gnome-vfs not in Rawhide?

[Paul A. Houle]

On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 18:31:25 -0400, Toshio <toshio at tiki-lounge.com> wrote:

>
> Mike, I definitely can agree with the portion of your argument shown
> here:: One of Window's selling points is its compatibility to old
> versions.  It is, in fact, the center of the Microsoft business model.
> If Longhorn were to totally break compatibility with previous versions
> of Windows, how many shops do you think would decide it made just as
> much sense to break compatibility and move to a better OS than to stay
> with an incompatible "Windows"?

	Microsoft has another motivation for keeping binary compatibility.

	If a new version of Windows breaks a major application that competes with  
a Microsoft app,  they'll have the DOJ on their case.

>
> Someone pointed out that many of the Loki Games no longer run on Fedora
> because of kernel changes.  No amount of keeping old libraries is going
> to overcome that.  If someone wants to fork a version of Fedora that
> gets updated applications but keeps a stable base down to the kernel
> layer and vet all potential changes there for things that will break
> user apps they might be able to garner market share from people wanting
> to run third party binary apps forever.  OTOH, they may find that corner
> of the market (game and app-rich, API/ABI stable, binary and
> proprietary-license friendly OSs) is already filled with more mature
> competitors.
>

	The guy who lives in our other house is mad because an upgrade to Win2K  
broke his favorite games that ran just fine on Win98.  I dread installing  
a DirectX game on any of the Windows machine I use because the odds of it  
working aren't that good.  A lot of times it's a problem with the video  
card,  drivers,  and all that,  but these problems aren't easy to fix.

	Back in 2000,  I caught the USB bug and started getting USB peripherals  
of all types.  I had much better luck plugging USB devices into Linux than  
I had plugging them into Win98.  With mplayer,  I can play just about any  
video file I get off the net.  I've installed all sorts of libraries on my  
Windows and MacOS X systems and neither of them reliably and correctly  
plays XViD files.

	Windows and MacOS X have a lot to teach Linux about having a better  
desktop experience,  but don't kid yourself into thinking they're perfect.