Re: Commercial programs in Debian
jmt wrote: Sorry for the disturbion but I would like to mention some things. I have been thinking about if it was possible to set up some bug list as a kind of quality assurance for commercial programs in Debian. Most commercial programs I have seen are only said to be compatible with RedHat and sometimes SuSe. Mind that most commercial programs, targeted for RedHat or SuSe, are generally i386 ONLY ! Second point : commercial program editors want to rely on some king of system certification ; even if what RedHat or SuSe provide is far from satisfaction, it can take place in a business process, as a mention to good practice. Third : what made Apple fortune : a very narrow hardware selection ! If a commercial program had to rely on Well, amd64 is a much more narrow platform than i386, which has various enhancements for i586, i686, as well as lots of little issues for special i386-compatible processors. If you want to run on all of i386, then you can't take advantage of i586, i686. If you go for max performance (i686), then it won't run on i586 which is still popular. amd64 does not yet have such problems. Helge Hafting -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Commercial programs in Debian
Gudjon I. Gudjonsson wrote: Hi again Thank you Goswin and Alexander for nice ideas. I will do something into these directions. About the idea below. Debian and more or less Linux has now been banned from my institution even if I have been able to solve a lot of peoples problems with it. Looking at a guy copying plots directly from some commercial program into Word on a Windows computer, 10 to 100 times faster than I can do with gnuplot makes me wonder if I am on the right track. The programs that I have mentioned need to work on Debian and they need to work better with open source programs if I will be able to continue use Debian or even Linux for the desktop applications. I could switch to Windows, get a perfect GUI and run the calculations on a Linux backend as most people do. It might save me time. I don't know gnuplot - perhaps that one is particularly tricky. Stuffing graphichs into a wordprocessor document on linux tends to be easy enough though. Now, microsoft is good at making things seem userfriendly, but the guy above have at least one problem. He's stuck with mediocre word quality documents. The open source world does much better than that with latex, and you may use lyx as a frontend to latex to get the userfriendly part. Helge Hafting -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Commercial programs in Debian
On Tuesday 09 May 2006 00:17, Sam Varghese wrote:
On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 06:19:44PM +0200 Francesco Pietra said:
On Monday 08 May 2006 18:34, A J Stiles wrote:
On Monday 08 May 2006 15:46, Francesco Pietra wrote:
However, there is scientific proprietary software from small
softwarehouses that has decades of experience and development, is
sold with accompanying source code, and solves problems that debian
is quite far from solving. Again, don't ask me the names because I am
not advertising (and I am user not softwarehouse) but I believe that
such softwarehouses deserve full support. They have my support.
There is an important distinction between software like this {the
traditional model, dating back to the days when Source Code was the
only thing any two systems might have in common}, and proprietary,
closed-source software which is distributed as a binary executable only
{and requires a homogeneous execution environment; something which has
only really become possible recently with the dominance of the 80%86
architecture and Windows}. It's not Free software because it can't be
distributed freely; but at least the vendor respects the purchaser's
right to inspect and modify the Source Code
I would like to intervene again about the last paragraph. I read your
statemente It's not Free software... but at least.. as placing Free
Software at a a higher (socially higher) level than Proprietary Software
(meant in the terms I specified above). If I read correctly, I disagree.
I disagree because that Proprietary Software allows me to do reseach work
that I could not otherwise carry out. The inventor who built the
softwarehouse lives from his invention and from his constant improvement
of the product (which generally is, how you could easily imagine, small
business). Would you not agree to support him? He does great service to
the society. (again I declare not to have any commercial involvment with
any software house, although from time to time i helped to improve the
product by using it, while I never claimed to get that acknowledged
because I live from chemical research).
Do you really believe that a business is set up for any other purpose
than to make money? The person running the business may create good
products but that is a matter of his/her own business practices; for
every good product there are 99 card-sharpers.
