On 06/02/2019 17.46, Liam Proven wrote:
On 2/5/19 10:29 PM, Michal Kubecek wrote:
From your e-mails, both here and in the recent discussion about bogus Phoronix benchmarks, it seems that you believe the goal of openSUSE is (or at least should be) attracting as many users as possible which mostly means adapting the distribution to meet the expectations of people who don't want to think, learn or work. I don't agree with such goal because it would mean way too many sacrifices which would make the distribution less attractive for me.
That is nearly as inaccurate a representation of what I am saying as Stefan's.
I am not saying that at all.
What I am saying is this:
* The Linux market is very competitive. Different distros have different strengths and weaknesses. It is fatally short-sighted to ignore what other distros and other companies are doing, for any reason, whether the reason is "Not Invented Here" syndrome, or because $DISTRO is not seen as a real competitor, or because of tradition.
If a company wants to survive, it has to attract new customers. Capitalism mandates growth.
...
Linux vendors don't get this privilege. We're all working from the same code. It's all GPL. We _have_ to share.
So we _have_ to keep up with the competition or we will die.
That means working out if the competition has a particular edge in certain areas, and playing catch-up.
Ubuntu decided on a fairly simple play. Pick a free distro with, at the time, the best packaging tool -- i.e. Debian, circa 2002-2003 or so -- and put a really nice easy desktop on it, with a complete set of integrated apps, and an easy installation program, and give it away for nothing. This was so the sponsor could give something back to the FOSS community that made him a billionaire (or near enough).
This has made Ubuntu the #1 end-user desktop distro.
Many people argue with this and it's very hard to prove, but in terms of mindshare, press coverage, etc., I think it's obviously the case.
I believe it is true :-( ...
Now, a decade and a half later, that means that there are hundreds of thousands of Linux folk who learned on Ubuntu first and know it best, and because of that, Ubuntu is what they choose to deploy on their servers and in their VMs and clouds.
Right. Some time not very long ago, I attended a long training course. Most of it was about Windows Server administration, but we dedicated some time to Linux as well. Guess what? They all installed Ubuntu. I insisted and installed openSUSE. I succeeded because of who I am, but I had to do more effort than the rest because I had to investigate more and change the procedures. The procedures for whatever, all assumed Ubuntu. All the instructions were for Ubuntu. I managed to do everything, on my own, but it was harder and longer (maybe days longer)... As I say, I was the single one in the whole class not using Ubuntu. Another example. The documentation of services my country administration provides, sometimes contemplate Linux, but when they do, it is Ubuntu what they use. Their docs give examples using Ubuntu. Thus when a month ago I tried to use my country ID card electronic identification system on openSUSE, I failed. All the instructions are for Ubuntu. No wiki page here. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.0 x86_64 at Telcontar)