[Wolves] Promoting Linux

[Aquarius]

Matthew Revell spoo'd forth:
> On Fri, 2003-05-09 at 13:35, fizzy wrote:
> 
>> I would refer you to the talk that Daniel someone (aq
>> will say who) gave on the short comings of linux/unix
>> at HAL.
> 
> You got that Aq?

His name was Hugh Daniel, and he's the lead on the FreeS/WAN project.
 
>>  Basic example - man, someone needs to make an
>> english version of that.
> 
> What's that?

"The Tragedy of Software Quality in OS/GPL systems" was the name of the talk.
Daniel complained about the shoddy state of Free Software in vitriolic terms; 
the software gives up the ghost with meaningless error messages, and doesn't 
try to help. In essence, there should be three messages for every error: the 
one we get now, a longer one explaining what it means, and a longer one again, 
explaining what to do about it. Anything in the "what to do about it list" 
that the computer can try on its own without your help, it *should* try to see 
if it worked, and then tell you about it afterwards.
See http://www.kryogenix.org/writings/tech/detail for some notes around the 
subject that I wrote a while back.
 
>>  Bambam would argue that what
>> needs to happen is for us to write a new operating
>> system from scratch, i would disagree but hey...
> 
> Whatever happens OS wise in the future, Linux is the best alternative we
> have at the moment. Was BeOS any good, anyone?

Yes, actually. If you haven't read it already, you should read Neal 
Stephenson's "In The Beginning Was The Command Line" 
(http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html), which isnot only an excellent 
essay on operating systems from the author of Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, 
but also goes into a bit of detail on the BeOS.

Aq.

-- 
Something must be Done
This is Something
Therefore, This must be Done
        -- The Thatcherite Syllogism