Well, it's Debian GNU/Hurd when Hurd is the kernel, so I see no reason why Debian GNU/NetBSD is not acceptable when the NetBSD kernel is used.
There's no 'claiming ownership' of anyone's work involved in this naming convention. The slash is a separator between 'majority OS stakeholder' and 'kernel'.
Even if you don't agree that GNU is a 'majority OS stakeholder' in terms of lines of code, I would argue that they are 'majority OS stakeholder' in that they defined and promoted a philosophy on top of which a community of developers, a body of software and a community of users has been built.
Depends what you mean by Linux. Kernel? Or GNU/Linux, operating system?
There hasn't been a technical revolution anyway The revolution has been in licensing and using the Internet as a development environment. The technical work is all evolutionary, small steps.
In proprietary software, you create the appearance of a revolution by giving something old a new name. You can't see the source so you can't see that it's nothing knew.
So I wouldn't be surprised to see Linux around in 20 or even 30 years, and I'm sure DOS and VMS will be with us too.
This means that people that have come from the public sector, at some point in their career, came directly from the public sector, without interim positions at private companies.
You got me, I missed the significance of the word "directly", but who gives a fuck: what's the relevance of your statement? What does it matter whether they had interim positions? You said you worked in an academic area of the public sector, I said that is rather different from the public sector as a whole, and this is your response?
Uh-oh! I don't have an argument anymore so I'm going to counter with a completely irrelevant, yet again taken out of context example.... [miscellaneous insults]
No, I was making the point that you have difficulty seeing that the truth depends on the details.
Right. So you agree that you should be forced to consider all possible solutions then. Sure thing. The next project you have, go spend a couple weeks hunting down every software project (both proprietary and open sourced) and consider each one, make sure you fully understand it, then decide what to get.
No, as it is I choose to consider a balanced cross-section of possible solutions. I don't spend months hunting down every project, I go to reasonable lengths to ensure I'm not missing some gems. I've found gems that way.
*(I am forced to consider proprietary software, so I choose to also consider free software; I think I should be forced by policy).
This really takes the cake as to the extend of what fucked up ideas you have.
Ok, don't take me out of context. When we're talking about "the people I work with that come from the public sector" I can say, "they all came directly from the public sector." Try to work with a 7th grade reading level, here.
See, I can't get past your inability to make sense, or to see it. Read what you just wrote.
Some people don't believe that copying music over the internet is illegal, it doesn't change what a fact is.
You approach ideas from one angle and that's the only angle you see. You don't care that there is detail that may make the world different to your model of it.
I have ripped my entire CD collection to Ogg format (yes I use Ogg, yes I am a free software bigot). I make them available in a protected web site so I can copy them to my PC at work and play them there when I'm working late. This is "copying music over the Internet". No, it's not illegal.
You can't back up and give one concrete example of a municipal system going with proprietary over open source because they thought open source was illegal. Feel free to try to find any information on this.
Why do I need to do this? I never claimed that I could.
Let me just put you down here.
Thanks. You like doing that, don't you? It's your substitute for reason.
I work in this industry, it doesn't sound like you do. So, in the most blunt way of putting it, you don't know shit about how things work out here.
In the past I worked for a defence contractor and for local government. If that's not public sector, what is? Oh, abuse again.
Right now, I like it.
Aha! Finally you admit that this is about how you don't want to be told what to do. In other words, you like the free expression of your unchecked ego. You are a child.
Open Source doesn't have a right to be considered any place the people don't have a clear understanding of what it is. If people don't have a clear understanding, I don't want them implementing or considering it.
Only by considering something can one reach a clear understanding of it. Show me how I can understand something by ignoring it.
Debian in the corparte environment? Give me a break.
Why not? From a TCO perspective it's much better than other distros. Administration is slick. If you want a piece of software, there it is, already packaged. Upgrades don't require hours of sweat and reboots. If I see a bug, I discuss with the maintainer.
The only missing part of the equation is support. But that's just a niche waiting to be filled by people like me (i.e. I'm already supporting Debian in the corporate environment).
Granted, most commercial software doesn't come with a "works with Debian" sticker, so I'd be reluctant to run those apps on it. But there's usually an effective alternative in the Debian package pool.
You are right, but you are the one who said that the people I work with are different than the public sector. This is bullshit, and incorrect, as they all came directly from the public sector.