When it comes to software and hardware, businesses try to get and keep
your business using lock-in. Period. That their software and hardware
does what you need is purely incidental.
Having spent the last two days trying to source a laptop for my teenaged
daughter, I can tell you that I have about had it with the manufacturers
and the way they literally force you to buy what they have on display.
They can do this because apart from the drive and the memory, everything
else is built according to their own design. If the laptop had been
commoditised the way the PC is, there would be an entirely different
situation.
Free software does not lock you in because the standards are open.
Sam
--
Sam Varghese
http://www.gnubies.com
The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts
from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.
My PGP key: http://www.gnubies.com/encryption/sign.txt
We are talking about different worlds, different sectors of the world. The
world I alluded to does exist. Surely as one of rare spots but it exists as I
described.
francesco
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Re: Commercial programs in Debian
On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 08:17:59AM +1000, Sam Varghese wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Do you really believe that a business is set up for any other purpose than to make money? Some are. Some are not. Making money is a constraint -- the business that does not make money vanishes from the face of the earth. It may not be the purpose. But the founder of a business may well be following his bliss in setting up the business, because he really *wants* to paint water colours, write software, build houses, etc. So he sets up a business doing that. And if luck is with him and he does the necessary financial analysis the business prospers. Some people, when they tired of the work, when it ceases to be a joy, closed their prosperous businesses find something else to do. -- hendrik -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Commercial programs in Debian
On Tuesday 09 May 2006 15:10, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 08:17:59AM +1000, Sam Varghese wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Do you really believe that a business is set up for any other purpose than to make money? Some are. Some are not. Making money is a constraint -- the business that does not make money vanishes from the face of the earth. It may not be the purpose. But the founder of a business may well be following his bliss in setting up the business, because he really *wants* to paint water colours, write software, build houses, etc. So he sets up a business doing that. And if luck is with him and he does the necessary financial analysis the business prospers. Some people, when they tired of the work, when it ceases to be a joy, closed their prosperous businesses find something else to do. -- hendrik At any event, because the product is excellet and has so long an experience (having been transferred from mainfraime to the first IBM PC at those early days and then reshaped for unix) to have no good competitor, it makes money. Not the money Gates has made but would you like to be a Gates? I do not, as I would not like to be a Berlusconi. Beg pardon for the comparison between the two, it is not deserved. It is not deserved to compare selling goods or smoke. francesco -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Commercial programs in Debian
On Friday 05 May 2006 06:53, Gudjon I. Gudjonsson wrote:
Hi
Sorry for the disturbion but I would like to mention some things.
I have been thinking about if it was possible to set up some bug list as a
kind of quality assurance for commercial programs in Debian. Most
commercial programs I have seen are only said to be compatible with RedHat
and sometimes SuSe. Such a list might make it more interesting for the
companies to port their applications to Debian and it would definetly make
my life easier:).
This is a most un-Debian-like thing to be doing. Instead of running non-Free
software on Debian, we should be seeking to create real Free alternatives
{although, demanding source code from vendors would certainly not hurt. I
have nothing in principle against the use of reasonable force in the course
of obtaining Source Code.}
Availability of Source Code is *the* single biggest reason why so much of the
software that is found in Debian can run on so many different architectures
{second only to NetBSD if I recall correctly?} That diversity is something
we should be proud of. *Un*availability of Source Code has already destroyed
a certain other operating system: every new release has to support a growing
heap of legacy code, and every insecurity ever exploited by a legitimate
program has to remain.
--
AJS
delta echo bravo six four at earthshod dot co dot uk
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RE: Commercial programs in Debian
You're both right...
Of course we want to promote free software, but without compatibility
with commercial applications, many solution stacks are missing key
components. That excludes Debian in an area where SUSE and Red Hat are
proud to stand up and say they support Oracle, SAP, or whatever.
The Debian way is to promote the availability of source code, but is
that more important than worldwide adoption in general? The focus
should be on capturing the audience first, and converting commercial
ISVs to the open source model after you have a captive audience. Am I
wrong?
