Im only replying to this email as i was mentioned in it.
May i start of by saying that i do agree with dels comments that
some people really aren't interested in assisting with non-debian
concerns. This is fairly reasonable as i venture to conclude that
many of the more advanced users have moved to debian. Perhaps to get
away from a lot of the 'padding' in fc and others, but even if its
just because there is a feeling of elitism towards debian users so
people want to move to it.
So we start with our experienced users being predominantly debian
users.
New users will most likley go for fc and rh derivatives. I think
this is simply a saturation and pc mag dvd sort of reason. Its not
really relevant. Some sort of survey may confirm which distribution
does get the best stats for first install. But lets assume that
fc is by far the most first installed distribution (which is my
observation)
Given that, it would seem obvious why experts recommend changing to
debian when problems could be avoided by using it. no its not
helpfull, but it is an answer. Why fumble around with silly rpms
when you can just apt-get something? (i know about yam or yum or
whatever)
My experience pretty much parallels that of Philip: If you're not a
Debian user then there are certain elements in SLUG that aren't really
interested in talking to you, except to convert you to Debian. If that
attitude were to change then I'd probably participate somewhat more in
SLUG, but I haven't seen it change for a number of years now despite the
best efforts of many of the people on the SLUG committee.
It's not a problem with SLUG specifically -- I've noted that attitude
from many Debian users outside of the SLUG community.
we debian users can be quite elitist.
In fact I think that it's time that a general vote was taken that Debian
evangelists should just keep their evangelising outside of Fedora / Red
Hat specific threads, and we'd all get along much better.
* Dean Hamstead (responding to a post about Red Hat consultants:
"a really savy consultant would recommend a move to debian"). 25/1/2006
Sorry, this is just flame bait and I don't see any reason not to target
it as deliberate flame bait. Why? What if the system required drivers
or features that are only available in Red Hat?
Well, that's 4 in the last 2 months. Do I need to go back through the
archives any further? Let's not bring up the consistent RH/Debian flame
wars of the past please.
huray i got a mention. anything can be perceived as flame bait. But i
stand by my comments. infact, my real attitude is much more towards
those of theo deraadt. that is, boycott anything that doesnt play
that game nicely.
this is flame bait : i cant think of anything that is specific to
redhat and its friends. perhaps there are some strange SAN drivers
which only work on redhat. if that is the case, you need to ask yourself
what sort of life is this hardware likely to have? if i update the
kernel will it make the hardware useless? binary drivers and software
suffer from bit-rot horribly in linux.
these are the sort of issues a good linux (indeed, unix) consultant
takes into consideration.
obviously if the hardware is in place and using linux is a must, then
redhat may be your only option. but in that case, you arent really
being 'consulted'.
Remember that it only takes a few rude / inconsiderate / ill-informed
posters on any particular subject to spoil the reputation of an otherwise
helpful and informative group. I'm not suggesting any form of list
censorship here -- merely backing up what the original posters have
said. The people mentioned above, not to mention those few others that
have posted on the same lines may like to consider that it's actually the
reputation of the Debian community that they are harming here, as well
as the reputation of SLUG.
I think ive been categorised as 'ill informed' which i find a little...
undermining. rude and inconsiderate suit me fine, they are the sort of
uncompromising qualities i feel win out in the long run. anyway that
is flame bait also.
Now I don't think that anyone's suggesting that the normal run of the
mill distro-comparison discussions are anything other than helpful.
However if someone's asking a question about getting something done on
Red Hat or Fedora then perhaps either start another subject on how
to do it on Debian, or refrain from replying altogether. Otherwise
you're (a) driving people away from the community and (b) driving them
away from SLUG.
perhaps we should look at the situation from another perspective.
that is, that the slug list has become measurably less intellectual.
perhaps it is that i joined as a very eager 15 year old with redhat 4,
some old linux howto books and way too much free time. now a days most
of the q&a's seem to be very low level. thus, it may be that many of the
more advanced users see recommending debian as a way of skipping over
re-inventing the wheel. further, one asks another flame-bait question -
are there actually really savy redhat users? on this list?
so perhaps it is that people are sick of really trivial distribution
specific questions on the list?
the solution may simply to be, people asking distribution specific
question should be directed to a distribution specific list? i for one
take this stance and spend a lot of time on the debian lists as
debian-ppc or debian-amd64 (or freebsd) questions arent likely to get
answered here.
or perhaps people are asking too much of an otherwise extremely general
linux distribution list?
Dean
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