torsdag 25 november 2004 17:15 skrev William A. Mahaffey III:
I have read this whole diatribe with amusement, the guy who started it is obviously a clown, & was tolerated far longer than I would have tolerated him. Kudos to SuSE for that.
I disagree that Linux itself isn't ready for the average user, but I agree that the current level of 'fit & finish' of various distros (SuSE least among them IMHO) is problematic. I have worked on SGIs professionally for about the last 12 years. They are &%$*(&%$ expensive, but smooth as silk, well documented, everything just works, etc. I consider that 1 end of the 'fit & finish' spectrum. Then there is the Linux of the mid '90's, with cryptic installs, mismatched packages, for uber-geeks only, the other end of that spectrum. The Linux community has made good progress from that state, but still seems too tolerant of screwups that some (hopefully simple & cheap) check-outs at the distro level could eliminate or cut down. IMHO, that wouldn't/shouldn't be much of a hurdle, & I place responsibility for that with the distro packagers. They can/should do what they can to assemble their packages from parts that really do match, rather than always striving for highest package/kernel version #'s. The bleeding edge is cool, but only when it works. I realize that the distributed nature of the Linux developement model, as well as the nearly malignant variety of different hardware makes this integration difficult, but it seems that a (hopefully) small amount of extra attention there might clean up a larger fraction of screwups/package mis-matches/etc. SGI & most other high-end builders have sophisticated testing regimes (automated, software based) to verify that all of their stuff not only works, but works together with other included packages. With the increased power of machines today, it seems to me that some of the distro packagers could make some progress in this area, even if only by some brute force methods.
The moment I came in comtact with SGI Workstations at my UNI, there was nothing else ... shame I haven't had the opportunity to use them since :-) But to me, Linux is ready for everyone except the die-hard WIndows user. There are a lot of those, who want nothing but "Outlook", just because it looks cool ... or Word, because it's got a cool "helper" down in the corner, etc. And I too have had problems with SMB browsing, and I tolerate it because I consider SMB to be an "outlandish" environment within Unix-Linux. An NFS/(Yellow pages or LDAP) would be the environment of choice for me, resulting in totally seemless hypercomputing environment. But unfortunately, most users are using desktop calculators and that limits things. And if I were a mere desktop user only, I'd probably be running Mac instead of WIndows ... it's got more style, for my taste. Just a bit too expensive for my pocket.