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

[Greg Mildenhall]

On Fri, 25 Feb 2000, Peter Wright wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 25, 2000 at 03:33:09PM +0800, Greg Mildenhall wrote:
> > On Thu, 24 Feb 2000, John Summerfield wrote:
> > > 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, neither did John say you were! His sentence might imply
> that, but it didn't specifically say it.
Oh, I get it, he was just preemptively reminding me to avoid doing so,
despite not thinking that I ever had in the past. Thanks John. :)

> > 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. ;]
Seriously, what is the alternative? I've heard that it's mutt, but mutt
seems a dog to me. elm is OK, but not quite enough. I think perhaps I will
just have to learn to live with mutt, and install my own copy where I need
it.

> > > 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)

He wrote it in a message which replied directly to (and quoted) my:
G> Then I reiterate: Anything distribution-specific is not a "killer app".
G> It is either poorly programmed or ridiculously restricted by license.

So that is the only thing he could reasonably have meant. John does have
a propensity for being unreasonable, hence my "Are you?" and "If". :)

> 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.
There is some other reason why one would install a new distribution for
one application? If John think so, then you speak eloquently for him:

> 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. 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.
Compared to reinstalling and customising and learning to use a new
distro, and then spend your days remembering why you don't use that
distro by choice? I'd take the week of retrofitting it to my existing
distro, but I'd sure as hell wonder what was wrong with the application.
If it takes that long to get working, is it really a "killer app"?
The above goes for a standalone machine, but imagine having that one box
out of sync with the distribution on the rest of your network.

-Greg