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

[Jonathan Barber]

On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 07:38:46PM +0100, Jonathan Riddell wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 06:58:19PM +0100, Andrew Clayton wrote:
> > On Mon, 2003-07-21 at 17:44, jim wrote:
> > > I would love to see a preinstalled version of linux to compaire with 
> > > windows preinstalled.
> > 
> > www.dnuk.com
> > www.xinit.co.uk
> > 
> > are two...
> > 
> > 
> > > I had to reinstall Redhat yesterday but it was pretty fast for a clean 
> > > install. Windows XP and 2K both take a long time.
> > > Mind you I still wounder about the ease of installing software once you 
> > > get your computer home for new users comparied to windows.
> > 
> > Hmm, some kind of install shield wrapped around rpm/deb, would do the
> > trick.
> > 
> > Though if you have an rpm or deb, it's pretty easy anyways...
> 
> Unfortunatly the lack of binary compatibility means you have to get
> the exact right .rpm or .deb for your distribution version.  

Eh? ELFs been the standard executable format for donkeys years now on
Linux. 

If you're referring to shared library dependencies then that's
true, but its a problem that Windows has had for ages as well with it's
DLLs, and I'm not sure there is a good solution for any platform, apart
from building everything statically or including the required shared
libraries with every package, which defeats the point of them being
shared.

> Plus dependency resolution is always going to be less than perfect for
> programmes which arn't included in your distributions CDs or a handy
> apt archive.  At least unless the package contains all staticly linked
> libraries like they do on windows.
> 
> Windows has binary compatibility from 1995 pretty much, Mac can still
> run programmes from 1985.  You just can't get on GNU/Linux.  Which
> makes it a lot easier on the developers of course.

See above. Binary executables are still compatible, shared libraries are
not, this is true for all platforms. Windows programs have certainly not
always used static linking, and there was a period when there was large
amounts of pain resulting from this, mainly because there was no version
information held in the file name, so different versions overwrote each
other.

As has been remarked, Linux executables that interface with the kernel
will not run correctly if they use calls that no longer exist. But this
is also true of Win95 vs. NT.

To comment on the majority of the rest of this thread (which is
impressively large BTW) I can't help but feel that the argument
is comparing apples and oranges.

Windows is provided by a single entity, the software that you get
off the CD is supposed to be left alone. Change it at you peril. Yet for
some reason this is supposed to be different for Linux distributions
[1].

People install random crap, change critical libraries without knowing
what it is they're are doing, and then blame Linux when it all goes
horribly wrong, and they're surprised!

But this is exactly the same thing that happens with Windows, except
magically rebooting the box twenty times and reinstalling the same
driver over-and-over again is unlikely to help with Linux.

I guess I don't see much difference between the Windows and the Linux
"experience" (although as a developer, Linux makes things a lot more
productive), both are lacking in the same areas and both will continue
to, because software/hardware is bloody hard and it's too complex for
any simple solution. 

[1] I don't hold that any of the distribut(ors|ions) are comparable
    with Microsoft or Apple, they just don't have the same control
    over the core software. And for the hardware they don't have control
    over it, or the vendors bending over backwards to write drivers for
    them [2].
[2] Normal exceptions to generalisations apply.
-- 
Jon