Red Hat Linux 6.1 vs Caldera OpenLinux 2.3

joe_s writes "CNET recently posted and update to their shootout between Red Hat Linux and OpenLinux, which has some pretty interesting points of view...and could be pretty useful for a newbie. "

Comments

Philosophy

[Ih8sG8s]

I remember why I switched to linux. I was bored with OS/2 and i had heard quite a bit about this unix stuff and how powerful it was. I was curious. OS/2 was nice, but I wanted to learn more. I had used crappy operating systems for years (OS/2 much less than windows), and had come to accept all the quirks that 'all operating systems have'. I didn't know better. So I started using linux, and was blown away by what i could do with it, and how well thought out the thing was. As I learned more, repeatedly my mind was blown as I realized what was possible with a real OS. What intruiged me the most was the philosophy that presented itself in all the tools, and design philosophy of just about every piece of unix software i could get my hands on. Ultimately it was my thirst for knowledge that got me hooked. the more I learned, the more i liked what i saw. Now take average joe-bloe. Been using windows forever. Doesn't know anything but windows because according to him, windows is what came with the computer he bought, and he basically stuck to it because that's what he was fed. Words like stability, robustness, and configurability equate to hardware to these people. "Faster CPUs makes more robustness, if you buy good hardware then your system will be stable. Better not play with windows too much because I might break something." Fact is, this is all most people know, and what they concider the truth. They accept it as truth. Stick these people in linux (regardless of distro) and watch them hate it. They don't care that they can configure X in 100,000 different ways, and the thought of customizing something for themselves scares them. They want to hit the power button, and see what they are familiar with, windows. In the garbage that is windows, things are much simpler. It's a flat, single user system, and its closed. As terrible as we all know this design is, it caters to the moms and the pops. There is no need to promote linux to the home user. If he/she is the sort that would explore linux and enjoy it, then they must first be looking for better philosophy from their computing environs. It wasn't the eye candy of E, or the dozens of window managers, or the 800+ packages that comes on a distro that hooked me on linux. It was a question of philosophy. The rest was a bonus.