How fresh is the dew: ROSA 2012 Marathon?

I didn't want to post anonymously in the first place :( Geez!

;)

Now he went to my review to claim I work for ROSA Labs and am engaging in advertising. I dunno. Do Yarok and ROSA look the same to you? Clue: they're not.

I think He doesn't like you, or perhaps He has to be right, to the extent that He will go to great lengths, including making himself look like a Jerk, to be always right.

LOL, ta. I don't try to explain guys like that. I just laugh at them.

It's too bad. I never thought he was a bad as some here felt. More importantly, he appeared to be improving.

But now he seems to have developed a "bunker" mentality, more focused on "friend vs. enemy" than "right vs. wrong" or "better vs. worse".

One thing I definitely learned today: you can get attacked for writing a positive review about a distro someone doesn't like every bit as much as for writing a negative one that a fanboy/girl loves. Honest writing is rarely appreciated.

Most distro reviews are little more than than fluff pieces offering little more than the most superficial level of depth. That is why I always found Steven's writings on his attempts to get OpenBSD working for him, or making use of some old hardware so interesting. It would often give you a feel for the distro/project even though the use case might be very specific.

Have you read my reviews? I always try to go in depth. http://www.caitlynmartin.co.cc/writing.html has the ones on DistroWatch listed. This was my first one for O'Reilly in a few years but the old ones can be found at: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/2654?all=yes#Blog

Yes caitlyn I always enjoy your reviews even though I disagree with your take on Slackware :)

That's fine, Mike. I can respect your opinion and agree to disagree.

> Honest writing is rarely appreciated.

I appreciate your technical opinions, Caitlyn, even when I don't agree with them. You always back up your positions with sound reasoning and facts.

And now the promised article. Even two:

http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2012/06/linux-on-test-drive.ht... http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/desktop-os/2012/06/18/the-m-word...

I read your ZDNet article. You set some new standards for nonsense and drivel there.

I really don't understand your vitriol against DarkDuck's reviews Caitlyn. Is there some history that I'm not aware of? An awful lot of "history" on this board seems to have the name "caitlyn" involved somewhere.

I can understand if you have some factual issues with the content of his reviews, but seriously, your main problem is that his review is of the "live" configuration?

Admittedly, there are particular challenges to making live configurations work on many machines, but when we are trying to get non-Linux users to try Linux for the first time, they are likely to try one of these things. If it fails all over the place then that's going to look pretty bad and we may lose a potential user right then and there and yet again confirms to someone the (largely now mythical) idea that "Linux" is not ready for prime time.

They *are* important.

There are many distros out there that have near faultless boots in live configurations and they're getting better and more reliable all the time. I've practically never had an issue sticking with the mainstream ones (such as *buntu) in the past. But I really do think that reviewing live setups is a worthwhile exercise.

@skelband

Quoting:Is there some history that I'm not aware of?

Actually, there is a lot of history. This isn't just Caitlyn bashing on someone for some personal reason. There are valid technical disagreements between DarkDuck and some readers, including myself, in this forum, and not just for the live reviews.

Quoting:An awful lot of "history" on this board seems to have the name "caitlyn" involved somewhere.

I won't try and read into what you are trying to say here. While I have had my run-ins with Caitlyn in the past, I respect her technical knowledge. When DarkDuck calls contributers here "narrow minded", I don't think he will get much respect.

@smallboxadmin:

My comments about "history" were an attempt to try to get at the gist of why the response to DarkDuck's articles are especially vitriolic.

DarkDuck's comments on this board (at least the ones that I have read) seem to be fairly even handed and reasonable, not that I particularly agree or disagree with his views or his reviews in general.

I'm much more disturbed by the increasingly personal and aggressive nature of the comments on this board, which are surely TOS territory. I've got no problem with taking issue with someone's opinions, but some of the comments here are getting to the point of hysteria and don't really move the debate on in any meaningful way.

If you disagree with the guy, just say so and move on. All this constant bickering is getting a tad tedious.

@skelband

+1

The personal attacks are wearing thin with me as well. Let's stay focussed on the issues and stay professional.

If you have a need to issue personal attacks, then do the rest of us the courtesy of taking them offline into private emails, please.

About what skelband and penguinist said?

Seconded! (or is that thirded?)

I can understand this militantly negative attitude towards certain bloggers and/or "tech-journalists" who are more deliberately provocative, and/or more blatantly contradict their supposed/claimed expertise (eg. Hess, Gerwitz, a few others), but honestly, DarkDuck just doesn't appear to merit the depths of disdain and vitriol being directed at him, here.

Well said and much applauded, Bernard Swiss!