[dundee] [jtsmoore@revolution-os.com: Re: Screening of Revolution OS]

[Mark Harrigan]

On Sat, Jul 19, 2003 at 01:32:57AM +0100, Andrew Clayton wrote:
> 
> Personally, I started using Linux, because I wanted to run UNIX on my
> PC. It grew from there....
> 
I'd say that's my real reason too but that's kinda wanting to really
understand how the computer works... or should work.

<snip>
> > can't be bothered to learn a little?! People should stay in their own little
> > controlled world without sharp edges and potholes in that case.
> > 
> 
> Which is why it's good to have the likes of SuSE, Red Hat, Mandrake and
> Connectiva around. They pay people to do the stuff that other hackers
> don't want to do. e.g docs, nicey nicey stuff etc
> 
> Also having the likes of IBM/HP/Oracle/SAP/CA  and many others, on board
> will only help this situation.
> 
Now this I find interesting, yes these fine companies do invest in
Linux but I don't see any that really invest in the user
experience. 

Redhat funds some Kernel work and developer side stuff for
Gnome especially work on ORBit the CORBA base behind Gnome's
architecture. Nothing directly user orientated.

SuSE works on server side stuff like the OS/390 port and Opteron
support. Nope.

Mandrake have a list of stuff they develop down the side of their home
page most of which is developer or high performance server
orientated. Don't think so.

Connectiva is hard to find out about but I'd assume they would help
Gnome in some way so they should be a good example. Maybe but I
couldn't find anything, didn't look very hard mind.

IBM, HP, Oracle, SAP and CA... I have a strange feeling this is all
very server side.

I agree that the application side is coming on very well but it's
still not intended for "Mr Average" when installed they look and work
in a way that will appeal to the average user but the install is
pretty daunting. What the hell are partitions? I only have a hard
disk? I've just bought a new graphics card/modem/cheap piece of
generic Taiwanese junk how do I install it? Taking the case off freaks
these people out enough, you then expect them to find out the chipset
their particular card has, find out if it has a driver, recompile the
kernel or modify XFree86? Not gonna happen. I want a piece of software
to do whatever, do I need the source, rpm or deb? How do I use these
files? Why isn't the latest version with magic feature A available for
my pc? You mean there's different platforms? I thought it was
all Linux? 

The only way to get around this is to change the architecture
significantly as Apple have done. XFree86... out the door, kernel
modification... gone, choice of desktop... nope, standard Unix
filesystem, no no no. The minute a big distro comes out like that
every Linux guru will be on Slashdot/Linuxnews calling it an
abomination that is against everything they've ever fought for. I
realise that gobolinux does the filesystem but that's a small
component.

Note I say A Distro, there can't be more than one, companies won't
sell identical distros because there's nothing to differentiate them
from the crowd and users won't stand for differences, look at the Unix
market of the 1980's to see why.

Unix was meant to be powerful, no-one ever said it should be easy, Linux
was created as a replica of that. The only reason Linux has these nice
looking apps is that nerds like shininess as much as power.

Mark