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Linux & Open Source Software, the Present
Mark writes to tell us that LinuxForums is running the second in a series of articles designed to reflect on "what Linux is, where it came from, where it's going, how to use it and why you should." With all of the recent talk about the perceived difficulties within the OSS community sometimes it is just good to take a look at our roots.
On a related note is an old but still relevant essay: Debunking Common GNU/Linux Myths by Jem Matzan.
Developers: We can use your help.
The article is not exactly ment to reflect...
Welcome to part two of a series for beginners explaining what Linux is, where it came from, where it's going, how to use it and why you should.
In short: nothing to see here, except the forever raging flamewar of KDE vs GNOME.
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
For example, if I'm seeking help with getting samba working nicely in a mixed environment or figuring out how to run a PHP app on a windows box, I get responses like, "Just ditch XP, d00d, it sux", and "Apache is better than IIS".
;-)
Many people underestimate the differences between the two platforms. Often there are odd problems such that even if the app is supported on Windows, it may have limited functionality. For example, HERMES (a PHP app) is a pain to install on Windows because of a lack of symlinks, and SQL-Ledger (a Perl app) can't use MD5 authentication with PostgreSQL on Windows, nor does the LaTeX support work right if you are trying to print directly to a printer. In once case, it is a DBD::Pg versioning issue, and on the other, it is a limitation with the printing mechanism.
My advice to you is this: If it is designed for Linux, run it on Linux. If it is designed for Windows run it on Windows. If you need to consolidate, use SFU and Apache on Windows (I have never gotten Apache on Cygwin to work properly with PHP and even if it did, I suspect there would be performance issues).
Otherwise, if you need help integrating even if you don't like my advice, you can pay for our services
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
What? Are you only counting Fedora as the major distro? The default desktop for Knoppix and Mandriva is KDE, and Slackware doesn't even include GNOME.