[SLUG] Food for thought

[Jonathan Worthington]

"David Webster" <dave at dave-webster.com> wrote:
>
> What is the purpose and place of Unix and indeed Linux?
>
They are multi-user multi-task operating systems, built to securely and 
efficiently multiplex various available resources (CPU time, memory, etc). 
Their purpose is to do that, and their place is wherever you need to do 
that.  :-)

> What are it's strengths?
>
If we're still talking about operating systems...
Stable design, interface and concepts
Was designed to be used by multiple users from the very start
Standardization (POSIX, etc) and the standards are open
Open source/Free so no vendor lock-in (in the case of Linux, *BSD)
Many software packages will run on Linux/UNIX

> Is Linux really meant for the office and/or home user, or is it an OS by 
> coders/hackers for coders/hackers?
>
I think Linux is what people and organisations choose to make of it.  Saying 
it's an OS by coders/hackers disregards the involvement of bigger companies 
(IBM, Novell, RedHat), who are hiring the hackers/coders and using them to 
make Linux the server OS or desktop OS they want to be able to provide to 
their customers.  I think there are organisations with the will (and money 
to back it up) to make Linux distributions for the home/office user.

> If we take Linux to mean just the OS kernel.  Then take a GNU/Linux 
> distribution as the kernel, a GNU tool chain and a set of applications and 
> libraries, then is there much of an idealogical difference between running 
> open source on Windows or Linux?  Is the porting of GNU/Linux applications 
> harming the Linux OS?
>
Depends whether you care about running only Free Software.  Which is an 
idealogical standpoint, I guess.  My ideology is to use the right/best tool 
for the job that's available to me.  I use a lot of open source software 
because it is the best tool I can lay my hands on, and sometimes in my view 
the best tool there is even if I could have any tool I wanted.  And I write 
open source software for a number of reasons.

And no, I doubt the porting of GNU/Linux tools will harm the Linux OS. 
Imagine if Firefox was only available on Linux - it would have a fraction of 
its current userbase, and seriously, how many people would have moved to 
Linux to use a different web browser?  Heck, how many people would have 
known it existed if there wasn't a Windows version?

Amusingly enough, my most recent bit of open source hacking was getting 
Parrot support for Windows closer to being on par with its support for UNIXy 
OSes.  (With success - Parrot will now pass the entire regression test suite 
on Windows).

> Some food for thought.  I'd like to hear people's views on this.  I 
> suppose this links back to the previous post "Why Linux isn't ready for 
> desktops "
>
It often feels to me like people expect that when Linux can do all Windows 
can and is as user-friendly, people will just move over to it.  It won't 
work like that.  Firefox pulled a load of users off IE not because it was 
IE-user-ready, but because it was a significant enough improvement for 
people to be attracted to it and put in the effort to make the change.

Jonathan