That's odd, your original post says over half of the people I work with used to work in the public sector until they started working here. Granted, all is indeed over half; however, the fact that you didn't say all in the first place shows that you are now talking out of your rusty sheriff's badge, and that I'm not.
Most people don't have a clear grasp of what open source is, but I don't know anybody who thinks that it's illegal.
Organisations often have a policy of running only "licensed software" because the software industry tells them that "unlicensed software" is "piracy". You and I know that free software is licensed and perfectly legal. Some people do not.
Some people think that if you didn't pay for the software, it must be stolen. Some people got into IT before the Internet was invented and their sum total experience of IT is four years in an isolated university followed by god-knows-how-long in a less than dynamic mainframe environment.
I speak from experience of seeing these people around me, in all the places I have been - two different schools, defence sector, community education, health service, finance.
Good, when you start working for a real company that spends millions on software come and talk to me, ok?
The company I work for does spend millions on software. Anyway, I said my employer spends hundreds of thousands of pounds on software for which there are free software alternatives. I could have qualified that further by saying which I have spent time thinking about. At least read what I am saying before ranting back at me.
You think people are some special variety of sheep, while pushing yourself into a savior role saying that these types of measures are justified because people can't be trusted to make decisions on their own.
You say "sheep", not me. I say that there is constant influence on people, and people are influenced. That is not indicative of sheep, but of people who live and work together and affect one another. I include myself in the group "people", so I don't cast myself as saviour; far from it, I believe all sane people recognise this. Currently I'd have to categorise you as insane.
It's forcing someone to think about something. That is my problem with it. It's fucking dumb to make anybody think about something.
I can see that I have yet to make you think about anything. I doubt anyone ever could. What are you so worried about? You live on your own planet, where only your rules apply!
The original bill forced a justification as to purchase of proprietary software. That is just retarded. I would rather have people running a system they are familiar and comfortable with, than an open source solution nobody knows what the fuck to do with it.
But your logic doesn't follow. Read it yourself. Think about the difference between the concepts "consider" and "implement". I'm sure you'll get there, you seem fairly intelligent, though you're a bit slow.
It's not a problem.
It's a problem when you it makes you look like a twit:)
so don't talk about things you don't know about, ok?
Well, you know nothing else about me but what I've told you; I've worked in the public sector, many people in my family work in the public sector. I know about the public sector.
Anyway this deviates from my original point which was that many people in positions of making purchasing decisions think that open source is the same as shareware and there is no support, and it's probably illegal.. Public sector, private sector, whatever, this is the case. You may have a "different experience" of it but that's allowed statistically.
First, I doubt you have the insight or the scope to actually qualify the statement of how much money Open Source would save your organization.
This continues the rather defensive tone of your first paragraph, and adds a hint of insult. Anyway, your doubts, beyond being simply arrogant and incorrect, are neither here nor there and lend nothing to your argument.
As it happens, my employer spends hundreds of thousands of pounds on software for which there are free software alternatives. You get support for that price, yes. I've investigated third-party support. It's available at a fraction of the cost.
Second, you aren't forced. There is a big difference between "forced due to legislation" and "forced due to company policy".
Legislation is the company policy of government. The end result of both is that the policy get's implemented. Tell me what the big difference is.
It's a good thing that thought police is a good idea for you... I know of several countries where you will fit in just fine. If people are told what to think, consider, and justify, no matter what the realm and breadth, it leads to a world where thoughts are dictated. This is never a good thing.
I'll ignore the frankly childish comments about thought police. The rest of your comment merely shows deep naivety. People are constantly being told what to think, consider and justify, whether this is explicit or subtle. If you think you are free from such pressures, fly off into the sun, Icarus. When the pressure is encoded into a policy then at least it has to stand up to public inspection.
In the final analysis, this proposed law is merely asking that something is considered, presumably on it's merits. What the fuck is your problem with this?
Anyway, I looked at your web page and it's clear you just have a general attitude problem.
There's a (fairly obvious) difference between public sector gernerally and the 'academic' sector of which you have experience.
I am forced to consider Windows solutions when evaluating software. I work in a large company with a range of platforms - mainframe, Unix (AIX), Novell, Windows and now (with resistance) Linux. IBM and Novell rule the roost because 'no-one got ever got sacked' (no-one actually says that, but, well, someimes they do say it) and the freebies are good. The IT organisation actually does quite well in terms of running a stable ship but if they would open their minds to Open Source the cost savings could be absolutely disgusting.
