Yet Another Call for Linux Standardization

An anonymous reader writes "Newsforge has an article Commentary: United We Stand...the Division in the Linux World, in which David Meyer argues that UnitedLinux will provide standardization for the Linux community that will allow it to win the desktop market from Windows. The article has a number of supporting comments, but then this one particular negative comment that disagrees with David. This particular comment offers an alternative view on the need for standardization. This aternative view that is put forward simply argues that 'Over what is almost twelve years we have pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps. We have done this using a development model that allows us to produce software that proprietary vendors cannot compete with', and then summarizing that 'the Linux community does not need to set up businesses with the specific intention of trying to "win" users from Microsoft; all we have to do is continue to develop software in the same way, and the users will make the switch all by themselves'."

Comments

Re:Standards

[kubla2000]

- Why do we still have to choose between a bunch of different desktops, ALL of which are mutually incompatible?

Out of all the duff crap in your post, this is worst. There's nothing stopping a KDE user from loading Gnome apps or vice versa, you just have to have the appropriate libraries loaded.

Re:Factions within Linux that won't go away

[PigleT]

What's the problem?

a) RPM already has at least two ways of being upgraded dynamically - urpmi and apt-get. It just needs a consistent well-maintained high-quality upstream pool-set

b) Debian supports RPM packages just fine.

c) The standards (specifically, the LSB) say nothing about requiring RPM to be the system's native package-managing system.

d) Debian already strive for LSB-compliancy, at least where it makes sense. This is why we've had /etc/init.d/ since the get-go while RH have been messing around with this "/etc/rc.d" abomination which then needs legacy support on the assumption that there are idiots out there who can't cope with RH correcting their previous mistakes.

"the system directory on Windows 2000 is \WINNT"

Well, only *if* you install it that way.

And one for thought: which is more important, adhering to a standard for the sake of it, or knowing what you're doing? (A specific example of the latter: given an IP#, I expect you to be able to trace through DNAT, netstat -p or similar and through /proc, to tell me where in the filesystem the httpd is located that's responsible for a given webserver. If you can't debug that, you ain't gettin' root on my boxes.)

Missed the point, missed the point, missed ....

[EmbeddedJanitor]

You miss the point. Nobody is saying that there should be one type of Linux, but that they should work with the same software.

To use your analogies:

Different TVs, but they all can view the same channels and use the same antenna connectors.

Different VCRs but they all use the same tapes and work with any TV.

Different cars, but they all use the same gas and standardised oil grades.

Differnt refridgerators, but they all use the same electricity.

That's the kind of similarity you need to standardise in user space.