[clue-talk] Hello CLUE

[Nate Duehr]

Hi Joseph.  Welcome to town.  I like your posts already!  (And I bet you 
know how to use a turn-signal, unlike the majority of folks who've moved 
here in the last 5 years or so!)  ;-)

T. Joseph Carter wrote:

> Personally, I am holding off on AMD64 for another six months at least.  No
> problem with the hardware, but tons with Linux distributions' support of
> it.  Very immature at present, and I am shocked by how much stuff just
> doesn't work.  Too much code that assumes all processors are ia32,
> especially if you want to start talking video stuff.

Keeping for reference... see below.

> Debian just needs to give up on having a stable, period.  Gentoo needs to
> dial back a little and have things actually work more often than not.
> Ubuntu needs to care about something other than GNOME, with KDE and XFCE
> and school people working on their own little projects on the side.

Isn't Stable exactly what's trying to avoid the problem you mention in 
the first paragraph?

I've been doing all sorts of Distros for a very long time, and the "one 
thing I can count on" is that Debian Stable will WORK for servers, no 
muss, no fuss, the damn thing just runs and runs and runs and gets 
timely security patches.

All other distros make Linux look stupid and unprofessional in this 
regard.  Debian sucks for desktops, but for server farms that you have 
no time to screw around with constantly, there's nothing better.

> There isn't a perfect distribution.  What we've got are a lot of imperfect
> ones that can almost sortof get the job done with additional stuff the
> makers of those distributions can't or won't provide.  (he says noting the
> recent example that Ubuntu has MythTV 0.18 packages that break on install
> attempt and has outright rejected working 0.19+fixes packages which are
> provided in an external repository..)

This is definitely Linux's strong point and HUGE weakness, when it comes 
to business use.  I work on high-availability telecommunications 
equipment for my day job, and the work Sun does to keep things stable so 
far outshines any effort any Linux distro has ever done, it's almost 
embarrassing to be known as a Linux enthusiast at work.

Then you get into hardware.  Sun and HP both make rock solid mid-range 
servers that simply don't die.  I hear IBM also makes nice stuff but 
have never had the opportunity to use them.

IBM and HP also make nice Blade servers, or so I hear.  Not so much, 
Sun.  (They're not that "nice".)

Linux makes good web farm material.  LAMP/whatever else has come along, 
Ruby/Rails, etc... still the "killer app" for Linux boxes after a decade 
of development.  Tomcat too for those that like that particular level of 
bloat and abstraction.  :-)

Fast databases and high-availability stuff (think telco SS7 network -- 
worldwide lookups guaranteed in less than 500 ms of any routing request 
for any phone number) don't belong anywhere near Linux.  The so-called 
"Carrier Grade Linux" project is mostly just laughable, if it weren't so 
sad.

And no way would a modern kernel -- ESPECIALLY not the 2.6 kernel -- be 
used in most cases.  What amazing bloatware the 2.6 kernel is, and slow. 
(All to support "desktop Linux" and more and odder hardware, which is 
still a non-starter and always will be amongst the general population.)

>> I'm not too surprised to hear your problems with Debian internals. In
>> the past most people I knew considered Debian to be "Linux with
>> ATTITUDE", and there was the time when you could have any desktop
>> manager you wanted as long as you spelled it GNOME and an ancient
>> version of that to boot <grin>. I don't think the Ubuntu project has
>> helped, since Shuttleworth paid bucks to get his hands on some prime
>> Debian developers.

Probably well-deserved bucks, too.  Some of those people slaved on 
really difficult problems for years for no pay.  Silly.  In virtually no 
other profession would that happen unless it was a Dr. traveling to a 
3rd world country to do a few weeks of surgery.  (And while it may be 
out of the goodness of his/her heart, they'd still write it off on their 
taxes!)

  > At the time I got involved, I could only use X at 320x200 256 color, so
> I frankly could use neither KDE nor GNOME.  Nowadays I'd call them two
> opposing extremes of how to reimagine the Windows XP interface.  Right
> down to those annoying as %*@&! taskbar pop-up balloons!

Agreed.  GUI design in Linux went straight down the toilet after RedHat 
pissed off the original Enlightenment developer and he got out to go do 
more interesting things away from computers.  I can't remember if he 
ever "came back" after that... but no one could blame him for leaving.

> Thanks--they tell me I have another six weeks of what they tell me is
> really weird hot + wet weather.  Guh.  At least it beats what Oregon has
> had the past month.  Global warming in action, or something.

The weather is definitely weird this year.  Definitely not "wet" though. 
  Total precipitation is (once again) very low.  Expect continued 
drought, typical of the high plains.  Today's the 30 year anniversary of 
the Big Thomson Canyon flood that killed a number of people north of 
Denver in 1976.

Nate