- Site menu:
- Latest Discussions
- Latest Newswire
- Archives
- Submit Story
- Story HOWTO
- Syndicate
- E-mail Alerts
The Linux Community: No Rational Discourse Allowed
|
|
Comments (46)
26 earlier comments in the full thread.
This may win the award for the comment I have most strongly disagreed with ever. First, I'm clearly not the only one who sees it as zealotry and hostility. I'm one of many writers who have made that point. Oh, and no, I won't leave. I will work and fight to make the community better.
@caitlyn. You often praise enterprise class Linux without missing an opportunity to sneer at hobbyist distributions. May I curtly remind you of the fact that Noah's ark was a hobbyist project and the Titanic a professional product?
Quoting:Oh, and no, I won't leave. I will work and fight to make the community better.
First off, what I meant by "leave the kitchen" is to leave the argument. That is what I have learned to do on the Internet.
2nd, good luck with changing peoples passion, and "religious zealotry" doesn't help much in that regards.
@caitlyn,
If you would prefer to moderate your own column, I am fine with that. Just let me know, and I'll let you or your designee(s) moderate your posts.
pm me and we can discuss how to best manage. thx
--Dietrich
If you would prefer to moderate your own column, I am fine with that. Just let me know, and I'll let you or your designee(s) moderate your posts.
pm me and we can discuss how to best manage. thx
--Dietrich
@Fettoosh,
>> I wouldn't call it religious zealotry, it is passionate and strong opinions not hostility. Can't stand the heat, leave the kitchen.
A Yiddish word I heard someone else say sounds like much like "shlameal", and it stands for the person that always gets figuratively BURNED in everything she or he does, i.e., the sucker (or maybe I'd better say "suckee" ;> Dunno, maybe this applies to caitlyn if she overpassionately sticks her neck in heated frying-pan arguments and ends up falling into the kitchen fire instead....
When, oh when, will she ever learn?
2 more c's
>> I wouldn't call it religious zealotry, it is passionate and strong opinions not hostility. Can't stand the heat, leave the kitchen.
A Yiddish word I heard someone else say sounds like much like "shlameal", and it stands for the person that always gets figuratively BURNED in everything she or he does, i.e., the sucker (or maybe I'd better say "suckee" ;> Dunno, maybe this applies to caitlyn if she overpassionately sticks her neck in heated frying-pan arguments and ends up falling into the kitchen fire instead....
When, oh when, will she ever learn?
2 more c's
> The Slackware comment (who did not have the courage to leave his or her name) was attacking me based on previous comments about Slackware for the most part.
Probably. Allow me to apologize on behalf of less idiotic Slackware users.
> I also find that community particularly intolerant of criticism.
Slackware gets a fair amount of unjustified criticism in addition to that which is justifiable. It makes some of the users a bit touchy on their triggers. That's human nature in action. There is no justification for the anonymous attack though.
Probably. Allow me to apologize on behalf of less idiotic Slackware users.
> I also find that community particularly intolerant of criticism.
Slackware gets a fair amount of unjustified criticism in addition to that which is justifiable. It makes some of the users a bit touchy on their triggers. That's human nature in action. There is no justification for the anonymous attack though.
@jdixon: You have no reason at all to apologize. Even when we disagree your comments are always respectful and thoughtful. I also think the members you term "idiotic" are a vocal minority, quite probably a small minority, of the Slackware community. Still, they are enough to put me off and I suspect I am not alone in that.
@kikinovak: Thank you for admitting that Slackware really is a hobbyist distro. When I said the same thing in a review I was raked over the coals for it big time. I was told again and again how suitable Slackware should be for any and all businesses when really, it's not.
I don't sneer at hobbyist distros at all and I am sorry you've taken my comments that way. I do Linux for a living. I believe you do too. Most of my writing is, consequently, either from a business perspective or takes business into account and perhaps you are misconstruing that as derision.
My complaints with Slackware aren't technical at all. It certainly isn't about quality, which I generally praise. It's either about the community, which includes a significant number of people who tolerate absolutely no criticism or it's about claims made on the website about how "easy" Slackware is when, by any accepted definition of usability, that term really doesn't fit. Also, looking at Linux from a business perspective (which is what I usually do) it's hard to recommend anything that requires extra work or is developed by a small and fairly opaque team. Once again, that does not reflect on quality, which is excellent, but rather where Slackware fits. In terming in a "hobbyist distro" you've really hit the nail on the head and I completely agree with you.
@kikinovak: Thank you for admitting that Slackware really is a hobbyist distro. When I said the same thing in a review I was raked over the coals for it big time. I was told again and again how suitable Slackware should be for any and all businesses when really, it's not.
