[plug] 64 bit machines

[Onno Benschop]

On Mon, 2004-01-26 at 13:39, David Lloyd wrote:
> No, the best operating system for the market at the moment is Microsoft
> Windows. It's proven by its sales and by the fact it *is* almost everywhere.
> It's only inferior on the grounds that you [and maybe even I] believe that
> it's inferior...

I will grant you that - for the market - the best OS at the moment is
Windows. It has come to be that way because of clever marketing and
momentum.

This was also true for horse whips until Henry Ford built a better
horse.

At this point you may well want to jump down my neck with all manner of
analogies, but let me share with you why for me - today - Linux is a
better horse to bet on and why I am not likely to go back.

        This morning my wife attempted to connect her Macintosh - via
        AppleShare - to my Linux box - using Netatalk. It failed. She'd
        done it plenty of times before with no problem. After looking
        through the logs, I noticed that on January 19, the version of
        afpd changed from 1.6.3 to 1.6.4.
        
        I looked at the bug reports on bugs.debian.org and noted that
        there was mention of some database incompatibilities between the
        versions, resulting in a login with no files - exactly what I
        was seeing.
        
        Remove the databases, restart netatalk, all happy.

Now I'd like to make two observations related to that incident:
     1. You might argue that when I upgraded my netatalk - during an
        apt-get upgrade session - likely on the 19th :-) - this should
        have been picked up - and indeed, I'd have to agree with you.
     2. You might go on to argue that had I seen this kind of issue with
        any other OS, I'd be able to come to a resolution also - and I'd
        have to disagree with you.

The fundamental reason that Linux is my horse - now - is because of the
implications associated with observation 2.

While observation 1 should never have happened - but then software
problems continue to - and will continue to - happen. (The
woops-factor), observation 2 has much more riding on it.

My single biggest reason for using Linux, with all its imperfections,
its frustrations, it's lack of completeness and its vagaries, the shitty
hardware support, the poor copy and paste, is the support I get. And I'm
not talking about phone numbers and experts and shops etc. I'm talking
about methodology.

For starters, I can look at (m)a(ny) log file(s) that tells me what is
happening to my machine. I can look at the errors in the log and see if
any others have seen those. I can look at bug reports - open and closed
ones - and if I really *really* have to fix something, I can download
the source, fix the damn problem myself and get on with my job.

That is not true for the other horse.


> The best things are NOT free. Let's get that little red herring out of the
> way. There's a cost to everything we do and it's not always easily measured
> in dollars, surely you're aware of this?

The biggest part of my Linux use is the freedom to use it. The dollars
associated with that freedom while comparable - perhaps even more
expensive than Windows - is worth every cent.

In Windows-land I've run into more brick walls than I could afford. In
Linux-country, I just build a new wall...


Onno Benschop 

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