement projects, such as Indymedia, and that is why I
> > choose to use Ubuntu: it is grass-roots connected, yet it is very
> > user-friendly and up-2-date with the newest drivers and features.
> > 
> 
> I think that you will find that the major distros are all pretty well up 
> to date and can be kept that way by a visit to the relevant web site.

I meant why I choose Ubuntu over Debian, not over the other bleeding
edge alternatives.

> 
> > I realise that these are political reasons, and that they are not the
> > concern for the pure, objective engineer - but I believe that to be an
> > illusionary position anyway: everything is political; certainly software
> > is.
> 
> I really don't understand your arguments.

I can see that!

> Yes! NOVELL makes money out of 
> applying SuSE. Red Hat makes money out of Fedora. But let's remember 
> that they also fund development of these distros which all of us have 
> access to.

> Ubuntu is funded by Mr Shuttleworth via his own money and all credit to 
> him for that. Again we all have access to the distro.

But Ubuntu directly helps Debian, that was one of my points.

> There are now many businesses based on making money out of applying 
> Linux, but unlike the above, they do not directly fund Linux.
> 
> All of these activities are good for Linux as a whole and result in more 
> and more people being exposed to Linux and to developments being pushed 
> along. That's got to be good for all of us.

It is, but there is still a significant conceptual difference between a
community project and a coporate profit margin, whether you can
understand that argument or not.

> So let's not get hung up on fine words like "community project that 
> intersects with....".

You can get hung up whereever you like, for me -and a hell of a lot of
other people- these are real issues. I do want to get hung up, not on
"fine words", but in the reality that community projects are. These are,
of course, realities that mainly makes sense to someone who has
experienced them, worked with them, volunteered within them and someone
for whom social change is of greater importance then corporate greed and
state-of-the-art technology.

> If all had been left only to Debian, Linux 
> wouldn't be as far ahead WRT development as it currently is.

Yes, there has certainly been great achievements riding on the surplus
of capitalism for the free software movement - but as this necessity is
slowly disappearing, people who care can move away from those who are in
it for the money. And even if this is a half-hearted solution based on
Shuttleworth's unfair accummulation of wealth in the first place, it is
nevertheless half a step towards freedom from corporate control.

> From what I have read, until recently, the politics within Debian were 
> killing it!

Yes, there are always costs involved in having and maintaining
principles: options must be foregone and technical advance at any cost
rejected. However, such compromises are always there - many devices work
really well in Windows out of the box and some probably never will in
the GNU/Linux world without some extreme hacker skills. The question,
then, is where do you draw the line? With the arrival of Ubuntu we are
provided with an option that is one step closer to the the grass-roots,
one step further away from corporate greed.

The choice is yours, I am happily hung up on politics.

-mp