On Wed, 30 Oct 2002 12:05:34 +0100 Dan Am <suse@dertext.de> wrote:
sorry if this has been brought up, I could not follow all the postings, but isn't UNITED LINUX supposed to address this issue, with longer devolepment cycles and standard components. The "business user" seems to considered a special audience by the makers of United Linux and SuSe is part of that.
I think there is confusion about the stability of linux. Linux is very stable at what it was intended to excel at: running servers and automating them thru scripting. The "Desktop Linux" phenomena has somehow co-opted the "linux stability label" and has confused the newbies into thinking that "Desktop Linux" is supposed to be stable; it isn't, it's experimental. If you run linux with only a very basic X environment, (no KDE or Gnome), you will get a very solid machine, although you may need to give up some fancy "drag'n'drop" stuff, and the like. Now that brings us back to the origin of this thread, and my basic gripe about the newer versions of SuSE. They are catering to the "Desktop Linux" crowd, instead of the "Secure Server" crowd. The installations are making it very easy to "automatically install" a desktop, but are making it more difficult to install a simple rock solid server, without all the fluff attached. It is becoming like "Windows was\is", and it is inevitable that this will happen, since you are trying to make "a no-brainer operating system" so newbies can be up and running in an hour and surfing the web. When I install now, most of my time is spent "deinstalling" all the stuff I don't want, like getting rid of the "automatic framebuffer" and the stupid login graphics, or getting the firewall to work with my straight forward ppp login. The "cute penquin" sitting on tty1 is'nt worth a damn thing, and probably is a security risk, since it adds to the complexity of the booting process, most of which is well hidden. So why do it? The answer to that is what is ruining the "linux experience". -- use Perl; #powerful programmable prestidigitation