Subj : Re: Open Source Leaving Microsoft Sitting on the Fence?
To   : comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux
From : =?iso-8859-1?Q?Lin=F8nut?=
Date : Mon Jul 26 2004 07:53 am

Error BR-549: MS DRM 1.0 rejects the following post from Steve Schefter:

> I quite agree with Peter's points.  Fragmentation was a big detriment
> to PC Unix.  Having to have a different release of your product for
> each brand of Unix made it less attractive to port a product to Unix
> at all.  
>
> In terms of fragmentation, Linux doesn't seem to have faired much 
> better so far.  But now you have to add to that the fact that there 
> is, IMHO, not enough attempt to maintain consistency within any one
> fragment.

That is why you generally want to stick with source installation, and
preferably ones that use the GNU automake facilities.

I've used RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, and Gentoo, and source installation
works wonders on all of these distros.

And now the package managers are getting to be fairly useable, as I understand
it, across many distros.

As far as I can tell, the fragmentation is shrinking, not growing, although
there are definite differences in handling init, runlevels, and networking.

-- 
Free as in freedom
Power as in empowerment

.