dep, FHS, Slackware

[dep]

begin  Michael Hipp's  quote:

| I'm curious. What do you find attractive about Slackware? What
| causes it to stand out so above the others?

it takes other people's system resources seriously, and but for 
bsd-style init scripts sticks to the fhs.

| My (unlearned) impression is it's the one with a face only a mother
| could love. And will never be anything more than a curiousity. So
| in that way, it's arguably no different than Gentoo. Just older.

older sometimes has its advantages -- patrick and his people have been 
around the block enough to know what they're doing. and i daresay 
there are several people here who would point out that it is not a 
curiousity -- at least not in the way gentoo is.

| When a commercial client talks to me about Linux. They mean Red Hat
| and I don't attempt to persuade them any different. I wouldn't even
| bring up Slack, Gentoo or now even Caldera or SuSE.

true. not good, but certainly true.

| But the real enemy is none of those and you know who I mean. Red
| Hat may not be perfect but it beats the alternative. We may be
| reluctant to cheer for Red Hat. But at least they're actually *in*
| the game. Far more than can be said for any of the others. 
| Especially now that UnitedNoDesktopsLinux is destined to remembered
| only by the size of their smoking hole in the ground.

well. that's great for red hat. now. let's suppose that microsoft 
corporation went to red hat and said "we'll pay you one billion 
dollars to endorse palladium and comply with it." that gives 
microsoft corporation a hand on the linux plug, to pull as it sees 
fit. because, as you say, with red hat effectively gone, there would 
be a handful of disparate distributions, and a wild voice out in the 
fever swamp someplace howling "gentoo" over and over. and that would 
be, pretty much, it.
-- 
dep

http://www.linuxandmain.com -- outside the box, barely within the 
envelope, and no animated paperclip anywhere.