View Single Post
  #5   (View Single Post)  
Old 11th July 2008
drl's Avatar
drl drl is offline
Port Guard
 
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 19
Default

Hi.

There are situations where one might find oneself looking in three places for information in Linux.

For example, if you look at man sort, you get some information, but no examples. If you then turn to info sort, it's the same information. However, if you look at info coreutils sort, you'll find a more complete description and a number of examples. In some situations, there is even a fourth area, /usr/share/doc/package_related_name that contains information.

I suspect part of that is due to so many cooks, there being smaller groups associated with the BSDs. One exception is Debian, which has a well-developed set of policies, even though it seems to have a lot of developers.

I like the stability of the BSDs and Solaris, but they don't seem to add new ideas as quickly as I would like. There will always be tension between stability and improvement, and with the pace of change.

There is some consolidation going on now in the Linux world, and some of the discussions related to it center on that tension. Xandros may be currently the largest Linux vendor by virtue of the ASUS EEE laptop situation. Linspire was recently purchased by Xandros. In forums of both distributions, there is much unhappiness because both distributions seem very old compared to, say, Ubuntu. There are other factors at work, of course. A year or so ago, the Xandros community was vibrant -- at least the forum was very lively. Then came the agreement between Xandros and Microsoft. A few months later, when I visited the forum, often I was the only person there. Many people moved to http://www.pclinuxos.com/index.php and to http://loscompanion.com/forums/index.php .

I'm not sure how often changes come around in the BSD world, but it's not unusual for a lot of changes to be propagated in Linux. For example, in the Debian testing area (lenny), it is not unusual to have 25-50 packages updated in a week. Many people accept that situation, others prefer the more stable area (currently etch).

So, while I am often disappointed with the balance of that tension, I'm happy to have choices. With the popularization of virtualization, people can have their cake and eat it, too.

And so it goes ... cheers, drl
Reply With Quote