[rescue] Re: G5 case

[Frank Van Damme]

On Wednesday 25 June 2003 18:56, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Jun 2003, Frank Van Damme wrote:
> > On Wednesday 25 June 2003 04:18, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> > > There's a huge one.  Linux is just a kernel; the userland comes from
> > > a few hundred different sources, and it shows.
> >
> > Ah, trolling again a bit eh.
>
> I don't stoop to trolling.  I try not to make comments about operating
> systems I haven't run.  I've used Linux for over 7 years and think I
> have quite enough personal experience behind any comments I make about
> it.

Sorry I read over the argumentation in  "the userland comes from a few hundred
different sources, and it shows." :-D

> Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean that they have a
> baseless opinion.

Sure.

> > Most of the essential userland comes from the Gnu project, which is one
> > source. And now if you'd care to explain the "it shows" part
>
> Try reading the man pages for the kernel-module routines, then for some
> of the GNU shit.  Oh, that's right, GNU has deprecated man pages, so
> they have info pages.  And half of the installed software deposits its
> documentation in /usr/doc, using neither man pages nor info pages.  At
> any rate, if it's possible to find information on two separate pieces of
> software in the same place, compare them.  Totally different
> documentation style.  The pages don't cross-reference correctly.  The
> environment DOES NOT ACT like a single OS.  It acts like a kernel with a
> bunch of third-party software stapled on.

I don't know.

I kinda like the "bricolage" approach. I even like the Gnu info system, which
has a few nice features over "man". I read them in Konqueror usually, it's
like a complete web site.

> Now, compare that to Solaris, IRIX, AIX, or one of the BSDs.  The man
> pages are all written (or rewritten) with the intent of you using the
> set of tools in the distribution as an environment.  Pay special
> attention to the cross-references.  The vendor -knows- what software
> you'll have installed, so all the appropriate cross-references are made.
> Contrast that with GNU gFooBar or whatever.  The maintainer doesn't also
> know that you might have GNU gBarBaz installed, which complement each
> other.  If you don't know that, you'll have no hope of gleaning that
> from the documentation.

Hm, I never noticed something like you say...

> Oh, and how about command arguments?  Since most of the tools that ship
> with a commercial unix or BSD come from the same place, most of the
> tools that take similar parameters have the same arguments.  For
> example, -f almost -ALWAYS- means "file for input or output".  For the
> most part, Linux distributions tend to have some amount of this
> cohesion...right up to the point of long parameters.  So you have
> --input-file= for one tool, and --file= for another and --source= for
> another.

Perhaps I just got used to it, but I never had any trouble with that.

> The system just isn't very polished.  It's a collection of very
> well-written tools that don't behave like a single product.

Much of this also depends on the distribution. Not that I expect them to
rewrite documentation, but generally I like the fact that it isn't 1 big
lump. It allows for very stripped-down installations.

--
Frank Van Damme    http://www.openstandaarden.be
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Je pense, donc je suis breveti."