[PLUG] Minutes of PLUG meet held on 05-0902009

[Shridhar Daithankar]

Hi,

Sorry, its a long rant...

On Tuesday 08 September 2009 06:58:36 Aditya Godbole wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 6:41 AM, Manas Alekar<maalekar at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I hate to say this, but would can we recommend that the government go the
> > FOSS way with a clean conscience? Nautilus still breaks once in a while
> > when I update it. Evolution backends die on me randomly when I try to
> > connect to EXCHG servers. Interfaces are still deprecated when deemed
> > necessary. Perhaps we should start by taking a leaf out of Solaris' book.
> > They still ship with Bourne (not Bourne Again) shell as the default. When
> > it comes to huge organisations with inertia, corporate or otherwise, such
> > things matter.
>
> 1. Use Debian

Doesn't debian patch things heavily so that all packages conform to a single 
debian standard(of build system, patches, configuration, install locations and 
what not), thus breaking lot of packges in the meanwhile i.e lot of bugs are 
debian only? 

Witness bad reputation of kubuntu(not exactly debian but close enough) v/s 
slackware KDE. Slackware is entire OS in nearly-one-man team and its KDE 
experience is awsome and rock solid, whereas kubuntu builds only a set of 
packages and has reputation of worst distro. for KDE?

Not to mention openssl fiasco with debian. *I* don't like debian for this 
heavy patching and prefer slack/arch, which patch only for bugs still not 
fixed in released upstream.

> 2. Don't use Gnome
>
>  :P

Don't say that :) Say that stability of desktop linux is not limited to gnome 
application and/or to a particular distribution only ;)

Also as far Manas's complaint, I don't know how much to fault evolution that 
it fails to connect with exchange. It could be a useful feature but its also a 
non-FOSS system and probably reverse engineered.  It may not matter to the end 
user but whatever it can do is a bonus IMO. 

Coming back to debian, breakinh nautilus on update, is this gnome's fault or 
debian's?(I assume manas is using debian).

I remember days when slackware had gnome/GDM and GDM didn't have a 
shutdown/reboot button but fedora gdm had. I guess fedora patched it heavily 
and that I dislike very much. Such an essential functionaliy should be 
available in upstream.

The OP(to whom manas replied and agreed), says that MS is better on these 
aspects. I don't agree on following points.
- each file on the system cannot be accounted for, 
- exact state of filesystem cannot be verified at any given time(unless used 
with third party tools such as tivoli etc.) 
- backward compatibility opens huge door for vulnerabilities, adding overhead 
of anti-virus and other solutions costing huge deal on money
- vulnerabilities are not reported/fixed promptly, leaving potentially(in 
practice, always) vulnerable system deployed. The track record so far does not 
contradict this.
- Its a upgrade tread-mill and hence its not stable by definition. MS-Office 
is a good example. 

These are all important characteristic of an enterprise platform. Linux 
provides it out of box. Windows doesn't.

Important thing is people choose windows for familiarity and backwards 
compatibility. Developers choose it for market share and these developers 
include tool makers too. 

Almost everything else is an excuse..

-- 
 Shridhar