Anyway, other than being 'pissed' when I have to consider Windows, what harm does it do? In fact it encourages a depth of analysis which might otherwise not happen given pressure to meet deadlines. Individual's skills and experience are important, I can't argue with that, but by requiring things from new staff rather than stipulating a requirement in project work, you're just turning an IT procedure policy into a recruitment policy. I'd say the sensible choice is to do both.
Well, considering that the disabled, the elderly and convicts don't contribute positively to society, why should they be supported?
When people become unable to support themselves (through legal means) perhaps it's best that they are allowed to die, or are 'disposed of' hygienically.
A lot of money would be saved. At least the States don't have an NHS like the UK or other socialist countries. Surely when someone is medically unfit, removal from the genepool is a positive contribution towards human evolution. Artificially sustaining the physically incompetent costs swathes of cash and produces a race of degenerates.
Look. The point is that many people in positions of making purchasing decisions think that open source is the same as shareware and there is no support, and it's probably illegal.
A bill which enforces consideration is unable to force people to make the wrong decision. It is, however, able to educate people that alternatives exist.
Seriously, there are people in IT who have not heard of Apache, and that don't realise RedHat will provide support.
The questions were asked at Waterloo Station, which is a railway station. These were random commuters, not employees of a single company.
At least, I can't imagine why they would select office workers employed by Waterloo Station, there can only be a handful, and any railway station manager who calls themselves a CEO is a prat.
For example, system updates are released entirely separately for OS X client and server- and often contain drastically different updates.
If you create specialised OSes then specialised updates are simply a logical outcome, not a benefit.
The server updates come almost always after the client updates, and rarely have I heard of the server updates causing nearly as many problems as the client side updates.
Simply a logical outcome, not a benefit. If I install a minimal Debian system, my updates will be minimal, and will cause fewer problems (although Debian updates tend not to cause problems anyway).
...and believe it or not, that "fine tuning" is a little more complex than "picking which set of packages to install" and "how we market it".
You've bought the marketing, and you aren't actually presenting an argument. You're just makeing statements. In fact, fine tuning at this level is exactly "picking which set of packages to install" given that the available packages cover your tuning profiles. Anything else is configuration of those packages; surely you're not be telling me you need separate operating system distributions to cover all the various configuration scenarios. That would be insane.
Novell is, in fact, the perfect example of the power of a ground-up, purpose-built server platform.
Is it? What about the ridiculous proliferation of Novell products? Couldn't it be case that Novell has simply painted themselves into a corner by specialising, when the market is demanding generalism, and their nebulous product range is their doomed attempt to assuage this?
Linux's weakness is that it has NO equivalent; your precious Debian has no core, ground-up focus on being a server distro and ONLY a server distro.
No. Linux does have equivalents. The Linux market is full of specialist distributions which occupy diminishing niches. They won't last.
Debian doesn't need to focus on being a server distro. The choice is made at installation time, rather than at CD burning time. I can make a Debian install more minimal than any Netware install, and run it as a secure firewall, or I can make it a full-blown workstation. The choice is made through package selection, i.e. "fine tuning".
Case and point- there simply isn't a way to use Novell as a desktop operating system(at least, it's not as easy on any other OS). It is ONLY for serving, and as a result, has a clear path in all regards, from development, to QA, to marketing. Do one thing, do it well.
This may be an advantage for Novell but how is it an advantage for the end user? And it's the end user that counts, isn't it?
Remember, you can't make everyone happy all of the time, so why bother trying? I wish linux distros would grow up and find their market segments instead of trying for everything. Even Apple has recognized the need for separate desktop and server "distros".
Don't be stupid. Server operating systems and desktop operating systems are similar. The fundamentals are the same. The differences are in the fine tuning.
Debian produce probably the most stable (in all senses) Linux distribution. They don't have a Server distro and a Desktop distro. When you install the operating system, you choose the components that form the type of system you are creating. What is wrong with this?
Returning to your final comment about Apple, their strategy of releasing two different OS's for desktop and server is a marketing decision, not a technical one. There is no difference between the two OSs so huge that the decision cannot be made at install time, instead of being brought forward to CD-burning time.
X11 features network transparency; I can run CDE on my Windows desktop by using XFree86 under Cygwin, or some other Windows X server.
HP workstations used to be quite popular. PCs are too fast nowadays for non-PC hardware to be big on the desktop, but there are still many situations when it's nice to run the servers native GUI environment while you sit at your desk.
