Eric Ellison wrote:
Guys
Well since I started this, intentionally, and have read all the messages:
1. I did not want it to become a 'mini-flame-war' or battle of the
"operating Systems"
2. There is NO question that the FlexRadio Windows console, will now, and
until the end of the product life hold the product together. PERIOD!
3. Everyone 'skirted' around the question without really getting to the
PRIME reason.
"Linux people, because of the nature of Linux, are for the mostpart
brilliant loners, insofar as an OS's is concerned."
This may turn out to be true for our group. But, it most certainly is
not true in the wider Linux world.
If it was, nothing would get done and the dozens and dozens of packages
would not work on all the various levels and distributions that they are
actually observed to do. In fact, I would expect if we produced a
Linux console of any popularity, it would work, without significant
fuss, on many distributions simply as a by product of its development.
Everything else in the GNU world works that way anyhow. Did years
before there even _was_ a Linux. There'd be some dependencies, as
usual, but if your distro met the minimums, it would tend to work.
That's the norm.
Now, whether we, this group, can pull together a proper Linux group to
get a console done or not is an open question. I earnestly hope we can.
But, I've already cited my travails -- and I'm wondering how many share
them.
For me, it isn't about Frank's or Larry's console half so much as it's
about the half dozen wires I'd have to move around to switch between
them to switch from "operate" to "tinker" and back again.
As long as this is true, I submit that I (and, I suspect others
similarly equipped -- how many of us have multiple desktops, really) are
going to find Linux having limited appeal EVEN IF, by miracle, Flex
produced its own, closed source commercial version and sold it for a
nickel. Point here being, I don't think it is quite so much open source
holding things back as it may appear. People want the rig to work. I
do, at any rate. Moving on and off Linux is too hard, at least for me.
Unless, of course, some subset of us were willing to stop operating a
while and commit to Linux only, even if it means no 3X or whatever else
we want this year. I hope such a group forms (maybe contesters could do
it?). But that is what I think it will take. That and a willingness
(which I think is practically there -- who wants to replicate Frank and
Bob's great work?) to have a common core even if there is a Frank's
console and a Larry's console down the road a piece.
When Frank noted earlier today that the jsdr console already did what I
suggested, that's a big, important bit of news. It means your concerns
need not be showstoppers. They might be, just as a matter of
personalities and so on. But, _technically_, they need not and have not
stopped other similar open source projects from succeeeding.
Larry WO0Z
