🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> "Rachel" == Rachel Polanskis <rachel@virago.org.au> writes:

  Rachel> I will be severely disappointed if Netscape gets totally
  Rachel> assimilated by the Linux community, given their penchant for
  Rachel> completely reinventing traditional UNIX ways of doing
  Rachel> things, at the expense of portability.

IMHO now that Linux has switched to glibc version 2, the shoe is on
the other foot.  Linux programs including linux/*.h simply don't
compile any more.  And I should add that there are now complete
glibc2-based distributions, so these programs have been ported (if
required) already.

IMHO those programs that were gratuitously nonportable deserved to be
broken.

  Rachel> I use Motif for lots of things, and GTK (for example) for
  Rachel> just one - GIMP.  What a waste of space.  I have a program
  Rachel> that uses Xforms.  It's the only one.  What a waste of
  Rachel> memory and space.  I also have a program that uses Qt - just
  Rachel> one program.  Also a waste of space.

Yes.   Sometimes an outright winner in a milti-horse race is a good
thing.  An exception to the "variety is good" mantra of the Unix
crowd.


  Rachel> Motif might be horrible (personally I like it, and can't see
  Rachel> what the fuss is about) but it's a *standard* library that
  Rachel> can be found on nearly all commercial UNIX OS's - if you
  Rachel> don't have it, it's not hard to come by.  So what if you

But it *is* expensive.

  Rachel> have to spend a few dollars for it.  It came free with
  Rachel> Solaris, so I'm happy.  If I had to use linux as a desktop
  Rachel> console there's no way I would not have Motif on there, even
  Rachel> if I have to fork out AUD100...

I use Linux for things thich are not very X; for example network
servers.  I don't think it is appropriate to purchase Motif for
these.  However, I might occasionally still run X.  Still having
decent-looking GUI programs is nice.

  Rachel> If Netscape goes the way of 10,000 other Linux GUI projects,
  Rachel> I'll just stick to the standard source tree, and conserve my
  Rachel> disk space for the shared objects I'll use the most...

The decision by Linux distribution vendors to ship Gnome (i.e. GTK)
will weigh the scales heavily.   I suppose this isn't an irreversible
decision, and SuSE are shipping KDE.   But if I had to bet, I know
which way I'd have gone.

  Rachel> A good Linux programmer is a portable UNIX programmer.

IMHO anybody deliberately makign a program nonportable has failed to
learn one of the lessons of the success of the Linux kernel; the
secret to good testing is having many people use your code in a
greater variety of ways than you could possibly so do yourself.