Subject: Re: 3 Lisps, 3 Ways of Specifying OS From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 21:00:06 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3212254802795915@naggum.net> * Pratibha | Are any of these implementations expected to support the current RedHat | version or SuSE version (7.2 in both cases, I believe) anytime soon? If you want a stable system, choose Debian: even their "unstable" version is more stable than RedHat. If you want to "conform" to a distribution, at the very least do not choose RedHat -- they have done so many insanely weird things to Linux kernels and libraries and versions of compilers and everything you would have to have a nightmare to dream about that it is a wonder something that works with RedHat works with anything else. That many vendors "standardize" on them is very unfortunate, since it means that their random brokenness defines the playing ground for everyone else, just like that other supplier of random brokenness and version hysteria. | I am somewhat surprised that none of these implementations officially | support even any version of SuSE, as I thought Lisp and SuSE were both | "big" (relatively speaking) in Europe. If you choose to officially support RedHat, you have few resources left to support any other distribution. Most of the acidic comments you find from vendors who debunk Linux as a mass of randomness and pain come from having had to deal with RedHat's utter lack of respect for stability and quality in the versions of things they ship. Of course, if you start off with RedHat, all other distributions _are_ different, giving a falsely negative impression. If you just ignore RedHat, the Linux world is so much less random and unpredictable. It was not always like that. The kernels used to be unpredictable, too, and the track record for backward compatibility for glibc was quite bad, but in the past couple years, these things have stabilized remarkably. If it were not for RedHat, vendors _would_ be able to list the version of the kernel and the prerequisite libraries and that would work just fine. It is therefore a disservice to the Linux community to list RedHat as the reference supported implementation and leave it at that. A much better approach would be to list the distribution, kernel, library version combinations that the vendor has focused on and to include those that have been tested and found working by the users. After all, the vendors are giving away software and it should help everyone to let users report back that it works well on their distribution, kernel, library version combinations, such as by running a test suite. This could help build a community of users on Linux systems, too, and if there are problems, the cost of finding and fixing their causes would not be left to the vendor. /// -- The United Nations before and after the leadership of Kofi Annan are two very different organizations. The "before" United Nations did not deserve much credit and certainly not a Nobel peace prize. The "after" United Nations equally certainly does. I applaud the Nobel committee's choice.