[TAG] Linusability

[Kapil Hari Paranjape]

Hello,

Henry Grebler wrote a long and very interesting post which I
agreed with in many parts. So I will concentrate on my points of
disagreement.

On Sat, 10 Jul 2010, Henry Grebler wrote:
> But, I've still got my Fedora Core 2 on one of my computers, and I
> love the version that was there. So I try to run it. But it won't
> run because whatever distro I have now (in that case it was FC5 -
> a long time ago!) doesn't have the old revs of the libraries.

There are innumerable ways to run multiple versions of GNU/Linux on
the same machine at the same time. ("I have a few articles on this
theme in LG" says he modestly!)

On Sat, 10 Jul 2010, Paul Sephton wrote:
> Having used Linux for well over a decade now, my subjective opinion is
> that the phrase "too many cooks spoil the broth" is very relevant to
> Linux in 2010.

Since these are not only cooks but writers of recipe books, you are
free to (may the source be with you!) cook things your own way. Less
metaphorically, both Fedora and Debian provide source packages and
rather easy ways to create clean build environments to build these
source packages after making your own modifications.

> I am sure a standard out the box Ubuntu or Redhat would work
> perfectly, but why can I no longer build and maintain my own system
> as easily as I once could?

It is easier today than it was once, since computers are faster today
than they were yesterday. (Not the same computers obviously!)

In general, you _can_ build it. If you choose not to build it and use
pre-built binaries that "just work" then you will have to live with
the choices made by the people who built the binaries. In Debian,
(and I believe in Fedora as well) the reasons for these choices are
generally well documented.

To come back to the original question, the "low usability of Linux"
meme that has been around for a long while, is slowly losing ground in
a number of different ways. At the same time we need to stay sharp
to ensure that gains are not made at the expense of core values like
tinker/tune-ability ... and of course the "command-line interface".

Regards,

Kapil.

This was typed in vi under screen under (fullscreen) xterm under
xmonad under xorg under linux which may or not not go to show that "I
am as geeky as the next guy".

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