-Original Message-
From: A J Stiles [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, May 08, 2006 1:17 AM
To: debian-amd64@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Commercial programs in Debian
On Friday 05 May 2006 06:53, Gudjon I. Gudjonsson wrote:
Hi
Sorry for the disturbion but I would like to mention some things.
I have been thinking about if it was possible to set up some bug list
as a
kind of quality assurance for commercial programs in Debian. Most
commercial programs I have seen are only said to be compatible with
RedHat
and sometimes SuSe. Such a list might make it more interesting for the
companies to port their applications to Debian and it would definetly
make
my life easier:).
This is a most un-Debian-like thing to be doing. Instead of running
non-Free
software on Debian, we should be seeking to create real Free
alternatives
{although, demanding source code from vendors would certainly not hurt.
I
have nothing in principle against the use of reasonable force in the
course
of obtaining Source Code.}
Availability of Source Code is *the* single biggest reason why so much
of the
software that is found in Debian can run on so many different
architectures
{second only to NetBSD if I recall correctly?} That diversity is
something
we should be proud of. *Un*availability of Source Code has already
destroyed
a certain other operating system: every new release has to support a
growing
heap of legacy code, and every insecurity ever exploited by a legitimate
program has to remain.
--
AJS
delta echo bravo six four at earthshod dot co dot uk
--
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[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Commercial programs in Debian
On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 09:16:33AM +0100, A J Stiles wrote:
This is a most un-Debian-like thing to be doing. Instead of running non-Free
software on Debian, we should be seeking to create real Free alternatives
I would sure like to see a FOSS tool with the power of Gamess or Gaussian, or
Jaguar. But I don't expect I'll see it within the next decade.
{although, demanding source code from vendors would certainly not hurt. I
have nothing in principle against the use of reasonable force in the course
of obtaining Source Code.}
You can get the source for Gamess just fine, but the license doesn't
allow you to redistribute it, nor change it.
Availability of Source Code is *the* single biggest reason why so much of the
software that is found in Debian can run on so many different architectures
{second only to NetBSD if I recall correctly?} That diversity is something
we should be proud of. *Un*availability of Source Code has already destroyed
a certain other operating system: every new release has to support a growing
heap of legacy code, and every insecurity ever exploited by a legitimate
program has to remain.
--
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__
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
Re: Commercial programs in Debian
On Monday, 08.05.2006 at 03:27 -0500, Miller, Marc wrote: The Debian way is to promote the availability of source code, but is that more important than worldwide adoption in general? The focus should be on capturing the audience first, and converting commercial ISVs to the open source model after you have a captive audience. Am I wrong? Is one of Debian's (formal) aims worldwide adoption? I don't think it is... Should it be? That's less clear, but again I think not. If, by making a superior 'free' (in both senses) operating system *leads* to wider adoption, then that's a helpful side-effect, rather than a goal, in my opinion. Dave. -- Dave Ewart [EMAIL PROTECTED] Computing Manager, Cancer Epidemiology Unit Cancer Research UK / Oxford University PGP: CC70 1883 BD92 E665 B840 118B 6E94 2CFD 694D E370 Get key from http://www.ceu.ox.ac.uk/~davee/davee-ceu-ox-ac-uk.asc N 51.7518, W 1.2016 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Commercial programs in Debian
Hi again
Thank you Goswin and Alexander for nice ideas. I will do something into
these directions.
About the idea below. Debian and more or less Linux has now been banned
from my institution even if I have been able to solve a lot of peoples
problems with it.
Looking at a guy copying plots directly from some commercial program into
Word on a Windows computer, 10 to 100 times faster than I can do with gnuplot
makes me wonder if I am on the right track. The programs that I have
mentioned need to work on Debian and they need to work better with open
source programs if I will be able to continue use Debian or even Linux for
the desktop applications. I could switch to Windows, get a perfect GUI and
run the calculations on a Linux backend as most people do. It might save me
time.
