[TriLUG] Where is Linux today?

[Tanner Lovelace]

I've now been up for 18 hours today and worked for 14 hours as an election
judge.  So, take anything I say below with that in mind, please.

On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 5:17 PM, Cristóbal Palmer <cmp at cmpalmer.org> wrote:

> There's the problem. I don't think he implied that at all.

Really?  Oh well.

> I wrote my email precisely because I recognize how much you've put
> into Open Source. You have more credibility and weight than most
> people (I'd hazard even most people on this list) when it comes to
> making arguments about Open Source. That's precisely why I thought it
> was odd that your argument seemed to be that some proprietary stuff is
> okay if there's a lot of Free stuff in or available for the package,
> and furthermore the fight that the Fedora Project is fighting is
> "tiresome". If you feel that way, then what hope is there for the
> majority of people who don't have the commitment that you do?

Actually, I have a lot less problem with what the Fedora project
does with codecs than I do with the other things I mentioned:
kernel politics.  I'm about as far removed as you can get from
kernel politics and still be involved in open source/free software,
so if they're bothering me I have to wonder about other people too.
But, mainly, the confrontational nature of many of the kernel
developers has actually come close to making me switch to
FreeBSD.  A lot of this has to do with the stance on closed
source drivers and the stubborn refusal to delineate a driver
interface.  But, I very, very much respect their right to do
whatever they want with what they created, so it isn't up to
me to tell them what to do (far from it!).  But, I've been dismayed
enough times by it that I've seriously thought about moving
to FreeBSD.  The main reason I haven't for my desktop
(which, admittedly doesn't get used as much as my laptop)
is the trouble it would take to move from my XFS filesystem
on linux software raid.  If FreeBSD could just read that directly,
I probably would have already switched.

As to what other people think, I don't know.  I haven't used
a Red Hat based distro in over 3 years, so I'm definitely not
qualified to talk about that.  But, if people have a PC and
want to move away from Windows, I strongly recommend
they install Ubuntu.  I make no judgements (unlike some
people in the Fedora camp) on what Ubuntu does or doesn't
do, but I do think they do a very good job of trying to "just
make things work". The simple fact is that unlike all of
us on this list, the vast majority of people really don't want
to spend lots of extra time in front of their computers making
it work.  They just want it to work.  I think, a lot of the time,
Linux does work fine.  But there are some times where it
doesn't, or where an "upgrade" breaks functionality because
of an ideological issue (fonts seem to be a big thing there...)
and while all of us on this list can fix things like that, the average
user isn't going to bother.  They're going to ditch the software
and go back to windows.

So, basically, what I'd like to see is much more of an
emphasis on making things work rather than ideological
issues.  I have no problem with the people who put
ideological issues first for themselves.  I just ask them
to understand that's not where I'm coming from at this
point in my life.

> I respect and honor the work you've put into Open Source, TriLUG, and
> Linux. I'm sorry my post came across as an attack.

I didn't take it as an attack, just as a spirited disagreement.
It's ok for us to disagree.  I understand your point of view
but for myself, at this point in time, I'm more pragmatic
about things and want more to look at my computer as
a tool rather than a source of enjoyment in and of itself.

Cheers,
Tanner

-- 
Tanner Lovelace
http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
(fieldless) In fess two roundels in pale, a billet fesswise and an
increscent, all sable.