Re: SEUL: Re: Proposal for using a single mailing list [was Re: Oneend-user distribution?]

[Martin Jackson <mjackson@deskmedia.com>]

Donovan Rebbechi wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, Michel Stam wrote:
> 
> > Ok, but would you consider changing/adding to your distribution if you could
> > maintain your goals ?
> 
> That's a likely "yes".
> 
> However, there is next to no chance of a RH based distro being binary
> compatible with a debian based distro.
> 
> > compatible with the others as well, there is no point in continuing this
> > discussion.

I was the head of seul-pub back when we first started having this
discussion.  I dropped it because of time constraints, but I have tried
to keep up with it.  (I wrote the now hideously out-of-date "Why Linux"
document on the SEUL site, too.)

Back then, I was a relative neophyte to Linux, though I had been using
it for a while.  I had never set up PPP, for example.  Now I have much
more experience and know much more about what I'm doing.  I was also a
huge fan of Debian back then, for many of the same reasons people are
advocating it now.

Here is my opinion, for what it's worth:  

The Debian project is pulling in too many directions right now.  Their
devel mailing lists erupt in flame wars regularly.  (One particularly
hilarious suggestion was Debian BSD.  Really.)  They do not exist on the
maps of people who get software into people's hands (OEMs, publishers,
etc.), and they are guided by the Stallman vision.  The world needs GPL
software, but it doesn't ALL need to be GPL.

The question is, why do you really need to create another distribution? 
Installing an OS is going to be hard, no matter how nice a face you put
on it.  Installing Windows is hard.  The answer to the difficulty of
installing Linux is making it available pre-installed.  Another
micro-distribution is, not, I think, going to make a difference in the
long term.  Red Hat has emerged as the clear winner of the distribution
wars, at least on this side of the pond.  (I like SuSE too, but it has
little presence here.  And I like its installer, too.)

-- 
Martin Jackson: mjackson@deskmedia.com
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Computer Info. Science Major
Minnesota State University, Mankato
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