Regards
Gudjon
This is a most un-Debian-like thing to be doing. Instead of running
non-Free software on Debian, we should be seeking to create real Free
alternatives {although, demanding source code from vendors would certainly
not hurt. I have nothing in principle against the use of reasonable force
in the course of obtaining Source Code.}
Availability of Source Code is *the* single biggest reason why so much of
the software that is found in Debian can run on so many different
architectures {second only to NetBSD if I recall correctly?} That
diversity is something we should be proud of. *Un*availability of Source
Code has already destroyed a certain other operating system: every new
release has to support a growing heap of legacy code, and every insecurity
ever exploited by a legitimate program has to remain.
--
AJS
delta echo bravo six four at earthshod dot co dot uk
--
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Re: [SPAM] Re: Commercial programs in Debian
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Yes, I agree with RMS on this point. He has pointed out that using the GPL (an not a license that permits a comercial entity to abscond with the code) superior free (yes, in both senses) _software_ (o/s, utilities, applications) makes for a better world. High ideals to be sure. Dave Ewart wrote: On Monday, 08.05.2006 at 03:27 -0500, Miller, Marc wrote: The Debian way is to promote the availability of source code, but is that more important than worldwide adoption in general? The focus should be on capturing the audience first, and converting commercial ISVs to the open source model after you have a captive audience. Am I wrong? Is one of Debian's (formal) aims worldwide adoption? I don't think it is... Should it be? That's less clear, but again I think not. If, by making a superior 'free' (in both senses) operating system *leads* to wider adoption, then that's a helpful side-effect, rather than a goal, in my opinion. Dave. - -- Fielder George Dowding, Chief Iceworm.^. Debian/GNU Linux dba Iceworm Enterprises, Anchorage, Alaska /v\ etch Testing Since 1976 - Over 30 Years of Service. /( )\ User Number 269482 ^^-^^ irad 301256 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFEXweX2kl99FX0AIkRAgE2AKCEds8Qc/OLq2ISpz7hPy2uGES/MwCdFKaY 00lTZjSY/T8obxC3yB01kME= =3fSH -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Commercial programs in Debian
On Monday 08 May 2006 17:19, A J Stiles wrote: The problem is, purchasing decisions are being made by people unqualified to make those decisions. That's true. In my country the public administration - including the university - is wasting public money (derived from taxation) in software that is found with debian, sometimes of better quality. They could better make donations to free software. However, there is scientific proprietary software from small softwarehouses that has decades of experience and development, is sold with accompanying source code, and solves problems that debian is quite far from solving. Again, don't ask me the names because I am not advertising (and I am user not softwarehouse) but I believe that such softwarehouses deserve full support. They have my support. In other words my point is not free software ueber alles, may point is serious software ueber alles (which implies getting the source code of the proprietary software, albeit with restriction to use it in connection with modifying the code to adapt the software to, say, the particular calculations). francesco pietra -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Commercial programs in Debian
On Monday 08 May 2006 15:46, Francesco Pietra wrote:
However, there is scientific proprietary software from small softwarehouses
that has decades of experience and development, is sold with accompanying
source code, and solves problems that debian is quite far from solving.
Again, don't ask me the names because I am not advertising (and I am user
not softwarehouse) but I believe that such softwarehouses deserve full
support. They have my support.
There is an important distinction between software like this {the traditional
model, dating back to the days when Source Code was the only thing any two
systems might have in common}, and proprietary, closed-source software which
is distributed as a binary executable only {and requires a homogeneous
execution environment; something which has only really become possible
recently with the dominance of the 80%86 architecture and Windows}. It's not
Free software because it can't be distributed freely; but at least the vendor
respects the purchaser's right to inspect and modify the Source Code.