Yes, it seems inevitable to me too. However, I am occasionally sobered by the thought that Marx said the same thing about the ascendency of the proletariat.
I can't disagree with anything you say but you are missing my point, which is that this in no way denigrates the achievments or capabilities of the Open Source community; they have not set out to market hardware devices. Well most of them haven't, but see the rest of this comment...
We should also note that the Open Source community is not just a looseknit group of hackers on the Internet. Hardware companies are also part of this community. Witness Linux-based PDAs like the Zaurus (I choose this because I have one). Sharp is a member of this community.
If Sharp had produced a tablet PC running Linux and Opie, then I would call this an achievment of the Open Source community. The fact that they didn't says nothing about the community; it says something about them as a company.
In fact, I see the main growth of the Open Source community to be in hardware companies, consultancies and end users; in fact everyone except the software companies... If the Open Source community restricts itself to out-of-hours amateur work by volunteers, then it'll have a tough time in the mainstream. But it doesn't restrict itself in that way, so it won't.
In short: the Open Source community COULD have produced this because they DO have money and brand name; this is true when you take a broader view of who is in that community than just a group of J Random Hackers. If you don't accept this broad view of the community then you can't criticise them for not producing tablet PCs, because J Random Hacker never set out to do that!
I agree with most of what you say, and I think tablets do have a future, but I must take issue with this bit:
the Open Source community couldn't have come up with a working implementation - where would they get the money to actually build hardware devices and market them to volume buyers?
Well, duh! Open Source / Free Software is a software phenomenon. You can't take a new hardware device and use it's existence to bash the Open Source community.
The missed opportunity was for some hardware manufacturer to build a device running Free Software before Microsoft got their effort out. This would have been possible. And the Open Source community would have created, or contributed to, a working implementation of the software.
What the hardware companies should do is agree on an open platform like Opie, sponsor it's development, build devices which use it and compete on the quality and features of their hardware.
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Well, it's Debian GNU/Hurd when Hurd is the kernel, so I see no reason why Debian GNU/NetBSD is not acceptable when the NetBSD kernel is used.
There's no 'claiming ownership' of anyone's work involved in this naming convention. The slash is a separator between 'majority OS stakeholder' and 'kernel'.
Even if you don't agree that GNU is a 'majority OS stakeholder' in terms of lines of code, I would argue that they are 'majority OS stakeholder' in that they defined and promoted a philosophy on top of which a community of developers, a body of software and a community of users has been built.
You simply don't make any sense whatsoever. I give up.
Depends what you mean by Linux. Kernel? Or GNU/Linux, operating system?
There hasn't been a technical revolution anyway The revolution has been in licensing and using the Internet as a development environment. The technical work is all evolutionary, small steps.
In proprietary software, you create the appearance of a revolution by giving something old a new name. You can't see the source so you can't see that it's nothing knew.
So I wouldn't be surprised to see Linux around in 20 or even 30 years, and I'm sure DOS and VMS will be with us too.
This means that people that have come from the public sector, at some point in their career, came directly from the public sector, without interim positions at private companies.
You got me, I missed the significance of the word "directly", but who gives a fuck: what's the relevance of your statement? What does it matter whether they had interim positions? You said you worked in an academic area of the public sector, I said that is rather different from the public sector as a whole, and this is your response?
Uh-oh! I don't have an argument anymore so I'm going to counter with a completely irrelevant, yet again taken out of context example.... [miscellaneous insults]
No, I was making the point that you have difficulty seeing that the truth depends on the details.
Right. So you agree that you should be forced to consider all possible solutions then. Sure thing. The next project you have, go spend a couple weeks hunting down every software project (both proprietary and open sourced) and consider each one, make sure you fully understand it, then decide what to get.
No, as it is I choose to consider a balanced cross-section of possible solutions. I don't spend months hunting down every project, I go to reasonable lengths to ensure I'm not missing some gems. I've found gems that way.
*(I am forced to consider proprietary software, so I choose to also consider free software; I think I should be forced by policy).
This really takes the cake as to the extend of what fucked up ideas you have.
What are you on about?
Ok, don't take me out of context. When we're talking about "the people I work with that come from the public sector" I can say, "they all came directly from the public sector." Try to work with a 7th grade reading level, here.
See, I can't get past your inability to make sense, or to see it. Read what you just wrote.