I don't sneer at hobbyist distros at all and I am sorry you've taken my comments that way. I do Linux for a living. I believe you do too. Most of my writing is, consequently, either from a business perspective or takes business into account and perhaps you are misconstruing that as derision.
My complaints with Slackware aren't technical at all. It certainly isn't about quality, which I generally praise. It's either about the community, which includes a significant number of people who tolerate absolutely no criticism or it's about claims made on the website about how "easy" Slackware is when, by any accepted definition of usability, that term really doesn't fit. Also, looking at Linux from a business perspective (which is what I usually do) it's hard to recommend anything that requires extra work or is developed by a small and fairly opaque team. Once again, that does not reflect on quality, which is excellent, but rather where Slackware fits. In terming in a "hobbyist distro" you've really hit the nail on the head and I completely agree with you.
> I was told again and again how suitable Slackware should be for any and all businesses when really, it's not.
Well, we both know it can be made suitable with a moderate amount of work
But the key point, which I think echoes your view, is: Why should anyone bother?
There are already distros out there built from the ground up to meet specific business needs. Why would any administrator want to go to the time and trouble of setting Slackware to duplicate that functionality when the simple alternative is to just to use another distribution that already has it.
I like Slackware a lot. It's my distribution of choice for my personal machines, and I've tried a fair number of them. But there are things it doesn't do out of the box (pam and selinux, to name two) that other distros do and that many businesses need (or think they need, which amounts to the same thing for this purpose).
It also doesn't have a large company behind it offering 24x7 enterprise level support. Things like that matter to large companies (again, whether they should or not).
For these reasons, Slackware simply isn't suitable for many businesses. And the distro that is, more so than any other, is Red Hat. Pointing this out isn't a corporate suck up piece, nor is it an attack on Slackware, it's merely pointing out the obvious.
> ...or it's about claims made on the website about how "easy" Slackware is when, by any accepted definition of usability, that term really doesn't fit.
Now, there we'll simply have to continue to disagree. As I've noted before, ease of use is subjective to the individual. The best you can hope for is a broad consensus which appeals to the majority of people but not necessarily to any individual. In fact, it comes very close to certain TOS forbidden topics in that regard.
Well, we both know it can be made suitable with a moderate amount of work
But the key point, which I think echoes your view, is: Why should anyone bother?
There are already distros out there built from the ground up to meet specific business needs. Why would any administrator want to go to the time and trouble of setting Slackware to duplicate that functionality when the simple alternative is to just to use another distribution that already has it.
I like Slackware a lot. It's my distribution of choice for my personal machines, and I've tried a fair number of them. But there are things it doesn't do out of the box (pam and selinux, to name two) that other distros do and that many businesses need (or think they need, which amounts to the same thing for this purpose).
It also doesn't have a large company behind it offering 24x7 enterprise level support. Things like that matter to large companies (again, whether they should or not).
For these reasons, Slackware simply isn't suitable for many businesses. And the distro that is, more so than any other, is Red Hat. Pointing this out isn't a corporate suck up piece, nor is it an attack on Slackware, it's merely pointing out the obvious.
> ...or it's about claims made on the website about how "easy" Slackware is when, by any accepted definition of usability, that term really doesn't fit.
Now, there we'll simply have to continue to disagree. As I've noted before, ease of use is subjective to the individual. The best you can hope for is a broad consensus which appeals to the majority of people but not necessarily to any individual. In fact, it comes very close to certain TOS forbidden topics in that regard.
Quoting:Now, there we'll simply have to continue to disagree. As I've noted before, ease of use is subjective to the individual. The best you can hope for is a broad consensus which appeals to the majority of people but not necessarily to any individual. In fact, it comes very close to certain TOS forbidden topics in that regard.
Perhaps much less one of those "certain TOS forbidden topics" than the discussion and debate of a decidedly political nature in the 'Best news in a decade' thread or previous borderline comments in this very thread.
As the LXer 'Terms of Service and Code of Conduct' does mention verbatim::
Quoting:... 6. Do not place any material on our service that could be considered offensive, indecent, abusive, hateful, harassing, libelous, profane, vulgar or unlawful. Our audience tends to be professional in nature, and we have the right, but not the obligation, to remove, edit, or relocate any content that we feel violates the standards of our site. Because of the real-time nature of our forums, it is not always possible for us to remove offensive material immediately.(Source: http://lxer.com/module/pages/v/12/)
Discussion and debate of a political or religious nature is not allowed on the site.....