{I would also expect that such suppliers would be willing to accept
customer-contributed patches, even possibly giving credit for them in
subsequent versions.}
It is the vendors who treat their customers like children and refuse to let
them see exactly what they are running on their own computers who deserve the
greatest contempt. After all, would you buy any processed food that did not
include a list of the ingredients and the protein/fat/carbohydrate breakdown?
--
AJS
delta echo bravo six four at earthshod dot co dot uk
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Re: Commercial programs in Debian
On Monday 08 May 2006 18:34, A J Stiles wrote:
On Monday 08 May 2006 15:46, Francesco Pietra wrote:
However, there is scientific proprietary software from small
softwarehouses that has decades of experience and development, is sold
with accompanying source code, and solves problems that debian is quite
far from solving. Again, don't ask me the names because I am not
advertising (and I am user not softwarehouse) but I believe that such
softwarehouses deserve full support. They have my support.
There is an important distinction between software like this {the
traditional model, dating back to the days when Source Code was the only
thing any two systems might have in common}, and proprietary,
closed-source software which is distributed as a binary executable only
{and requires a homogeneous execution environment; something which has only
really become possible recently with the dominance of the 80%86
architecture and Windows}. It's not Free software because it can't be
distributed freely; but at least the vendor respects the purchaser's right
to inspect and modify the Source Code
I would like to intervene again about the last paragraph. I read your
statemente It's not Free software... but at least.. as placing Free
Software at a a higher (socially higher) level than Proprietary Software
(meant in the terms I specified above). If I read correctly, I disagree. I
disagree because that Proprietary Software allows me to do reseach work that
I could not otherwise carry out. The inventor who built the softwarehouse
lives from his invention and from his constant improvement of the product
(which generally is, how you could easily imagine, small business). Would you
not agree to support him? He does great service to the society. (again I
declare not to have any commercial involvment with any software house,
although from time to time i helped to improve the product by using it, while
I never claimed to get that acknowledged because I live from chemical
research).
francesco pietra
{I would also expect that such suppliers would be willing to accept
customer-contributed patches, even possibly giving credit for them in
subsequent versions.}
It is the vendors who treat their customers like children and refuse to let
them see exactly what they are running on their own computers who deserve
the greatest contempt. After all, would you buy any processed food that
did not include a list of the ingredients and the protein/fat/carbohydrate
breakdown?
--
AJS
delta echo bravo six four at earthshod dot co dot uk
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Re: Commercial programs in Debian
Þann Föstudagur 5. maí 2006 08:32 skrifaði jmt: Sorry for the disturbion but I would like to mention some things. I have been thinking about if it was possible to set up some bug list as a kind of quality assurance for commercial programs in Debian. Most commercial programs I have seen are only said to be compatible with RedHat and sometimes SuSe. Mind that most commercial programs, targeted for RedHat or SuSe, are generally i386 ONLY ! Second point : commercial program editors want to rely on some king of system certification ; even if what RedHat or SuSe provide is far from satisfaction, it can take place in a business process, as a mention to good practice. Third : what made Apple fortune : a very narrow hardware selection ! If a commercial program had to rely on - amd64 - nvidia on top of any other hardware combination you can imagine, this list would generate thousands messages a day ! jmt Thanks for your answer You are most probably right in all your points but I can mention that in my case. I need to run the following programs: Cadence, Matlab, Femlab, Sonnet, ADS, ISE-Tcad and Proxecco. Debian is not supported by the producers of these programs but I have managed to make them run more or less flawlessly on my computer. I would rather not need to switch to SuSe nor RedHad, just for running these programs but when advising other people on what distribution to choose, I cannot say Debian because of this lack of quality assurance. Anyway, I see a problem with Debian that might be solved in some clever way but this list is perhaps not be the right forum for these ideas. If anyone could point out a better forum for this idea I would be happy. Regards Gudjon
Re: Commercial programs in Debian
