On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Eli Marmor wrote:
> Focus ALL the efforts to improve the compatibility issues:
>
> * kernel, device drivers, etc. I thinkthat the most important events
> for the friendliness of Linux in the recent years, were the launch of
> Linux 2.2, and the launch of Linux 2.4. And hardware is not the only
> compatibility issue related to the kernel: I think that the fact that
> NTFS is still only read-supported and not write-supported is severe.
> And there are many other examples.
>
I think Mandrake - latest versions is much better than what I previously
encounters. It detects and configures correctly all the hardware available
on the machine on several installation I head or experienced.
Furthermore, this is the i386 we are talking about. Like Moshe Zadka said
it is a collection of incompatible hardware components from different
vendors. Expecting it to work 100% of the time.
> * Better filters, from and *TO* Windows applications (for example,
> PERFECT filters for WORD, Excel, PPT, etc.). And support for MS
> protocols and formats (e.g. better emulation of Outlook in mail apps,
> so an organizational Exchange server can be used better by Linux
> users).
>
Agreed. "Let me switch back". This is always a good idea.
> * Migration from the current ASCII "CONF" format to binary format or
> database-based format. There are zillion GUI's for Apache (just as an
> example), and none is good, because it's impossible to develop a GOOD
> GUI for an ASCII-based configuration file. I guess that everybody is
> going to laugh at the "REGISTRY" and other MS stuff, but handling
> ASCII CONF files, with VI/emacs, when you are a dummy, is impossible.
> (I know that many people don't agree with this point, but I don't
> want to start a new argument, although I have a lot of experience and
> knowledge in this field; The last line remains the same:
> COMPATIBILITY).
>
Over my dead body! Config files stay ASCII, so they can be edited by hand.
If you want to write an abstraction layer above Apache's configuration
that will be less capabale than what Apache provides - fine - do that.
Most users who'll use it won't edit the Apache configuration by hand
anyways. Those who do will soon be told that it will be hard for them to
switch back.
I want to keep the configuration files as ASCII because that way the
terminal is the computer and I can ssh into it and do everything I can do
with the most sophisticated X/KDE environment. This is the UNIX way of
doing things and regardless of how much new power users (Aunt Tillie will
never play with the configuration or install anything) are frustrated by
it, we must keep it this way.
> Zillions of development hours were wasted on wrong issues, such as
> KDE/GNOME (although we all enjoy them); Now is the time to start
> working on the real problems, before it's too late!
>
Relax, Eli - it's never going to be too late. Linus has so many bigot
users who use it because it is a superior system technically and won't
trade it for anything else. I encountered someone who used Linux to test
Infiniband (network devices of 2-3 GBits) cards and used g++/gcc, Emacs,
CVS and other tools and did not know a thing about "./configure;make;make
install" or RPMs.
Whether we conquer the home computer market now, later or never makes
little difference, as Linux is already widely used and NT sucks in
comparison to it in much more ways that Linux does relative to it.
Children will have little problem using Linux instead of Windows. And they
will find editing obscure ascii files fascinating.
Microsoft spreads a lot of FUD regarding the supposed superiority of
Windows. But this FUD is becoming less effective on the general public who
see even not-too-intelligent users use Linux for quite some time. It all
depends what are you doing with Linux. I once upgraded half of my Mandrake
system by compiling the SRPMs. I'll doubt someone else who is not a
hard-core developer like me will need a newer package.
And I believe Microsoft wishes to switch to Linux where they have a well
defined POSIX, LSB, X and KDE or GNOME standard that has been around for
users, and they can build nice user-land applications over it, and get rid
of the over-engineered, over-complicated, under-understood, 50 million
LOCs and growing and pretty much dysfunctional operating system known as
NT. They can translate everything (consultants, certification programs,
services) to Linux, contribute about 5 developers in each one of its
layers for good measure (who'll develop open-source GPL/LGPL/BSD code) and
then have a nice stable interface that they can use for years, and compile
on every other UNIX or Linux version as well.
I'm not saying Windows is not superior to Linux in some respects. But as
a general rule programming for Linux is much less frustrating that with
the Win32 API, MFC, VB, COM or all the other Microsoft APIs, some of which
Microsoft can distribute for Linux as well. Once the Linux market is large
enough, we are going to see MS products for Linux, and Microsoft will
actually like it. Not working on NT means that they'll have lots of very
qualified, highly expert programmers that can be channeled to more
profitable ventures, or simply get ridden of.
Linux is not about getting rid of Microsoft. It's about changing the rules
of the game.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
> --
> Eli Marmor
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> CTO, Founder
> Netmask (El-Mar) Internet Technologies Ltd.
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Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups..."
"Wait a second - is n a natural number?"
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