@caitlyn. I just forgot the quotation marks. My fault :o)
Yes, I do use Linux all the time for a living. Oddly enough, I used RHEL (the real thing, not CentOS) for the last job, because the client (the French Oceanographic Institute) needed some specific software that's only certified for Red Hat Workstations. For my bigger clients, it's mostly a mix of RHEL, Oracle Linux and CentOS.
I take care of some dedicated servers in a datacenter. Until a year ago or so, I've been using either CentOS or Debian for the job, although Debian curiously lacks of long term support. Someone who opted for stable six months ago only has a year of support left for Squeeze. So I decided to give Slackware a spin on these machines, and, well, it does the job perfectly. It has long term support, security updates are often handled faster than the big players (read the ChangeLog, you'll see). And until I'm sufficiently intelligent to grasp the point of SELinux, traditional security tools will do :o)
But most of the time, I have to install desktop clients and workstations, more often than not on older hardware (because this is South France). Until 2011, I've been using my personal blend of CentOS on steroids for the job. Now I configured the same mix on Slackware with Xfce, and it's perfect. Meaning clients work on it 24/7, and I have zero complaints.
Here's my company's "Enterprise Desktop":
http://www.microlinux.fr/desktop_linux.php
And here's the innards (feel free to give it a spin):
https://github.com/kikinovak/desktop
I guess the word "simple" has to be taken in a specific meaning with Slackware. It means "no useless stuff added" or "no cr@ppy assistant getting in your way". That's Slackware's simplicity. Which also makes it the greatest distribution for teaching. My students will confirm this.
In conclusion, let me quote my latin teacher at the University in Montpellier, who once said: there's no "best" latin grammar book. The best latin grammar book is the one you're most comfortable with. I guess the same thing applies to the various Linux distributions. I have some guru admin friends (by "guru" I mean hackers doing security research for the French Army and the likes) who do great stuff on Hardened Gentoo, on DIY+LFS, on Ubuntu, on openSUSE or whatever.
I know about your grief with the Slackware community, Caitlyn. As far as I'm concerned, I find them to be a very pleasant and helpful bunch, and extremely competent. But then, you don't walk into a Hells Angels meeting shouting out loud that Harley Davidson is cr@p and Honda is better. :oD
Cheers from a fellow Linux admin.
Yes, I do use Linux all the time for a living. Oddly enough, I used RHEL (the real thing, not CentOS) for the last job, because the client (the French Oceanographic Institute) needed some specific software that's only certified for Red Hat Workstations. For my bigger clients, it's mostly a mix of RHEL, Oracle Linux and CentOS.
I take care of some dedicated servers in a datacenter. Until a year ago or so, I've been using either CentOS or Debian for the job, although Debian curiously lacks of long term support. Someone who opted for stable six months ago only has a year of support left for Squeeze. So I decided to give Slackware a spin on these machines, and, well, it does the job perfectly. It has long term support, security updates are often handled faster than the big players (read the ChangeLog, you'll see). And until I'm sufficiently intelligent to grasp the point of SELinux, traditional security tools will do :o)
But most of the time, I have to install desktop clients and workstations, more often than not on older hardware (because this is South France). Until 2011, I've been using my personal blend of CentOS on steroids for the job. Now I configured the same mix on Slackware with Xfce, and it's perfect. Meaning clients work on it 24/7, and I have zero complaints.
Here's my company's "Enterprise Desktop":
http://www.microlinux.fr/desktop_linux.php
And here's the innards (feel free to give it a spin):
https://github.com/kikinovak/desktop
I guess the word "simple" has to be taken in a specific meaning with Slackware. It means "no useless stuff added" or "no cr@ppy assistant getting in your way". That's Slackware's simplicity. Which also makes it the greatest distribution for teaching. My students will confirm this.
In conclusion, let me quote my latin teacher at the University in Montpellier, who once said: there's no "best" latin grammar book. The best latin grammar book is the one you're most comfortable with. I guess the same thing applies to the various Linux distributions. I have some guru admin friends (by "guru" I mean hackers doing security research for the French Army and the likes) who do great stuff on Hardened Gentoo, on DIY+LFS, on Ubuntu, on openSUSE or whatever.
I know about your grief with the Slackware community, Caitlyn. As far as I'm concerned, I find them to be a very pleasant and helpful bunch, and extremely competent. But then, you don't walk into a Hells Angels meeting shouting out loud that Harley Davidson is cr@p and Honda is better. :oD
Cheers from a fellow Linux admin.
