The Linux band wagon

[chris p]

What's your response to what Bill Gates and others have said about the incompatibilities
in the differing versions of Linux being a major detriment to its widespread
use, especially on the net?

[Neil Matthew & Rick Stones]

chris p <chrisp38@excite.com> wrote in message
news:395a8a4a$3@news.devx.com...
>
> What's your response to what Bill Gates and others have said about the
incompatibilities
> in the differing versions of Linux being a major detriment to its
widespread
> use, especially on the net?

Hi,

It's tempting to respond that the comment is a bit rich coming from
Microsoft.
Just how many incompatibilities are there between Win NT4, Win 98, Win 98
SE,
Win 2000, and Win Me? No PnP or USB on NT4. DHCP differences between Win 98
SE
and Win 2000, and on it goes. But we won't

It is true to say that the various distributions of Linux have gone their
separate
ways in some respects. Installation methods, packages installed by default
and
locations of "standard" files all differ. This reflects the fact the Linux
is
essentially open, vendors can do what they think is best to address their
target
market. This is both good and bad.

On the positive side we have seen distributions that concentrate on ease of
install
and ease of use. Corel Linux is one example that appeals to the new user
because
of this. Attracting new users is of course essential for the growth and
widespread
uptake of Linux - which is A Good Thing {tm}. Another positive benefit is
the
creation of what we might call Linux appliances, distributions aimed at one
particular task, for example Turbo Linux server, or another one that might
be
a firewall-in-a-box. These pre-configured solutions may be attractive to
corporate Linux users wanting to explore the option of using Linux in
business
and avoiding having to make too big an investment in learning how to tweak
every
option that the Linux community provides. A drop-in Web server would be a
good
example of this, one that comes pre-configured with Apache/PHP/MySQL say.

On the "not so positive" side we see differences that are not really
justified,
such as the location of configuration files for X, networking and startup
scripts.
This makes it unnecessarily difficult for application vendors to create a
program that will install and run on all distributions. We have started to
see
applications choosing to require a particular distribution, usually Red Hat.

There is a solution to this though. The Linux Standard Base project aims to
create a standard for Linux distributions which will allow applications to
run on all compliant systems. We believe this can be achieved without losing
the diversity of distributions that provide the positive points noted above.

You can see what the LSB are doing at:

http://www.linuxbase.org/


Neil and Rick