Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2483 mails)

[Randall R Schulz <rschulz@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Saturday 03 January 2009 14:45, James Knott wrote:
> j debert wrote:
> > Ummm... How would you know whether or not building from source
> > would have a noticeable benefit for me? That seems so...nevermind.
>
> I've noticed that sort of thing in a few areas with SUSE.  They seem
> to think they know what you want, better than you do.

I do not think this is a valid characterization. As a Linux 
distribution, openSUSE (and its commercial siblings) are large (very 
large) collections of software. Much of it is drawn from projects 
hosted outside Novell, of course, though very significant additions 
come from within. Naturally, when they put this distribution together, 
they must exercise judgement about what to include and how to configure 
the various options, often chosen from a large and complex complement 
of package configuration options that often entail extensive 
interdependencies on other projects, applications and libraries. It is 
unavoidable that tradeoffs arise and while it cannot be expected that 
everyone be fully satisfied, I believe the empirical success and 
longevity of the distribution is a strong indicator that they are 
exercising good judgment in this regard.


> For the record, I have also on occasion built from source, as the
> binaries weren't available.  One of the nice things about Linux has
> been the way it allows people who know what they're doing to do it. 
> Now it seems some nanny is taking over, to make sure we don't fall
> down and scrape our knees.

I, too, have done this, though it's been something between rare and 
uncommon. More often I have to build a package from sources when that 
package is not included in the openSUSE distribution.

Nonetheless, the state of the art in computing hardware and software has 
not reached the point (if such a point even exists) where a 
one-size-fits-all approach to very large, general-purpose systems is 
possible. And absent that, issues of judgement and economics (as in 
matters of the best use of limited resources) will apply.

Everybody has different needs and criteria. Personally, I want to spend 
as little time as possible compiling and installing the software I use 
so that I can do what I do, which is write my own software. For 
my "money" (ha! — though I used to buy the SuSE Linux distributions), 
openSUSE is the best balance of comprehensiveness, user support and 
utility (the functionality subsumed under the YaST umbrella being the 
principal component of that support) and hardware coverage.

Your mileage may vary.


Randall Schulz
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