> But then, you don't walk into a Hells Angels meeting shouting out loud that Harley Davidson is cr@p and Honda is better. :oD
Event though it's true :)
Event though it's true :)
> Event though it's true
Another personal opinion stated as fact. A never-ending problem in this group and the basis for far too many pointless arguments.
Another personal opinion stated as fact. A never-ending problem in this group and the basis for far too many pointless arguments.
> Another personal opinion stated as fact
Where did I indicate it was other than a personal opinion as to what was true? I had thought the smiley at end would be a give away as to that.
Mind you, I'm sure I could come up with some statistics to act as a factual basis for that statement if you really wanted, but since this is an free software forum, not a motorcycle one, I don't think there would be a lot of interest.
Sometimes a comment is meant as humorous exaggeration, not a factual accounting.
Where did I indicate it was other than a personal opinion as to what was true? I had thought the smiley at end would be a give away as to that.
Mind you, I'm sure I could come up with some statistics to act as a factual basis for that statement if you really wanted, but since this is an free software forum, not a motorcycle one, I don't think there would be a lot of interest.
Sometimes a comment is meant as humorous exaggeration, not a factual accounting.
> Where did I indicate it was other than a personal opinion as to what was true?
....and weasel capacity is unrivaled. ;)
....and weasel capacity is unrivaled. ;)
> ...and weasel capacity is unrivaled.
I'm pleased to know that my powers of deception and malleability are so obviously profound. I must have missed my calling and should be in sales/marketing rather than IT.
I'm pleased to know that my powers of deception and malleability are so obviously profound. I must have missed my calling and should be in sales/marketing rather than IT.
> This may win the award for the comment I have most strongly disagreed with ever.
Darn, I've been dethroned.
Darn, I've been dethroned.
I don't like to use the word "easy" to describe Slackware. What Slackware tends to be in comparison to other distributions is "simple." Some people think those two words mean the same thing. I think that depends on context. When it comes to a distribution I would say that "easy" means that it takes less effort to use, while "simple" means that it takes less effort to understand. So, yes, "simple" can be the same thing as "easy" as long as you are talking about understanding rather than using Slackware.
@CFWhitman: I can't disagree with what you've written here. If it was explained that way on the Slackware website the comment in my reviews would never have been written. I'll note that distros like Arch Linux and CRUX don't call themselves "easy" and yet they are basically in the same category as Slackware.
@kikinovak: You are more than intelligent enough to fully grasp and take advantage of SELinux. From the SELinux wiki:
As everyone knows, web servers are under perpetual attack. When I work on sites that have had security incidents one of the things I usually do is to make sure a sane SELinux policy is in place. If we're talking Apache/LAMP I also use mod_security and lock things down that way at the web server level. I've been very good at mitigating security issues on web servers and, indeed, on other production servers. SELinux is important because it defines clearly what can and can't be done to a file or resource by a given user or group.
@kikinovak: You are more than intelligent enough to fully grasp and take advantage of SELinux. From the SELinux wiki:
Quoting:SELinux also adds finer granularity to access controls. Instead of only being able to specify who can read, write or execute a file, for example, SELinux lets you specify who can unlink, append only, move a file and so on. SELinux allows you to specify access to many resources other than files as well, such as network resources and interprocess communication (IPC).
As everyone knows, web servers are under perpetual attack. When I work on sites that have had security incidents one of the things I usually do is to make sure a sane SELinux policy is in place. If we're talking Apache/LAMP I also use mod_security and lock things down that way at the web server level. I've been very good at mitigating security issues on web servers and, indeed, on other production servers. SELinux is important because it defines clearly what can and can't be done to a file or resource by a given user or group.
Arch does call itself "simple", exactly that. Just take a peek at the title of the "Arch way" page.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way
As for SELinux, I have yet to encounter a situation on my public machines where traditional security tools won't do the job to keep the insisting guys from China, Russia and Nigeria out.
Some folks use a sledgehammer to drive a nail into a wall. I'm more a hammer guy.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way
As for SELinux, I have yet to encounter a situation on my public machines where traditional security tools won't do the job to keep the insisting guys from China, Russia and Nigeria out.
Some folks use a sledgehammer to drive a nail into a wall. I'm more a hammer guy.
SELinux is the opposite of a sledgehammer. It allows fine control in a way traditional Linux permissions do not.
Post a comment
A free account is needed to post. Write your comment here first: your text is kept in this browser while you sign up or log in, and is waiting for you when you come back.
Your message:Markdown: **bold**, *italic*, [text](https://link), - lists, > quotes, $x^2$ for math. Formatting help
Sign up and post (it is free) or Log in and post