Why I use Debian. Was Re: [plug] Mandrake - printing

[Peter Wright]

On Fri, Feb 25, 2000 at 03:33:09PM +0800, Greg Mildenhall wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Feb 2000, John Summerfield wrote:
> > > Then I reiterate: Anything distribution-specific is not a
> > > "killer app.".  It is either poorly programmed or ridiculously
> > > restricted by license.
> > You are entitled to your views,  but have the grace to recognise
> > they are not held by others as universal truths.
> Which of my views have I been espousing as a universal truth?

I don't _think_ you have been espousing any as universal truths. Of
course I haven't quite read every post in this now-quite-impressively-
large thread, so I can't be certain of that. 

Of course, neither did John say you were! His sentence might imply
that, but it didn't specifically say it. It just said... well, it's
just up there *points*, have a look.

> > Many people have no problem using commercial products, and for some 
> > purposes there is no satisfactory alternative.
> Have you somehow got the impression that I disagree with this? I
> have made some statements against non-free software, but never
> against commercial software. If it is non-free software you are
> talking about, then surely the mail client I am using will tell you
> that I don't have a problem with the use of such.

Bah. Bloody Pine users. ;]

> > DB/2 and Oracle are both high-end RDMSs, there is no free alternative. 
> > If you want a high-performance database amounting to terabytes of data,
> > postgresql is not a choice.
> Are you citing these as examples of distribution-specific software?
> If so, you are quite mistaken.

No, he wasn't and isn't. (John, feel free to correct me if I've
totally misread and misunderstood you)

What he initially said was that if there was an application he wanted
that was packaged in a particular distribution (and wasn't packaged
for his preferred distro), he'd be more likely to try using that
distribution. He used Oracle as an example of an application that
would persuade him to try a distro that had it packaged (as Oracle is
almost the definitive killer-app).

Where I think the misunderstanding has occurred is that you thought he
was using Oracle as an example of an app that was distro-specific.

I'd also mention that initially at least he didn't use the phrase
"distribution-specific". A lot of the time you may get applications
that have been packaged and are intended to be used on a particular
distribution. I am just about certain that with some work, virtually
all of these will run on any Linux system (and most *BSD systems to
boot).

The question is here - how much work? A day of buggering around with
an app, trying to get it working, might be tolerable. Maybe. But a
week? Nah. Especially when you consider that you could have the app up
and running quite happily with just an hour or two install of another
distro.

> -Greg

Whoops, running out of time. Bye. :)

Pete.
-- 
http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~pete/

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