What is Digg?19 Comments
- jonesin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10that's like saying evolution will never work because there's too much divergence, but the fact of the matter is that the best versions win out. if you can't comprehend that, you're on the wrong site
- rowanjl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Yeah, its not like all these distros are active, and its not like the benefits of one distro aren't shared with another.
When the dinosaurs died out, it gave way to a whole new set of species. - kooft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6[SLAP]
- Fordi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6There's also a number of very good general purpose Linux distros. Those are for desktops.
The 'problem-specific' distros are usually optimized from the ground up to solve a particular problem, like hosting, factory control, embedded systems, being usable on your old P-133, etc.
Still, most of them wouldn't exist if it weren't for someone needing them.
Wow. Just poked at your profile (since your astrotufing post directed me this way) and looked at your submissions. You ARE a cute little astroturfer, aren't you? Anti-open source movement because it 'lowers programmers wages'? Riiight. You're sans-agenda, aren't you?
I just dugg down all your submissions. Anyone with sense will do the same. - Fordi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5uh...
Do you even know what make is for? How about the Linux Filesystem Heirarchy? udev? Porting an app from Linux->Linux is effortless, regardless of the distro. It's not even that hard to go to BSD or Solaris (*nix's are all similar enough that the major problems are all low level - things like accessing optical writers and such; things that are generally handled by the OS anyway, and that you can have your program access common CLI software in a nice user-invisible way). Hell, if you use one of the two major widget sets to write your code, and involve something like SDL in the process, porting to Windows isn't even that hard.
Seriously. It's like you've never written software for a free platform before. I mean, you seem to have enough to say about them, I expect you to know better. - Fordi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@Audience:
Ignore this dork. From what I can tell he doesn't seem to actually like programming; just sees it as a way to make a quick buck. This is the sort of guy who caused the '98 dot com bollocks. - kooft, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Dammit, who disabled CAPTCHA on the user registration page?
- lengau, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I have over 20,000 packages (Kubuntu Edgy with many repositories), and I know that's not even a quarter of what's available.
Also, many of these "different distros" that Distrowatch offers are merely different versions of the same distro (at least in my opinion). For example, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu etc. are basically just variations on the Ubuntu distro. Many others are extremely specialized (Linux for such and such router) and thus don't matter in your count. Still more are for specific purposes (again, a boot CD for virus scans etc. doesn't count). Even more are for specific desktop purposes, such as testing unreleased or prerelease software (Beryl, KDE 4, etc.).
The number of major (non-niche) distributions are few (*buntu [MEPIS], Red Hat [Unbreakable, Fedora, CentOS, etc.], SuSE, Debian [Xandros] etc.). It doesn't really matter which you use, It's simply personal preference. Personal preference also includes Windows, Mac OS, *BSD, SkyOS, BeOS, VMS, etc. - shad0walker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4And if you look, most of those distos are fairly specific, like ones designed for audio editing or video editing, id rather have some choice in the matter than just use windows for absolutely everything and pray someone can get it to do something properly.
- metalhead3767, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3THIS IS A LIE!
Just be searching for linux on sourceforge I get 6951 results and I'm willing to bet that theres twice as much as that outside of sourceforge. - Fordi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@ngsayjoe:
Like any other group there are fanboy zealots. I like linux for its flexibility, and for the fact that if I run across an issue, I can quash it pretty quickly.
Meanwhile, if you want to take the fast route to being able to support Linux users without distributing source or writing seperate code for Windows and Linux, may I suggest using wineLib? It's just a shim library for win32 apps that gives a wine-run windows application the ability to run at native performance levels under linux. Things like AbiWord, PuTTY and VirtualDub do this. - vixenk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Ummm... there's probably about 100 distros at Distrowatch... and I *know* there's a *lot* more Linux software than that.
That being said, Distrowatch doesn't even list them all, but I still seriously doubt that there are more distros than there is software. - Fordi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@ngsayjoe:
It's hyperbole, not a pun.
Seriously, you'd think a pundit such as yourself wouldn't punish us so much. - crownedgriffin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Aside from getting manufacturers to actually use Linux, support wouldn't be an issue if they used either Red Hat Enterprise or SUSE Enterprise and had those companies do support. Honestly, SUSE is just as easy to use as Ubuntu and has more features out of the box.
- crownedgriffin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Oops. Ignore that comment. I followed too many links and posted in the wrong one >_
- ngsayjoe, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1This is supposed to be a "pun" to mock how silly Linux is. No there's more software than Linux distros. But here's a ratio comparison of Distros .vs Software. Do you think we really need so many distros when there only so few software supporting Linux.
>>>Just be searching for linux on sourceforge I get 6951 results and I'm willing to bet that theres twice as much as that outside of sourceforge.
Yeah, I bet 90% of them are developer tools. That's the problem with open-source. Developers only develop software of there own interest. - ngsayjoe, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2@Fordi
No, I never written software for free before. And no plans to do so in the future. I wish Linux burn in hell.
Hmmm no, just joking it's a fine OS. The thing I hate about open-source is becoz it's being promoted by people out of hatred towards Microsoft and Bill Gates. People can be very irrational sometimes, they do and say things out of fanboyism. All these script kiddies just need to grow out of Linux and be a man.
Don't tell me no ***** about Linux. I was one of the pioneer users of it until it grows to be popular and used as a way to attack Microsoft. - ngsayjoe, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1I think all you open-source programmers have really gone out of your mind. How can you ever relate Operating Systems with with Evolution, worst still Dinosaurs. Imagine when you develop an application that has to support 2000+ operating systems. Phew ....
- ngsayjoe, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2>>And if you look, most of those distos are fairly specific ...
Hey, that's what applications are meant to address, not operating systems. An OS is supposed to be generic, just like a processor. You have to develop an audio application to address its problem, not an audio OS.
No wonders you guys are nuts!!!
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