[geeks] Ok I am ready to kill this Fu**ing linux box

[David Cantrell]

On Fri, May 24, 2002 at 10:33:41AM -0400, alex j avriette wrote:

> first, im not convinced that a) millions of people use xine, and b) that 
> millions of people happily use linux.

I'll agree with you on a, disagree on b.

>                                        i'm sure that a large percentage 
> of the people who use linux use it because they would prefer to not use 
> windows (or macos or whatever).

Sure.  That's a perfectly valid reason.  It's why I started using it.  Not
from any ideological reason, just that Windows stopped me from doing what
I needed to do.

> we arent just talking about two users among millions. we're talking 
> about two users on a mailing list. we're also talking about two 
> competent (and in my case certified) technicians. its very very easy to 
> play the "user error" card when you're talking about average users. that 
> is not the case here.

Just because you are a competent technician does not mean you are good at
everything.  I don't know what you're certified in, so without telling us
what you're certified in that information is pretty worthless.  You might,
for instance, be certified in maintaining hardware from $vendor.  Which
has fuck all to do with the task being discussed.

I too am a thoroughly competent technician.  And I have weaknesses.  I
admit that I don't know everything about computers, or even about Unix-a-
likes, or hell, even about Linux, which is the Unix-a-like I know the
most about.  I am more than happy to admit that when something I try to
do goes wrong that it could well be user error.  It is, in fact, the first
thing I suspect.

> i will not even address the debate re: "linux isnt an operating system, 
> its a kernel" because every time i bring it up deriding linux, somebody 
> says I'm FOS. you cant use the argument to support linux and at the same 
> time say its rubbish when used to defame same.

I agree with you.  However, someone was having problems with Redhat, and
then blaming Linux.  That is clearly silly.  Linux is not Redhat.  Redhat
is just one out of many Linux distributions.  To say "Linux sucks" because
of problems experienced with Redhat is equivalent to saying that cars suck
because of problems experienced with Ford.

> > There are very nice tools that do the package dependency resolution for
> > Linux.  Yast2 comes to mind - search for the package you want to
> > install, check it off, click install, it finds the deps and installes
> > them.  Quick and easy.  This doesn't hold true for all distributions
> it has never been my experience with such tools (such as yUP) that they 
> are easy or nice.

I've never heard of yUP, nor have I used Yast2 enough to comment.  However,
I am very familiar with apt, and can tell you that it Just Works.

> this is the inherent problem in the rpm architecture. the one premise it 
> is built upon is that rpm's are all built in the same way to the same 
> standards.

Indeed.  What this has to do with Linux, though, I am not entirely clear
about.

>             sometimes they will install stuff in /usr/local, sometimes 
> just in /usr, sometimes they will go in /opt or whatever. the problem 
> is, suse rpms dont work on redhat, redhats dont work on mandrake, and so 
> on.

Actually, back when I was using Redhat, I found that I could mostly mix and
match for the few extra packages I needed.  Maybe I just got lucky, but it
is untrue to say that SuSE rpms don't work on Redhat.  I know cos I've dunnit.

> > I also just demonstrated that even otherwise fine OSs can have the same
> > issues when I built Minicom.  The dependencies are what will kill you,
> > but once you've done it a couple times, you begin to understand what
> > you're looking for.  Yes, dependencies suck, but they're not confined to
> > Linux, and they don't automatically make Linux suck.
> but we weren't talking about other os's, we were talking about linux. we 
> just had the linux vs bsd flamewar, remember?

When you say Linux sucks because you have difficulty with dependencies, it
is legitimate to point out that every other OS in existence has the same
problem.

-- 
David Cantrell    |    Reprobate    |    http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

      Good advice is always certain to be ignored,
      but that's no reason not to give it            -- Agatha Christie