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Hi Tim, On Tuesday 14 May 2002 08:33 pm, Timothy R. Butler wrote:
-----8< snip! >8----- One thing I have noticed is that SuSE and Debian users are also fiercely loyal to their distributions. Honestly, I do not see people telling folks to quit complaining about bugs on the Mandrake lists I'm on, but I see it a lot here, and somewhat on debian-user. The concept that it's bad to complain about annoying problems in a commercial product is something that I can't quite grasp.
Totally off-topic, but the answer you're looking for is "esprit de corps." It's the bonding of the despised, rejected, and oppressed into "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers." It's what makes battles possible - the sane individual would run away. Members of a corps fight together: not for flag or country or other abstraction, but for each other. Woe betide the traitor and the quisling! It's true that Microsoft would like very much to see Linux go away. It's true that SuSE has had some tough economic times. What isn't true is that this is the last stand of the few and the proud against the barbarian hordes. SuSE Linux tells you what it's for every time you log in: it's for fun! SuSE seems to have a solid business plan. Chris Mahmood won't be buying a Ferrari with his stock options any time soon, but he'll continue get a paycheck. SuSE 8.0 has some problems. I have a very strong suspicion that I ran into them because my laptop was released scant weeks before SuSE 8.0 was released. I'm not staying up late fuming, I'll continue to enjoy SuSE 8.0 on my desktop and RedHat 7.3 on my laptop. It's OK, the Republic will survive. The problems will be fixed. And if they're not, SuSE 8.1 will be along in five or six months, and we'll do it all over again. It's not God and country, it's not even the Mystical Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Water Buffalo, it's an OS. It's for fun. Solving problems is part of the fun. -- Bill