[TriLUG] Who runs Red Hat and KDE

[Stephen P. Schaefer]

Brent Fox wrote:
[elided]
> If a majority of our users were asking for us to release new desktop
> packages every week, I feel certain that we would do it.  The reality is
> that most users are not asking for this.  And yes, we do feel the GPL
> makes us different from other software companies.  I think our
> commitment to the GPL is well documented.
[elided]

I'll toss in my perspective as a happy Red Hat user.  I've been dealing 
with Unix for more than two decades, and my attitude to graphics is 
this: equanimity and detachment.  Yes, there can be some occasional 
nutrition (kstars!) in the eye candy, but the effort is usually 
extravagant for the obtained result.  The number one benefit for me of a 
monitor over a character cell screen is that I can get 160x50 characters 
instead of 80x24.  Emacs "windows" (i.e., boxes of text) get me 80% of 
what I want from a user interface.  I'm reading/composing e-mail in 
Mozilla right now, but my screen consists almost entirely of boxes of 
text with borders.  But the fonts? you say.  Regardless of how superbly 
the fonts are rendered, the whole monitor/keyboard business is tiring in 
comparison to a well printed book.  Only the interactivity and immediate 
access justifies the computer.

I'm not anti-picture: pictures obviously have their place.  But what 
conceivable deep tweaking of the window manager could recoup the time 
spent by an individual?  (Which hasn't kept me from trying.)  That time 
*is* justified if a marginal improvement is enjoyed by a wide subscriber 
base, but, of course, all the subscribers have to spend the time to even 
learn about the change.  Further, I don't see much work justified by 
fundamental human factors measurement, as described by Jeff Raskin in 
"The Humane Interface" - or by any serious alternative methodology.  As 
for allowing the programmers to be productive, Red Hat's theming does 
not in my experience break the functionality of individual applications. 
  Moving from 7.2 to 8.0, I wasted some time finding out that I couldn't 
add things to the menus.  No big deal: I could still add them to the 
tool bar or to the desk top, which is sufficient, and probably more 
effective anyway!  I've used lots of different desktops, and none of 
them have been compelling enough to agonize over their passing.  I 
haven't gotten a good return on my time customizing any of them.

For me, both Gnome and KDE applications work fine out of the Red Hat 
box, as do generic X clients.  That's all I need, and I'm quite 
satisfied.  I an delighted with Red Hat's GPL policies: trouble there 
would make me retire my religiously worn red fedora.

All the above is from my perspective at home with my computer.  At work 
it's totally cut and dried: the chip fabs demand their input come from 
proprietary chip design software from vendors who in turn specify what 
their software runs on.  Right now, that's only Red Hat (maybe one or 
two SuSE), with a few still specifying 6.2 and most specifying 7.2.  End 
of Story.  Stability is everything, and maybe late this year or sometime 
next those proprietary vendors will support Advanced Workstation or 
something like it.  And Red Hat is (usually) a lot better for my 
employer than the other options offered: Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and 
sometimes Windows NT or 2000.

	- Stephen