Some people don't believe that copying music over the internet is illegal, it doesn't change what a fact is.
You approach ideas from one angle and that's the only angle you see. You don't care that there is detail that may make the world different to your model of it.
I have ripped my entire CD collection to Ogg format (yes I use Ogg, yes I am a free software bigot). I make them available in a protected web site so I can copy them to my PC at work and play them there when I'm working late. This is "copying music over the Internet". No, it's not illegal.
You can't back up and give one concrete example of a municipal system going with proprietary over open source because they thought open source was illegal. Feel free to try to find any information on this.
Why do I need to do this? I never claimed that I could.
Let me just put you down here.
Thanks. You like doing that, don't you? It's your substitute for reason.
I work in this industry, it doesn't sound like you do. So, in the most blunt way of putting it, you don't know shit about how things work out here.
In the past I worked for a defence contractor and for local government. If that's not public sector, what is? Oh, abuse again.
Right now, I like it.
Aha! Finally you admit that this is about how you don't want to be told what to do. In other words, you like the free expression of your unchecked ego. You are a child.
Open Source doesn't have a right to be considered any place the people don't have a clear understanding of what it is. If people don't have a clear understanding, I don't want them implementing or considering it.
Only by considering something can one reach a clear understanding of it. Show me how I can understand something by ignoring it.
Post your IP address and let /. demonstrate!
Debian in the corparte environment? Give me a break.
Why not? From a TCO perspective it's much better than other distros. Administration is slick. If you want a piece of software, there it is, already packaged. Upgrades don't require hours of sweat and reboots. If I see a bug, I discuss with the maintainer.
The only missing part of the equation is support. But that's just a niche waiting to be filled by people like me (i.e. I'm already supporting Debian in the corporate environment).
Granted, most commercial software doesn't come with a "works with Debian" sticker, so I'd be reluctant to run those apps on it. But there's usually an effective alternative in the Debian package pool.
Quite, all the more so since Debian has various non-Linux ports.
'C' levels are nowhere close to 'B' levels.
For 'B' you have to pull the power out too. 'A' requires metalworking skills.
You are right, but you are the one who said that the people I work with are different than the public sector. This is bullshit, and incorrect, as they all came directly from the public sector.
:)
That's odd, your original post says over half of the people I work with used to work in the public sector until they started working here. Granted, all is indeed over half; however, the fact that you didn't say all in the first place shows that you are now talking out of your rusty sheriff's badge, and that I'm not.
Most people don't have a clear grasp of what open source is, but I don't know anybody who thinks that it's illegal.
Organisations often have a policy of running only "licensed software" because the software industry tells them that "unlicensed software" is "piracy". You and I know that free software is licensed and perfectly legal. Some people do not.
Some people think that if you didn't pay for the software, it must be stolen. Some people got into IT before the Internet was invented and their sum total experience of IT is four years in an isolated university followed by god-knows-how-long in a less than dynamic mainframe environment.
I speak from experience of seeing these people around me, in all the places I have been - two different schools, defence sector, community education, health service, finance.
Good, when you start working for a real company that spends millions on software come and talk to me, ok?
The company I work for does spend millions on software. Anyway, I said my employer spends hundreds of thousands of pounds on software for which there are free software alternatives. I could have qualified that further by saying which I have spent time thinking about. At least read what I am saying before ranting back at me.
You think people are some special variety of sheep, while pushing yourself into a savior role saying that these types of measures are justified because people can't be trusted to make decisions on their own.
You say "sheep", not me. I say that there is constant influence on people, and people are influenced. That is not indicative of sheep, but of people who live and work together and affect one another. I include myself in the group "people", so I don't cast myself as saviour; far from it, I believe all sane people recognise this. Currently I'd have to categorise you as insane.
It's forcing someone to think about something. That is my problem with it. It's fucking dumb to make anybody think about something.
I can see that I have yet to make you think about anything. I doubt anyone ever could. What are you so worried about? You live on your own planet, where only your rules apply!
The original bill forced a justification as to purchase of proprietary software. That is just retarded. I would rather have people running a system they are familiar and comfortable with, than an open source solution nobody knows what the fuck to do with it.
But your logic doesn't follow. Read it yourself. Think about the difference between the concepts "consider" and "implement". I'm sure you'll get there, you seem fairly intelligent, though you're a bit slow.
It's not a problem.
