[Gllug] internet connection

[Peter Grandi]

>>> On Mon, 17 Oct 2005 16:08:09 +0100, David Bell
>>> <edos at hurlehouse.eclipse.co.uk> said:

edos> [ ... ] IMHO any Linux user who prefers messing about
edos> trying to connect via USB modems/routers in preference to
edos> an eth0 connection

I went down that path and started rewriting a messy driver that
actually mostly worked... But gave up.

This sort of topic is one of my pet peeves, so be forewarned,
but I think it is an important topic, so perhaps warbling about
it may help some of the readers of this list make wise choices
as to the hardware they buy. I have come to reckon that these
opinions may be somewhat interesting:

* Things often depend on statistical pressure more than
  absolute truth. ''Works'' is not a boolean predicate in
  practice.

* What really ''works'' in free sw is the result of (persistent)
  itches that have been scratched by people in a position to do
  something about it easily.

* Linux development is by and large done by people who now work
  in a luxurious, cost-no-object, infinite-bandwidth/RAM/...,
  corporate environment:

  http://WWW.BusinessWeek.com/technology/content/may2005/tc2005056_1017.htm
   «Looking at the top 25 contributors to the Linux kernel
    today, you'll discover that more than 90% of them are on
    the corporate payroll full-time for companies such as HP
    (HPQ), IBM, Intel (INTC), Novell (NOVL), Oracle, Red Hat
    (RHAT) and Veritas (VRTS), among many others.»

* What these people have on their desktop, or are asked to work
  on by their employer, is likely to work well and reliably,
  because that's what they have the best motivation and
  opportunity to fix.

  This currently means mostly Dell-style high end boxes
  connected to the 'net with high speed ethernet links, and some
  very high end servers (where most the vendors that employ
  these people make their money).

* Things that rarely impact these people are rather less likely
  to be actively maintained and fixed and polished.

  This includes swapping/VM, slow or small systems, and also
  things used in ADSL modems like the ATM subsystem or USB
  communication devices. However all these people will have
  high bandwidth ethernet links to routers, so that is far
  more likely to ''work'' well.

So, using an USB ADSL modem runs against the grain of some
pretty fundamental trends in Linux kernel development, and
using an Ethernet ADSL router runs with the grain.

Realistic people like Linus realize that things work out like
this pretty well, for example he previously chose Alpha as his
desktop machine and now a dual CPU G5 precisely to avoid the
dangers of a non-dominant configuration not being his itch:

  http://WWW.Linux-Mag.com/2005-01/
    "The Emperor Penguin" Monday, 03 January 2005

    «As mentioned, I use a PPC64 machine myself, at least partly
     because I wanted to have a more ''balanced'' development
     environment, so that not all of the major developers would
     be running on x86 variants.

     I personally think that the ''big three'' core variations
     are x86, ARM and PPC, and in x86 and PPC, I obviously
     include their 64-bit variations.»

So he has deliberately chosen to make PPC, 64 bit, big endian
and SMP (read: non x86, non 32-bit, non-little endian, non-UP)
itches that he must personally scratch in order to use his own
PC. Thank you Linus! (and I use a x86, 32 bit, LE, UP system,
but I appreciate his logic regardless).

edos> must be somewhat of a masochist ;-)

Uh, that reminds me of newbies that choose Gentoo ;-). (ducks)

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug