Linux is not about choice [was Re: Fedora too cutting edge?]
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
Thu Jan 10 15:31:14 UTC 2008
Olivier Galibert wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 10, 2008 at 08:06:53AM -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
>> Zfs isn't the only interesting thing about opensolaris and Sun does give
>> you the candy if you take the whole package. It is only the Linux terms
>> that keep you from adding the parts. Solaris has an entirely different
>> attitude about backwards compatibility which makes the mention slightly
>> on topic for this conversation. I can't, for example, imagine them ever
>> changing a device name arbitrarily and breaking a previously working
>> configuration while Linux has no such respect for its users' previous
>> work. Fedora may not be the place for it, but I would seriously like to
>> see a distribution based on the OpenSolaris kernel and the same user
>> programs you'd find in a current Linux or *bsd distro.
>
> Given that it's the user programs that have the lack of respect for
> previous configurations (Linus considers backwards-compatibility very
> important), I doubt you'll see any change for the better.
Is it a user program that has changed my /dev/hdX into /dev/sdX more or
less arbitrarily - or turns what used to be detected as eth0 into eth2
when a different kernel is booted? Admittedly it has been a while since
I've used Solaris, but I can't recall anything like that ever happening
with it. In a unix-like system where access to everything is through
its device/file name, what is more fundamental than that?
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
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