I can illustrate my experience with commercial packages for quantum mechanical and quantum chemical calculations. There is at least one package for quantum mechanical calculations (don't ask me the name as i am not advertising) that is accurate, solves all problems of file type conversion, provides input to quantum chemical calculations and reads (graphically) the output. Well, this program (absolutely not inexpensive) is distributed with the source code. This allows compilation (with assistance from the distributor) for your particular environment. More importantly, the source code allows you to change parameters - or insert new ones as soon as experimental data from, say, IR come out - for the calculations. The latter strategy is not allowed by imperscrutable commercial packages, which pretend you do chemistry blindly. This long preamble to an area (chemistry calculations) that will hardly find anyone interested here. But I wanted to refer to the philosophy behind. In any area, this is the only way to accept a commercial package on unix systems. Not only for freedom problems. First of all for technical problems. How do softerhouses survive this type of distribution? As far as university quarters are concerned, we honor this type of distribution and pay willingly (even for personal use) for them, and keep them strictly under the license conditions. Yours francesco pietra On Saturday 06 May 2006 09:14, Gudjon I. Gudjonsson wrote: Þann Föstudagur 5. maí 2006 08:32 skrifaði jmt: Sorry for the disturbion but I would like to mention some things. I have been thinking about if it was possible to set up some bug list as a kind of quality assurance for commercial programs in Debian. Most commercial programs I have seen are only said to be compatible with RedHat and sometimes SuSe. Mind that most commercial programs, targeted for RedHat or SuSe, are generally i386 ONLY ! Second point : commercial program editors want to rely on some king of system certification ; even if what RedHat or SuSe provide is far from satisfaction, it can take place in a business process, as a mention to good practice. Third : what made Apple fortune : a very narrow hardware selection ! If a commercial program had to rely on - amd64 - nvidia on top of any other hardware combination you can imagine, this list would generate thousands messages a day ! jmt Thanks for your answer You are most probably right in all your points but I can mention that in my case. I need to run the following programs: Cadence, Matlab, Femlab, Sonnet, ADS, ISE-Tcad and Proxecco. Debian is not supported by the producers of these programs but I have managed to make them run more or less flawlessly on my computer. I would rather not need to switch to SuSe nor RedHad, just for running these programs but when advising other people on what distribution to choose, I cannot say Debian because of this lack of quality assurance. Anyway, I see a problem with Debian that might be solved in some clever way but this list is perhaps not be the right forum for these ideas. If anyone could point out a better forum for this idea I would be happy. Regards Gudjon
Re: Commercial programs in Debian
I wish every package was like the one described below. I am not in the business of advertising the commercial programs I mentioned. I am in the business of advertising Debian and Linux because these named programs work more or less flawlessly most of the time on Debian although there are several unnecessary flaws. And I don't get any warning when they are about to break (I admit that I live a too risky life in that sense:). Can we agree on that companies are run by different strategies and the more programs that run flawlessly on Debian, the more likelyhood there is of people using it? If the answer is yes, then please advice me to the right forum where I will either be helped or told to shut up:) Regards Gudjon Þann Laugardagur 6. maí 2006 08:40 skrifaði Francesco Pietra: I can illustrate my experience with commercial packages for quantum mechanical and quantum chemical calculations. There is at least one package for quantum mechanical calculations (don't ask me the name as i am not advertising) that is accurate, solves all problems of file type conversion, provides input to quantum chemical calculations and reads (graphically) the output. Well, this program (absolutely not inexpensive) is distributed with the source code. This allows compilation (with assistance from the distributor) for your particular environment. More importantly, the source code allows you to change parameters - or insert new ones as soon as experimental data from, say, IR come out - for the calculations. The latter strategy is not allowed by imperscrutable commercial packages, which pretend you do chemistry blindly. This long preamble to an area (chemistry calculations) that will hardly find anyone interested here. But I wanted to refer to the philosophy behind. In any area, this is the only way to accept a commercial package on unix systems. Not only for freedom problems. First of all for technical problems. How do softerhouses