[rescue] Re: G5 case

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003, Kevin wrote:

> personally, they would all be collecting much dust
> without the "userland from a few hundred different
> sources" SGI freeware.

That4s a bit different.  mkfs, your core utilities (such as ls, dd, and
so on), your X11 distribution, and your core runtime libraries all come
from SGI.  On Linux, the kernel team -only- works on the kernel.  The
C runtime comes from GNU, the X11 distribution comes from XFree, the
init system comes from I have no idea whom.

Even in the case of the BSDs, which use a lot of GNU software, the code
is continually "BSDified" by the maintainer of whichever OS you're
using.  OpenBSD, for example has made a lot of extensions to GCC to
support their new "W^X" security model and other OS niftiness.

> I do see much value in, and support, the "one company
> making the hardware and software" concept.  I just
> don't subscribe to the idea that that is the only way
> things can work well.

Me, neither.  Note that I never said Linux doesn't work well.  It just
isn't as polished and seamless as what I'm used to.  Using IRIX,
Solaris, or one of the BSDs is like reading a large tome written by one
author.  Using a Linux distribution is like reading a collection of
short stories; while the underlying theme may be the same, it's clearly
not one contiguous work.

--
Jonathan Patschke   )  "Leave your lawsuits at home.  I have guns."
Elgin, TX          (                      --"Kountry" Mike Lundgren