On 12/04/2010 00:47, Richard Gaskin wrote:
Peter Alcibiades wrote:
Here are a couple links, the first being the redoubtable Caitlyn
Martin, the
second Warren Woodford. These guys are serious people and should be
listened to:
http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2010/04/ubuntu-is-a-poor-standard-bear.html
The other is the case she does not mention, that of Warren Woodford of
Mepis who moved away a couple of years back
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6170488551.html
It makes no sense to 'standardize' on a distribution which is made
the way
Ubuntu is. By all means use it if that is what one likes. I have
nothing
against that. But this is not about what we like, its about what we
use for
standardization, and the whole concept of standardizing on something
which
is built new every six months out of someone else's experimental
packages
makes no sense.
Both authors make some good points, but even Ms. Martin notes:
To whatever part of the general non-geek public is even aware of
Linux the names "Linux" and "Ubuntu" are all but interchangeable.
Markets are funny things.
Reminds me of a chap who came with his daughter to my school a couple
of years ago and said "But how can those
computers work without Windows?"
Betamax was arguably a much better standard than VHS, and Mac arguably
better than Windows. We saw how those worked out.
And so it is with Ubunutu: While its historical development paths may
raise some questions, the bottom line is that Ubuntu, warts and all,
is the leading distro today.
I didn't choose Ubuntu; the market chose it for me.
Yes, and an Operating System that loads from a ROM chip is probably
better than one that loads from a ferro-magnetic lump!
I used to use Red Hat when I was starting out, then switched to SUSE
for a while. I liked both of them well enough, but I simply don't have
enough PCs lying around to install every major distro out there so I
decided to adopt the one most folks were using.
For a long time that was difficult to determine and often in flux, but
in recent years Ubuntu has emerged as dominant on the desktop, and not
without reason: By focusing on the end-user experience, they've made
an OS that just about anyone can use without a manual. That's a BIG
leap forward in a community that had historically earned for itself a
reputation of appealing only to geeks.
It's not my job to tell my customers which OS they should be using.
My job is simply to deliver software products for the OS they already
have.
I have tried that many times (but, hey, I have an abrasive personality)
and more often than not got the metaphorical
equivalent of a bloody nose.
I don't personally care which distro any individual chooses, or
whether they choose Mac, or Windows, or anything else. Diversity is
good, it keeps competition healthy and maintains an efficient gene pool.
But for my products and those of my clients, we've focused on Ubuntu
as our primary Linux target because that's where most of our customers
are.
To the degree that they may favor a single distro in RunRev's offices,
I suspect their thinking is similar. It simply isn't their choice to
make, it's the market's.
This point is really the same as your earlier posting: why RunRev might
be putting more energy into R&D for Mac and
Win rather than Linux: we all know what puts bread and cheese on the table.
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