On Fri, Nov 06, 2009 at 10:53:15AM +0100, Hans Witvliet wrote: [ 8< ]
Perhaps it would be informative to have a side-by-side comparison of the main releases (openSUSE_11.2, SLES_11, Buildservice-addons, ubuntu_9.10, fedora_11, centos_5.4, ...) , and what version the most important packages have. (total count of available packages?)
That's nothing a vendor should provide. I fear such a comparison presented at an openSUSE.org page would not help to establish trust into the people behind the project. Such a comparison is a task for Linux magazines. The vendors might provide an overview what's included in which version (glibc, bash, KDE, Gnome, Firefox, Samba, ...). The other and for the users more important question is how well integrated are the different parts to make it a good = useable product. It might be helpfull to have a test suite to check a set of applications to be available and to collect the version data. Like we already have with LSB. I'm not sure if LSB is still limited to rpm based systems. At the next level we might have to ask ourself if we like to compare our Linux with closed source products like Apple Mac OS and Microsoft Windows? To me the answer is quite clear: In particular the mass market of Microsoft users must be the target. Apple demonstrates that it is possible to bite them. :) And I also like to bite these shiny Apples. Lars -- Lars Müller [ˈlaː(r)z ˈmʏlɐ] Samba Team SUSE Linux, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany