Re: [chat] What Linux can learn from Apple growers

[invisible ink <jdub@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Forgive me if I wax on a bit here.

<quote who="Ken Foskey">

> I heard a comment recently that over the last twelve months RedHat had
> died out of the list and Debian has taken over.
> 
> Politics is hard to control in any body and I beleive that we need to woo
> back the redhat support to keep SLUG from being an elitist debian club.

SLUG is *not* an elitist Debian club. There are users of all of the
distributions on the list, some more vocal than others. You'll find posts
recommending LRP, Debian, SuSE, Mandrake, e-smith, Red Hat, Conectiva,
Progeny, the VA modified Red Hat, the K12 modified Red Hat, etc.

  Many of the very active, knowledgable members of the list happen to use
  Debian these days. Note that I say "active": A lot of the faces we've
  known for years have moved on because they're busy, out of the country,
  yada.

Charlie left for e-smith in Canada. I haven't seen Ken Yap for a little
while (I miss his pointed comments and his signature one line link emails)
and Grahame Kelly (who takes the blame for pulling me back into all this
Linux mess) posts very rarely nowadays. I'm very glad Jamie Honan is still
around.

  There used to be a lot of chatter about Red Hat, at one stage SuSE was
  talked about a lot. At the moment, it seems everyone is looking into
  Debian. Since potato was released, the Debian talk on the list has cranked
  up significantly amongst new users of the distribution and the younger
  members of SLUG. SLUG is a hell of a lot younger these days.

Craige McWhirter, a relatively new Debian user (but very long time SLUGger),
even started up the Debian SIGs. Why? Dunno. It's interesting. It's a
community in itself. It just fell into place.

  !!! But ultimately, it was because Craige got off his arse and did
  something that interested a bunch of other SLUGgers. Good on him. !!!

Yes, I'm one of the vocal Debian users on the list. When I first started
using it, I was quite shocked, and bubbled on about it quite a bit. I've
stopped the longer advocacy posts now, but I pick up on it every now and
then. When people ask how to do things, I try to give general answers as
well as the ones I know very well.

> OK I have bitched here is what I propose, I recommend that we create a
> redhat list and a debian list.  We search out the Redhat subscribers of
> old and invite them back onto the redhat list so that they can have a
> forum where it should be 'on the local lug'.

I think this is a terribly destructive thing to do. It took many, many
months to finally start slug-chat because we didn't want to "split the
community" - luckily, that hasn't happened. Remember:

  Linux is Linux is Linux.

Heaps of the stuff that applies to SuSE will apply to Slackware. Red Hat to
Debian. Conectiva to Mandrake. Firewalling, FreeS/WAN, BIND, Apache, we talk
about all of these things; they're all Free Software, and they all run on
Linux.

  When Jason Ball left a while ago, it was horribly disappointing for me as
  a new committee member. There was a lot of one-upping on the list at that
  time, and it did become ugly on a couple of occasions. I really miss
  Jason's input, he was a wonderful guy (he donated our mail and web
  server).

Del, I'm sorry you've decided to leave us. You've battered me with the clue
stick on a number of occasions, and provided a lot of insight on the list.
I'm sure I'll be missing your input as much as Jason's.

- Jeff

-- 
     "Free software never simply picks up its marbles and goes home." -     
                            Jonathan Corbet, LWN