[Lvlug] What happened?

[Christopher Hever]

On 4/16/06, Mark <mstanley at technologist.com> wrote:

> You have to find out how to find the information before you can even RTFM!
> Imagine trying to learn system commands and not even knowing what 'man' is.
> To this day Slackware does not make it easy to find system documentation if
> you want to learn Linux.

Your choice of dist, or even os, or whether to use a computer *at
all*, pivots on a number of factors. A lot of them are pragmatic;
e.g., one might have to use Solaris at work, so you use Solaris, and
make it better by rounding it out with the GNU tools. At home you
might use Linux, or Windows, or Mac, or whatever, for any given
reasons. Sometimes people use Windows just because it's inconvenient
for them to port all their stuff over to whatever

But it boils down to the question: why do you use a computer to begin with?

In my case, that's education. When I was a n00bx0r at Linux, I tried a
number of different distros. Fortunately, I read voraciously about
Unix well before I even started using Linux at all, so I got fairly
comfortable with all of them. I could say that at any given time,
whatever distro I was using was the 'right' distro for me. When I was
using Red Hat and Mandrake, they were 'right' for me, because I hadn't
progressed as far with my Linux skills. Knoppix was 'right' for a
while. They were all 'right'. Slackware was 'right' for a year or so,
and right now, Vector Linux is right for a number of reasons. It has
the inertia of being on my desktop since forever, I am involved in
dev, it makes the tedious things in Slack easier while allowing
further delving, I like the forum...etc. etc. etc.

This also shapes my attitude towards software licensing. Open source
(or free software) is usually the right thing for me because it's the
educational choice. The software isn't dumbed down and you obviously
have the listing there. There are occasions where I think it is a
better idea to use a proprietary binary, but this does not come up
frequently. Although I personally can't imagine myself writing
anything other than OSS code. So I find it funny when people think I
am some kind of freak for using Linux. Perhaps you have also known it;
you get all this sanctimonious drivel about moderation and
balance...they're right, I want multiple OSes in the market, too,
including commercial competitors like Apple and Sun
Microsystems...unfortunately, an aggressive monopoly hell-bent on
dominating all of it like a game of Risk doesn't do much for the
speaker's vision of diversity.

BTW, Unix isn't my ideal OS...my ideal OS would feature a highly
integrated Symbolics/Smalltalk-80-esque environment run on a unit of
hardware specifically designed for the execution of one particular
VHLL...one of those langs that no one knows well, really wishes he
did, and swears he'll get around to...namely Scheme or Smalltalk;
Common Lisp is a four-letter word around here. Especially now that MIT
apparently have the ability to roll out $100-$200 laptops, that would
be pretty f---en sweet.

But now that I think of it, Ruby would actually be a good choice of
language for some kind of next generation Dynabook. Unfortunately,
most of the activity around Smalltalk these days falls into the 'rigor
mortis' category. Ruby picked up on a lot of the technical excellence
of Smalltalk while eliminating the need for virtual image and GUI
display, which were salient drawbacks to Smalltalk. That and Moore's
Law favored it, rather than scorned.

...and the laptop has to be waterproof when closed, just in case I
fall off a boat or something.

--
"For the time being anyway, until the age of Terminator." -- Yukihiro
'matz' Matsumoto