On Sat, 2007-02-24 at 02:52 +1100, Steffen Kluge wrote: > On 22/02/2007, at 2:06 PM, Les Mikesell wrote: > > Macs do a nice trick. Aside from upgrading the same machine, if you > > buy a new Mac can connect your old one via firewire, boot it as a > > firewire target (they all do that) and it will migrate all your old > > settings (users/passwords etc.) and programs over. A new Intel Mac > > will even migrate older PPC programs over and continue to run > > them. That's a tough act to follow. > > I wish you hadn't said this, it makes me butt in to a thread > everybody has stopped reading anyway... > > I have a lot of respect for ESR, he's been one of the most vocal and > influential campaigners of Linux, and open source in general. I think > we (the open source community) do owe him a fair share of our current > status and credibility. > > It makes me sad to see a letter like this from him. It was clearly > written in a state of anger, and lacks all of his usual eloquence and > sharp logic. He obviously got fed up to a bursting point. > > I'm not going to even mention any of his particular arguments (other > than saying that RPM is brilliant, just rule in those sloppy > packagers), however I must say I've been harbouring doubts about the > future of Red Hat and Fedora myself. I can't really point my finger > at anything specific, but let me start by saying that I've been a > Linux-only user for about 13 years, much of that with RH/FC. And so > has most of my household. In the past couple of years this turf has > been invaded from two sides, though. > > Firstly, I replaced my firewall and Internet exposed servers with > OpenBSD boxes a couple of years ago. The OpenBSD camp are stuck-up > and hostile bunch, but with the sheer number of security patches my > Linux boxes required on a regular basis I just didn't feel > comfortable anymore to put them in the first line. > > Secondly, the desktops. I've immensely enjoyed the Linux game, making > the impossible happen, sticking it up to them (you know who), even > playing as an equal in a corporate Windows/Exchange environment. It > had cost me a lot of time and sweat but it was worth it. > > I'm getting older though, my days seem to get shorter and I need to > get stuff done. There isn't a lot of time for tinkering and fixing > stuff on the spot anymore. I needed something that just works most of > the time, without debugging. I've become a user, and as such joined > the rest of my family. My family had morphed into a Mac OS X > community some time ago (Linux was too hard and Windows was out of > the question), so I finally joined them and am now using Tiger on a > Mac as my primary desktop. > > After those two invasions I'm still running Linux on my corporate > desktop at work and on a few servers at home, and don't intent to > change that. But for day-to-day desktop/media/end-user stuff I've > pretty much given up on Linux. Now, you could blame that on Fedora, > but I don't think it would have turned out any different if I had > been using another distro. In the end, user experience wins, and > Apple appears to be the only player that fully groks this. > > Of course, Apple have an unfair advantage, they make their own > hardware... > > Please don't take this post as a pro-Apple rant, I was just trying to > express that people (other than just ESR) can become frustrated at > various aspects of a home computing environment that doesn't give the > user a star to steer by but seems to be chaotic and rudderless all > the time. I will certainly keep open-minded and closely follow the > Fedora project. > > Cheers > Steffen. I am amused by this whole discussion , somewhat reminiscent of the argument I got what I said FC6 was not "up to snuff". By the way I have had the same dependency missing problems under OS X using fink (really apt-get under the hood). -- Aaron Konstam <akonstam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