It's a problem when you it makes you look like a twit
so don't talk about things you don't know about, ok?
Well, you know nothing else about me but what I've told you; I've worked in the public sector, many people in my family work in the public sector. I know about the public sector.
Anyway this deviates from my original point which was that many people in positions of making purchasing decisions think that open source is the same as shareware and there is no support, and it's probably illegal.. Public sector, private sector, whatever, this is the case. You may have a "different experience" of it but that's allowed statistically.
First, I doubt you have the insight or the scope to actually qualify the statement of how much money Open Source would save your organization.
This continues the rather defensive tone of your first paragraph, and adds a hint of insult. Anyway, your doubts, beyond being simply arrogant and incorrect, are neither here nor there and lend nothing to your argument.
As it happens, my employer spends hundreds of thousands of pounds on software for which there are free software alternatives. You get support for that price, yes. I've investigated third-party support. It's available at a fraction of the cost.
Second, you aren't forced. There is a big difference between "forced due to legislation" and "forced due to company policy".
Legislation is the company policy of government. The end result of both is that the policy get's implemented. Tell me what the big difference is.
It's a good thing that thought police is a good idea for you... I know of several countries where you will fit in just fine. If people are told what to think, consider, and justify, no matter what the realm and breadth, it leads to a world where thoughts are dictated. This is never a good thing.
I'll ignore the frankly childish comments about thought police. The rest of your comment merely shows deep naivety. People are constantly being told what to think, consider and justify, whether this is explicit or subtle. If you think you are free from such pressures, fly off into the sun, Icarus. When the pressure is encoded into a policy then at least it has to stand up to public inspection.
In the final analysis, this proposed law is merely asking that something is considered, presumably on it's merits. What the fuck is your problem with this?
Anyway, I looked at your web page and it's clear you just have a general attitude problem.
There's a (fairly obvious) difference between public sector gernerally and the 'academic' sector of which you have experience.
I am forced to consider Windows solutions when evaluating software. I work in a large company with a range of platforms - mainframe, Unix (AIX), Novell, Windows and now (with resistance) Linux. IBM and Novell rule the roost because 'no-one got ever got sacked' (no-one actually says that, but, well, someimes they do say it) and the freebies are good. The IT organisation actually does quite well in terms of running a stable ship but if they would open their minds to Open Source the cost savings could be absolutely disgusting.
Anyway, other than being 'pissed' when I have to consider Windows, what harm does it do? In fact it encourages a depth of analysis which might otherwise not happen given pressure to meet deadlines. Individual's skills and experience are important, I can't argue with that, but by requiring things from new staff rather than stipulating a requirement in project work, you're just turning an IT procedure policy into a recruitment policy. I'd say the sensible choice is to do both.
Well, considering that the disabled, the elderly and convicts don't contribute positively to society, why should they be supported?
When people become unable to support themselves (through legal means) perhaps it's best that they are allowed to die, or are 'disposed of' hygienically.
A lot of money would be saved. At least the States don't have an NHS like the UK or other socialist countries. Surely when someone is medically unfit, removal from the genepool is a positive contribution towards human evolution. Artificially sustaining the physically incompetent costs swathes of cash and produces a race of degenerates.
This sarca-troll brought to you by...
There are many years of marketing to undo. What's wrong with speeding the process?
Look. The point is that many people in positions of making purchasing decisions think that open source is the same as shareware and there is no support, and it's probably illegal.
A bill which enforces consideration is unable to force people to make the wrong decision. It is, however, able to educate people that alternatives exist.
Seriously, there are people in IT who have not heard of Apache, and that don't realise RedHat will provide support.
The questions were asked at Waterloo Station, which is a railway station. These were random commuters, not employees of a single company.
At least, I can't imagine why they would select office workers employed by Waterloo Station, there can only be a handful, and any railway station manager who calls themselves a CEO is a prat.
How do you know the interviewees didn't give disinformation?
Who the fuck are you?
If you create specialised OSes then specialised updates are simply a logical outcome, not a benefit.
The server updates come almost always after the client updates, and rarely have I heard of the server updates causing nearly as many problems as the client side updates.
Simply a logical outcome, not a benefit. If I install a minimal Debian system, my updates will be minimal, and will cause fewer problems (although Debian updates tend not to cause problems anyway).
