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CollegeLinux Released to the Public
YOU ARE SO FIRED! writes "It seems that the Swiss Robert Kennedy College (with the aptly named website) has released CollegeLinux, a Linux distribution based off of Slackware, to the public. If only my employees could've used this in school - I wouldn't have to fire them so much! See the interview with the dean of the school for more information."
Linux is great and all but I feel half the reason it isn't doing as well as it could is because there are just so many distros in general. I know the nature of Linux is about choice and open software but this hurts Linux in itself. Why don't hardware companies put out Linux drivers as much as they do Mac drivers? Because they expect certain things within the Mac OS, not everything is different from system to system, which makes it easier and more attractive to companies to write Linux code and drivers...
http://www.pchopper.com/mirror/linux/
but how they are perceived. For instance, there are a whoooole lot of distros based off other distros - based on RH, Slack, Debian etc.
This is all well and good, but maybe we need some other terminology than "distro". A term which implied sort of half-fledged distro-ness [sic], for instance for a distro *based on* something, but focussed in a certain area, would be very useful.
If this were the case, you would have your general distros (Redhat, Slack, Debian), and then, in sub-groups or similar, you would have Redhat-based College Distro, or Debian-based Medical Records distro or whatever....
Having so much effort wasted on many different distributions is stupid. Can you imagine what type of improvements could have been made to Linux in general with the programming time invested in maintaining many different distributions?
You mean you would already have a free clone of YOUR favorite OS NOW if everyone would just team up and agree that your favorite GUI and OS's philosophy is the best?
The problem is, there are people who actually work on projects, and those who criticize other's projects. The reason that there are so many projects is that people disagree on what the 'correct' way of doing things is. If you want a windows clone, use windows. Otherwise, choose the distribution that fits your computing style the best.
Oh, and by the way, ctl-alt-+ and ctl-alt-- changes your resolutions in X on-the-fly, if you compile your quality sound driver and insert it into the kernel, you'll have reliable sound, and xfreee86 +xinerama works great for MULTI-monitor setups, not just dual-monitor setups.
Furthermore, the developers that work on making different distributions have totally different skill sets than driver developers and applications developers. In other words, you can't assume that if these people weren't developing their distribution they would be fixing problems with sound, video, etc.. In fact, if they weren't developing their distribution, they would probably be posting nonsense on slashdot, and complaining about how all the current distributions are crap.
Sorry if I come off as harsh, but I hate this type of thinking. Some people are so lazy, but expect the world of others. Parasites.
If it's not one thing, it's Steve's Mother