At 23:12 12-03-01 -0600 some list member(s) wrote:
>largely due to the number of core components...
This, to me, is the key! Just what are the core components? In Linux World,
there is simply no fence between the core and the periphery (bone and meat,
court and yard...). Or, in our paradigm, between the operating system and
the applications. And Linux distribution vendors (very much including this
one) are going about in a completely misguided way: instead of attempting
to build this fence, they are ignoring it: a distribution may contain well
over 1000 components, all - apparently - of equal importance. And if any one
of them craps, it's Linux that crapped (in the mind of a non-technical user).
Unless the fence is built, Linus will remain a footnote in the history of
computing. Non-technical users will not migrate to an environment where
they must "solve" operating system problems; the operating system
SIMPLY MUST WORK out of the box. But it's not that 1000 components
must work out of the box. Quite to the contrary, user is prepared - and should
be given the opportunity - to select the applications (and yes, the application
vendors, commercial and othervise) that do, and reject those that do not.
If the operating system distributor (or vendor) is at the same time
application vendor, this can not happen.
It should finally be noted that - in slightly differnt way - this is also
Microsoft's achiles heel. Microsoft decided to blur the fence out of the
greed, and, by manipulate this blurred application/operating system
interface, establish the control in the application marketplace.
In doing so, it made it nearly impossible to write good applications;
and on the other hand, its own application offerings are of very low
quality. This creates the push that might provoke this long-awaited
mass-migration: non-tecnical user judges the environment by the meat,
not by the bone...
(no metter how much those of us on this list ~can~ detect a difference
between the bone-cancer ridden skeleton and a healthy one).
t.k.
Anthony K. Transportation Systems - no HTML mail please.
