Brian K. White said the following on 11/02/2011 03:31 PM:
Have I made it confusing and baffling enough ? :)
You had it right when you said
However, the general principles you can apply to almost any unix-like system
I recall reading a paper that, cynically perhaps, explained that Windows admins learned by rote, from pictures of the GUI screens, whereas *NIX admins learned the generic principles. Perhaps it wasn't worded like that, but idea was that very often the Windows admins had to re-learn when a new release came out that had different GUI-looks or details, because there was only the GUI. The point many of us make here is that Linux is about basic principles and putting them together, knowing how things work. Isaac Asimov wrote a short story called "Profession". In it an engineer learnt how to use a certain fabrication machine, but lost an opportunity for a job because it needed another. Sadly a lot of industry is either like that or HR views things like that; the Certification Industry just makes it worse! But the reality is that those of here who have been using Linux for a while can work quite happily with any version of Linux. We might have our preferences (I prefer zypper to yum for example). Many of us professionally involved with *NIX also deal with the Big Iron versions, AIX, Solaris, HP/UX and some of us might even have encountered DG-UX. Yes, there are vendor specific and hardware specific differences, but they are easy to accommodate. Do you speak more than one language? How do you keep them separate in your head? Have you lived and driven/navigated in more than one city? How do you keep the maps separate in your head? Can you drive in the UK/Australia "On the Other Side of the road"? How do you keep such abilities separate in your head? Sift or Automatic? Is the shift lever on the floor or on the steering column? Any of these are more complicated things that the differences between versions of Linux, or for that matter between Linux and Solaris and AIX. Yes, there are times when people come up with an idea and someone comes up with a competing idea. Sadly the media makes an unnecessary big issue of this so they have something to write about. Remember the GUI wars between Motif (backed by IBM, DEC, HP, and SCO) and OPEN LOOK (backed by Sun and AT&T)? But hey, KDE and Gnome have "themes" (read "skins") to adopt the look and feel of either. (More than you get with Windows, eh? ) So what the "War" about? Publicity and lack of imagination when it comes down to it. Trapped in an "Either/Or" world instead of doing "And". So don't fret about the distributions, how they are packaged, what the tools are. "Just Do It!" -- Man's mind once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimension. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org