Test -- Where have all the horses gone?

[Bill Campbell]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2004, David Bandel wrote:
>On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 15:23:21 -0600, Michael Hipp <michael at hipp.com> wrote:
>> Collins Richey wrote:
>> > On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 14:41:14 -0500, Brad De Vries <devriesbj at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Here we go again. Have you checked the archives for recent threads on
>> > this very topic?
>> >
>> > In the old days (Caldera), it was a struggle to get almost any package
>> > or piece of hardware working, so there was a lot of traffic. Now, with
>> > debian, slackware, fedora, gentoo, etc. most everything works, and
>> > thus the traffic volume is low.

I never had a lot of trouble with software on Caldera, but then I'd been
doing open source stuff for SCO OpenServer for years, and SCO Xenix before
that so anything in Linux was easy by comparison.

>> And another factor is the general quality and quantity of Linux
>> documentation has improved greatly. Google can find the answer to almost
>> any question.
>> 
>> As for there not being any "serious power" on this list (that
>> description never applied to me anyway), it's been a rare occasion when
>> I asked a question on this list and didn't get some authoritative answers.
>
>Go try that on the Debian Lusers List.  There are the gratuitous 50 or
>so RTFM answers.  Then there's about 100 flames (more if you're
>obviously a newbie).  Somewhere in there you might find one or two
>folks who, despite their lack of knowledge, have at least tried to
>provide an answer (because they feel sorry for you after having borne
>the brunt of RTFM/flames themselves).

I've never tried the Debian list, probably because I'm not an acolyte of
the GNUish religion, but I have heard others say it's not a very friendly
place.

Another list that I have found to be very useful and friendly is the list
for python newbies, <tutor at python.org>.

>About the only questions I've seen lately (on another list) had more
>to do with Fedora's new use of SE Linux policies because "xyz doesn't
>work after upgrading".

Personally I can't understand why anybody would run Fedora unless they're
totally addicted to the Red Hat Kool Aid, but then I've avoided RH forever,
largely because they have always seemed to release things before they're
ready.

We switched from Caldera to SuSE a couple of years ago, and have been happy
with it.  I'm not into what I consider hacker or hobbyist Linux, preferring
to let somebody else to the heavy lifting on kernel and hardware
interfaces.  I want to concentrate on putting systems together that work
reliably with minimum hassle.

Bill
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