🚀 go-pugleaf

wbarnes@phoenix.lhup.edu (Wally Barnes) writes:

> 
> Dr. Who (mind@ripco.com) wrote:
> : camp.  I'm quite sick of seeing that Linux has become a trendy "Generation
> : X" operating system.  The fact of the matter is that Linux is doing more
> : or less what Microsoft does.  Even though it's not commercial, it
> > certainly behaves that way.  Everyone is too busy trying to support every
> > new crap hardware device that comes out on the market, but is not giving
> > much thought to improving what already exists (ie: the "good" hardware
> > support).  Do we *really need* plug and pray support under Linux?  I
> > think not.  Especially judging by the typically poor quality of that
> : type of hardware to begin with.
> 
> 
> I thought the whole idea behind the open system mentality was to enable the
> growth of the OS by letting people add what they need/want.

Not really. The whole idea behind the open system mentality is to allow
vendors to provide compatible solutions. This encourages competition as
the primary benefit, and also allows interoperability as another really
cool benefit.

For example, you can buy your routers from Cisco, your software off Sun
and your main box from Fujitsu, then get extra hard disks from IBM. All
this is possible because of open standards, like TCP/IP, the Sparc arch
and SparcStation specs, the POSIX and SPEC standards, SCSI, etc.

> Linux isn't
> the newest victum of Microsoft. If anything it is becoming the victum of
> people who have forgotten the basic principle behind Linux/Free BSD etc..
> "If you want it, the code is there. Go develop it yourself."

In some people you see this: people who like to leech, and see Linux as
a "Windows Killer" that they should cheer for, but not actually do work
for (that'd be getting your hands dirty!). But overall I think there is
a lot of very good hackers putting their hearts into Linux.

I find a new cool project every week, and every odd week I even see one
of them get something working :-) There's still a lot of development, a
lot of it is really good development too. Though truth be told if I see
another hacker write a mail reader without using mh, I'll scream!

-- 
The idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able to properly use
a given tool without training or understanding is even more wrong for
computing than it is for other tools (eg automobiles, airplanes, guns
or power saws).