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I
don't think the point was to make you look like and idiot nor to give you a
history lesson.
I have
to totally agree with R.B.E. (my grandma, what a long name you have!) on the
fact that as bad as most of the ubergeeks hate it, Linux is going to become a
business. I'll go a step further and say that it will become BIG business.
Having said that, I will say that Mark is completely correct when he states that
AOL has "bastardized" pretty much everything that they have touched. I,
personally, don't believe AOL will keep the interest of the Linux community
in mind if they do buy RH.
AOL
(as well as most of the larger IT companies), has seen the pocketbook of most of
the computer users... and it is deep. Geeks are a major "bottom-line factor" in
today's economy. With a new product coming out every 6 months, geeks push the
economy and the tech industry like never before. So, if the big thing for geeks
is Linux, it stands to reason (monetarily, anyway *** 5 syllabels, were did that
come from!!!***) that LARGE companies are going to make it a priority (with the
exception of MS, naturally).
The
thing that makes me wonder is, since RH is known more for being a server type
distro, would AOL leave it alone or would they add some of their
<sarcasm>"security features" that makes the AIM client such a joy to use
</sarcasm>. Or maybe they'll implement some of that "security" on future
distros of RH that are geared specifically towards the server environment, thus
making crackers happy and making linux security and stability a joke. I hope
that this is not the case.
Overall, the speed of Linux has been greatly overplayed
(I'm running RL, RH and Mandrake on an old 200Mhz, 128Mb RAM system and it
is painfully slow. I have run them on a PIII 450, 256Mb RAM and have not
been that impressed with the speed). But the stability cannot be overplayed
enough! That should be the focus of Linux in the corp environent. But the home
environment is totally different. Now, I know that the speed of Linux is based
more on the speed of processing, but my grandma does not care about how fast
some geek can run SETi... hell, I don't care about that!!! All we want to know
is, "Can I play Quake 3 on it without having alot of FPS issues?" (Disclaimer:
My Grandma does not play video games... arthritis, you know). My point is this:
The Linux community needs to decide if it wants to enter the home
user world or not. If it does, then pompous ubergeeks need to stop thumping
their chest about the "normal" user and how Linux doesn't need them (ask for
tech help on some of the Linux forums and see how many times you get, 'Why don't
you go back to MS, loser?') and start making the advanced features of Linux work
for the home user community. If this is "selling-out" (a term used far too
broadly these days), then SELL OUT. This does not mean that you have to play the
MS game! There are enough brilliant Linux people out there, so get up off of
your ass, and help make a difference!!!
It
seems to me that the folks at RL are doing just that. I say this to them, "GREAT
JOB!!!" Keep the good work coming.
Sorry
about the height of my soapbox,
Billy
Vines
Wow! Impressive! Especially the multisyllable
reference! Humm... Is someone hinting that I may be an idiot? Well, that just
may be true! But, the point I'm trying to get at here is that AOL has
absoluletely bastardized everything they have put their hands on since the day
of their inception, and taken advantage of less *technically savvy* users
for just as long with their marketing glitz. Red Hat is (in my humble opinion)
a great product. I'd hate to see it destroyed by a hack fest of an
operation like AOhell. I don't particularly care about the business, or the
money. Just the product. That's all. Plain and simple.
To be honest,
Robert, I'm not sure why you assumed *I* needed a history
lesson (SCOUnix? Yep...Been there, done that...), but thank you just the
same! ;-)
Have a great night!
-Mark
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2002 10:34
PM
Subject: Thoughts on DL
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Let's
not talk about "selling out" (re: possible purchase by AOL
or RH), but
about entrepreneurship (Hey, Ma! -- Look! More than
three
syllables!)
Several things motivate a business: Making money
(otherwise,
just work for someone else), offer a new product, better
service
or otherwise distinguishably (and hopefully better) offering for
the customers, the excitement of the challenge and perhaps a
wish to
see one's name in lights.
If RH "sells out" (based on interviews with
the founders of RH),
I would say it is most likely because they see
themselves as the
"leading edge" of the Linux movement and will like to
see it do
well in the marketplace and on the desktop. They've done
a good
job, but they've also bought into the "rush to market with the
latest" approach to their distribution and it's already caused a
number of embarrasing releases that wouldn't quite work. As I
understand their philosopy, a well-structured sale to AOL would
actually fit the vision they had when they started.
Joe's vision,
as he states it, is to accept that MS has done a
damn good job of
packaging and has had any number of really good
ideas (many of them
originally stolen from Unix and Apple), but
has put them together in a
package thatis both buggy and
appealing in its simplicity for the average
user.
Linux, until Joe, seemed primarily designed for the geek or the
technologically proficient (same thing, actually) -- a tiny
minority
of users. More and more people have had the vision of
producing a
distribution of linux that would appeal to the
average desktop
user. What was needed was a collection of
easy-to-use productivity
and entertainment products that
performed pretty much as
expected.
As recently as three years ago, all we could find were some
mediocre word processors, a few clumsy spreadsheet programs that
reminded me of the kinds available in the early 1980's, tons of
klutzy editors (sorry you emacs and vi fans -- but that's the
judgment of the vast majority of ordinary users), a few
graphics tools, nothing really useful for accounting and, in
general, a really nice operating system and not much else. Unix
on a desktop -- and not much else. (Except we did have
TeX.)
Within a year, we had Star Office 5.2 -- a really good and
usable word processor and spreadsheet application that I was
already
using, Moneydance -- a modest but powerful accounting
package, and some
GUI based text editors that really worked.
Today, we have some really
good applications, Kapital (not quite
there, folks, but, within a month
or so will be) for accounting
and I have absolutely no need for Windows
for anything except my
taxes.
I'm running, not on the latest and
greatest, but on an old 200
MHz machine with only 128MB RAM and 4GB of
hard disk space.
It's as fast as any Windows programs, is rapidly
losing its
clumsiness, and, thanks to Joe, not overcrowded with
applications I will not use in a month of Sundays. Instead, I
have a lean, mean and fantastically well designed desktop
program
with the ability to add other programs that I would
want, but without
having options I don't give a damn about.
In other words, Joe has
fulfilled the early (and now abandoned)
dream of Caldera's desktop
installation plus taken some of the
beneficial lessons from MS.
Rather than condemn MS for bugs and
complexities and really difficult
administration tools, he has
praised them for their successes in getting
so many people to
using computers productively and entertainingly and
brought many
of their best features to Linux.
And it keeps
getting better -- month by month. MS gets better
and gets more
bugs with each distribution. Its security stinks
(way too many
holes and why they still have Outlook Express --
perhaps for "if you use
it, you had better look out" -- I have
no idea) and its memory
management leaves just a little bit to
be desired. I mean, I hate
those crashes and page faults.
I'm excited by what Joe is
doing. But I don't jump on RH for
"selling out." That's only
the way it looks if you think of any
big business as an enemy (why
anyone would think that way, only
their psychiatrist would know).
In fact, it is my hope that
this new company becomes huge and
successful. If it does, it
will only stay that way by keeping its
present vision. If it
doesn't, if it becomes buggy and clumsy,
someone else will
replace it.
That's the way of
business.
- --
Robert Black Eagle
Bus. Site: http://www.desertsilver.com
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