[Tfug] Alan Cox: "I've had enough"--what else is new?

[christopher floess]

You know, on the one hand I keep admiring your ability to keep trying,
but on the other hand, I can never seem to agree with you. Every time
it seems like you're making a well thought out comment, you end up
saying something that I'm completely in disagreement with.

I've been blown away at how well-rounded linux is, but at the same
time, I never once thought of "free Unix" as a linux thing. It's just
PART of the "free Unix" thing. Your comments about a "movement" make
it sound like it's a flare up of some sort. It's not that at all. It's
something that will continue as long as people have access to source
code, and have a curiosity about hacking. Whether the
ubuntu/<Insert_distro_here /> movement takes off, is only tangential
to curiosity about this stuff. If ubuntu/<Insert_distro_here /> flops,
we'll still be interested in it.

I think the problem is that you want to hate Vista/OSX, but are
tempted to by the comfort of their status quo status, so YOU think of
the Linux era, and its need to overcome hurdles so that it can
overcome mainstream inertia, and win the masses over.

Finally, I don't see the BSDs and the Linuxes as being at odds like
your post seems to indicate you feel. Instead, I see them both as
parts of the "free Unix" thing, and for that reason I don't see an
overall difference between the quality of a constantly
"pissy/disagreeable" herd of linux people and what the BSDers are
putting out. Yeah, their are differences in approach, and thus, there
are different things to admire in both camps (not to mention in all
the different flavors of one or the other), but that is really just
the source of the impetus for their development.

If anything is at fault, I think it's this hackintosh crap for not
even having the backbone to stand independently, but instead, just
copying some system that has a bunch of fanboys/fangirls declaring the
superiority of their overpriced systems, when it really only trumps in
the realm of eye candy and commodity fetishism.

~ Chris



On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 3:42 PM, <bpoag at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
> I do try. :)
>
> Seriously. And yes, I mean seriously, a number of us would be well-suited to
> start to think of "free Unix" as something other than Linux, something other
> than mucking around with GNU tools. You know how economists always take
> forever to acknowledge the obvious, like that we're in a recession? Same
> thing applies here. We're in a post-Linux era, now. It simply no longer
> makes sense to declare a "movement", and then watch it fumble around without
> direction.
>
> The Linux era ended when we had no answer for Vista's awkward silence. Vista
> face-planted on the stage, and the spotlight quickly moved over to Linux.
> And what did we have? Nothing. Two divergent projects that weren't ready for
> prime-time with near-zero high quality commercially-supported software to
> make the switch desirable enough.
>
> Worse, people are beginning to realize that code developed under the open
> source model isn't immune to the same "shelf life" principles that
> closed-source code suffers from. I mean, think about it. All the code people
> wrote even 6 or 7 years ago when Linux was still more or less a quietly cool
> thing people did for fun....Practically none of it works anymore, at least
> without uprooting and fundamentally screwing your installation by
> interspersing it with old library versions, patches and hacks. It was all
> for naught.
>
> Who wants to do that?
>
> I have a hackintosh now. It's BSD, it's kernel is free, and it's fun.. It
> is, IMHO, what Unix should be, and what a constantly pissy/disagreeable herd
> of cats like the Linux community will never, by its very nature, ever be
> able to produce.
>
> Cheers,
> Bowie
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joe Roberts" <deepspace at dataswamp.net>
> To: "Tucson Free Unix Group" <tfug at tfug.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 12:50:18 PM GMT -07:00 U.S. Mountain Time
> (Arizona)
> Subject: Re: [Tfug] Alan Cox: "I've had enough"--what else is new?
>
> On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 12:33 AM, Bowie J. Poag<bpoag at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> The whole free software movement has been tainted with this sort of crap.
>> It's always has been the case for the Linux movement as well, even from
>> its
>> earliest days.
>>
>> Oh, by the way, here's a video of Richard Stallman sitting down on stage,
>> pulling his sock off, and eating his toe cheese. These are your "leaders".
>
> The way you left Linux can only be described as cinematic.  Walking
> away from a big dark building in slow motion, pulling your collar up,
> cigarette danging out of your mouth, only to be flicked back toward
> the building.  The camera zooms in on the lit cigarette tumbling
> through the air in slow-mo, only to land in a puddle of gasoline, when
> suddenly BOOM, the entire building goes up, but you don't look back.
> No dammit, you just...you just walk on, past hot chicks in leather
> pants looking lustfully at you in your duster and popped collar, the
> building a hellish inferno behind you...
>
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