Distro flamewar (was: Re: [CS-FSLUG] Linux success story)

[Josiah Ritchie]

Greg Slade scripted ::

>> Which reminds me, when was the last time we had a good distro
>> flamewar?
>
>When I joined the list, you guys were right in the middle of one,
>which didn't to much to convince me that Linux is the way to go, if
>people can't even agree on which Linux to use. 

Ah, that's just a little fun. It's no fun having choices if everyone
agree on the same one and it's healthy to discuss the differences.
Besides it encourages people to understand the differences of
different distros so they can choose the one that's right for them
(or at least keep trying in the case of an installaholic). As much as
I really enjoy Gentoo, I wouldn't really want to see everyone on the
list join me in use of it. I think everyone else would say the same
thing. Part of the beauty of the Linux community is its diversity
which breeds healthy competition. Take KDE and GNOME for example.
They've been raising each other for the best desktop for almost as
long as I've been a linux user and neither KDE or GNOME would be where
it is today if it weren't for that competition, IMHO.

RedHat was, a few years back, getting bad vibes from inside the Linux
community simply because they were setting themselves up to be "the"
distro, rather than one of a few good choices. Now the distaste for
them includes many other reasons, but SUSE and MDK are putting up good
competition with them, well at least SUSE.

Our "flamewars" are just to help us remember the need for other
distros and besides loyalty to your favorite distro is fun to express
once in awhile and provides a creative outlet by which to mock the
more contentious lists. :-)

JSR/