survive this type of distribution? As far as university quarters are concerned, we honor this type of distribution and pay willingly (even for personal use) for them, and keep them strictly under the license conditions. Yours francesco pietra On Saturday 06 May 2006 09:14, Gudjon I. Gudjonsson wrote: Þann Föstudagur 5. maí 2006 08:32 skrifaði jmt: Sorry for the disturbion but I would like to mention some things. I have been thinking about if it was possible to set up some bug list as a kind of quality assurance for commercial programs in Debian. Most commercial programs I have seen are only said to be compatible with RedHat and sometimes SuSe. Mind that most commercial programs, targeted for RedHat or SuSe, are generally i386 ONLY ! Second point : commercial program editors want to rely on some king of system certification ; even if what RedHat or SuSe provide is far from satisfaction, it can take place in a business process, as a mention to good practice. Third : what made Apple fortune : a very narrow hardware selection ! If a commercial program had to rely on - amd64 - nvidia on top of any other hardware combination you can imagine, this list would generate thousands messages a day ! jmt Thanks for your answer You are most probably right in all your points but I can mention that in my case. I need to run the following programs: Cadence, Matlab, Femlab, Sonnet, ADS, ISE-Tcad and Proxecco. Debian is not supported by the producers of these programs but I have managed to make them run more or less flawlessly on my computer. I would rather not need to switch to SuSe nor RedHad, just for running these programs but when advising other people on what distribution to choose, I cannot say Debian because of this lack of quality assurance. Anyway, I see a problem with Debian that might be solved in some clever way but this list is perhaps not be the right forum for these ideas. If anyone could point out a better forum for this idea I would be happy. Regards Gudjon
Re: Commercial programs in Debian
On Sat, May 06, 2006 at 10:07:36AM +0200, Gudjon I. Gudjonsson wrote: ... Can we agree on that companies are run by different strategies and the more programs that run flawlessly on Debian, the more likelyhood there is of people using it? If the answer is yes, then please advice me to the right forum where I will either be helped or told to shut up:) Regards Gudjon Hello, since most of the programs you gave as an example are not part of debian, it is not easy to find an appropriate forum. Maybe you can try: http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/ or make a suggestion to setup some documentation about how good different commercial programs integrate with debian on: http://lists.debian.org/debian-doc/ Since you are dealing with scientific/engineering applications, debian-science might als be appropriate: http://lists.debian.org/debian-science/ Last but not least, you can scan all available lists on: http://lists.debian.org/ for one that fits your needs. Alexander -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Commercial programs in Debian
Gudjon I. Gudjonsson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hi Sorry for the disturbion but I would like to mention some things. I have been thinking about if it was possible to set up some bug list as a kind of quality assurance for commercial programs in Debian. Most commercial programs I have seen are only said to be compatible with RedHat and sometimes SuSe. Such a list might make it more interesting for the companies to port their applications to Debian and it would definetly make my life easier:). Is it possible for example to make a pseudo package to install in Debian with the name of the program that makes apt-listbugs retrieve all bugs for that program when the system is upgraded? Perhaps such an idea has already appeared on the internet but I did not find it. Sincerely Gudjon I think an alioth project might be better. You could host patches to the installer scripts, bug tracking, an ML, ... MfG Goswin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Commercial programs in Debian
Sorry for the disturbion but I would like to mention some things. I have been thinking about if it was possible to set up some bug list as a kind of quality assurance for commercial programs in Debian. Most commercial programs I have seen are only said to be compatible with RedHat and sometimes SuSe. Mind that most commercial programs, targeted for RedHat or SuSe, are generally i386 ONLY ! Second point : commercial program editors want to rely on some king of system certification ; even if what RedHat or SuSe provide is far from satisfaction, it can take place in a business process, as a mention to good practice. Third : what made Apple fortune : a very narrow hardware selection ! If a commercial program had to rely on - amd64 - nvidia on top of any other hardware combination you can imagine, this list would generate thousands messages a day ! jmt -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