You've bought the marketing, and you aren't actually presenting an argument. You're just makeing statements. In fact, fine tuning at this level is exactly "picking which set of packages to install" given that the available packages cover your tuning profiles. Anything else is configuration of those packages; surely you're not be telling me you need separate operating system distributions to cover all the various configuration scenarios. That would be insane.
Novell is, in fact, the perfect example of the power of a ground-up, purpose-built server platform.
Is it? What about the ridiculous proliferation of Novell products? Couldn't it be case that Novell has simply painted themselves into a corner by specialising, when the market is demanding generalism, and their nebulous product range is their doomed attempt to assuage this?
Linux's weakness is that it has NO equivalent; your precious Debian has no core, ground-up focus on being a server distro and ONLY a server distro.
No. Linux does have equivalents. The Linux market is full of specialist distributions which occupy diminishing niches. They won't last.
Debian doesn't need to focus on being a server distro. The choice is made at installation time, rather than at CD burning time. I can make a Debian install more minimal than any Netware install, and run it as a secure firewall, or I can make it a full-blown workstation. The choice is made through package selection, i.e. "fine tuning".
Case and point- there simply isn't a way to use Novell as a desktop operating system(at least, it's not as easy on any other OS). It is ONLY for serving, and as a result, has a clear path in all regards, from development, to QA, to marketing. Do one thing, do it well.
This may be an advantage for Novell but how is it an advantage for the end user? And it's the end user that counts, isn't it?
Remember, you can't make everyone happy all of the time, so why bother trying? I wish linux distros would grow up and find their market segments instead of trying for everything. Even Apple has recognized the need for separate desktop and server "distros".
Don't be stupid. Server operating systems and desktop operating systems are similar. The fundamentals are the same. The differences are in the fine tuning.
Debian produce probably the most stable (in all senses) Linux distribution. They don't have a Server distro and a Desktop distro. When you install the operating system, you choose the components that form the type of system you are creating. What is wrong with this?
Returning to your final comment about Apple, their strategy of releasing two different OS's for desktop and server is a marketing decision, not a technical one. There is no difference between the two OSs so huge that the decision cannot be made at install time, instead of being brought forward to CD-burning time.
Well, Mozilla and Netscape truly are better than IE, that's for certain!
The fact the world hasn't caught on to this is simply a glitch.
X11 features network transparency; I can run CDE on my Windows desktop by using XFree86 under Cygwin, or some other Windows X server.
HP workstations used to be quite popular. PCs are too fast nowadays for non-PC hardware to be big on the desktop, but there are still many situations when it's nice to run the servers native GUI environment while you sit at your desk.
Yes, it seems inevitable to me too. However, I am occasionally sobered by the thought that Marx said the same thing about the ascendency of the proletariat.
I can't disagree with anything you say but you are missing my point, which is that this in no way denigrates the achievments or capabilities of the Open Source community; they have not set out to market hardware devices. Well most of them haven't, but see the rest of this comment...
We should also note that the Open Source community is not just a looseknit group of hackers on the Internet. Hardware companies are also part of this community. Witness Linux-based PDAs like the Zaurus (I choose this because I have one). Sharp is a member of this community.
If Sharp had produced a tablet PC running Linux and Opie, then I would call this an achievment of the Open Source community. The fact that they didn't says nothing about the community; it says something about them as a company.
In fact, I see the main growth of the Open Source community to be in hardware companies, consultancies and end users; in fact everyone except the software companies... If the Open Source community restricts itself to out-of-hours amateur work by volunteers, then it'll have a tough time in the mainstream. But it doesn't restrict itself in that way, so it won't.
In short: the Open Source community COULD have produced this because they DO have money and brand name; this is true when you take a broader view of who is in that community than just a group of J Random Hackers. If you don't accept this broad view of the community then you can't criticise them for not producing tablet PCs, because J Random Hacker never set out to do that!
I agree with most of what you say, and I think tablets do have a future, but I must take issue with this bit:
the Open Source community couldn't have come up with a working implementation - where would they get the money to actually build hardware devices and market them to volume buyers?
Well, duh! Open Source / Free Software is a software phenomenon. You can't take a new hardware device and use it's existence to bash the Open Source community.
The missed opportunity was for some hardware manufacturer to build a device running Free Software before Microsoft got their effort out. This would have been possible. And the Open Source community would have created, or contributed to, a working implementation of the software.
What the hardware companies should do is agree on an open platform like Opie, sponsor it's development, build devices which use it and compete on the quality and features of their hardware.