[Lancaster] Help me select a distrob

[Martyn Welch]

Personally, I prefer vi. 

Whoops wrong topic. :-)

Martyn

On Thursday 20 Apr 2006 18:31, mp wrote:
> 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
>
>
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-- 

Martyn Welch (welchm at comp.lancs.ac.uk)

PGP Key : http://ubicomp.lancs.ac.uk/~martyn/pgpkey/
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