[TriLUG] best tool for the job (was about DVD burning)

[Chris Hedemark]

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On Monday, November 18, 2002, at 10:15 PM, Bill Vinson wrote:

> I personally try to choose the best tool for the job (Sometimes
> financial constraints prevent that from being fully realized). I do not
> believe that locking myself down to Linux or *BSD is a good idea when 
> in
> some cases a Mac may be a better choice. Let the buyer make up their 
> own
> mind.  I don't think he will make a bad choice using Linux or Mac OS X 
> at
> all...

Yes, absolutely right.

Linux advocacy is not diametrically opposed to pragmatic choice.  Linux 
is going to be the best choice for some areas.  *BSD for others.  Mac 
OS X still for others.  OS X is such a good mobile desktop environment 
it has displaced my use of Linux in this area.  OpenBSD is such an 
awesome firewall that it has displaced Linux in my home there.  But 
Linux displaced Windows NT in my home as a file server.  But I still 
have one Windows machine in my home which is used by my wife because it 
is currently the best platform for her to manage our finances on.  And 
I'm okay with that.

Just looking around the room right now, I count ten different hardware 
architectures in my office.  They run probably half as many operating 
systems.  The presence of different hardware platforms motivated their 
designers to continue pressing forward and improving their products.  
And no matter how much Linus protests, Linux continues to improve 
because of a healthy competition with Windows, FreeBSD and Solaris.  If 
Linux were the dominant player by a wide margin, I doubt we'd see it 
growing as quickly as it is now.

Some platforms focus on certain specialties that make them the ideal 
choice for a given set of applications.  In my search for a mobile 
desktop OS with excellent A/V capabilities, OS X came out way on top.  
In my search for a reasonable Windows replacement I found Linux.  And 
when I looked for the most secure OS I could run on my servers, I 
mostly run OpenBSD as well as some Linux.  I've got some Solaris and 
HP-UX around too but that is mostly for me to keep up on my skills.  I 
would be running OpenVMS as well if I could just get my hands on it 
(have the hardware though).

I know there is a very vocal minority in the Linux community, which 
seems to congregate at http://slashdot.org, that would have you believe 
that Linux is the alpha and omega in operating system choice.  I 
stand^H^H^H^H^Hsit here before you as a long-time contributor to the 
local Linux community and tell you that limiting your repertoire to one 
OS is short sighted and ill advised.

Also, although in name we are the Triangle LINUX Users Group, our 
charter extends to Open Source software in general.  While it might not 
be appropriate to carry on long discussions with a primary focus on a 
proprietary OS like Mac OS X (or Windows or Solaris, etc), discussion 
of Apple's Darwin OS or OpenBSD or Gnu Hurd are totally appropriate 
according to our charter (hence the BSD at trilug.org mailing list that 
TriLUG hosts).

Chris Hedemark
Hillsborough, NC
http://yonderway.com


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