Re: Is there still a place for electronics techs? (Reply to JeffM) --> Linux distro performance

On Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:29:04 +0000, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

[quoting nb]
I've been very disappointed so often with Linux distros that *almost
work* that I'm not bothering to try to learn why openSUSE sound doesn't
work. I'm abandoning it, sooner, I hope (and it's one of the better
ones.)

(Topic was disappointment with openSUSE, about a month ago.)

Geoff,

I apologize for not checking sooner; still getting [re]accustomed to
USENET after a long hiatus.

[GSM]
If you don't understand why it doesn't work, you don't understand the
whole Linux/open source model.

Good point, and no offense taken. I have probably fallen into a modest
trap of thinking that certain distros. really should work on any more-or-
less-ordinary hardware. I'm aware than Novell supports (shucks, owns,
afaik) SUSE, but expected that sound on an recent MSI motherboard should
work; it didn't.

RHEL is stable because people put money into keeping it that way. SUSE
is stable because Novell puts money into keeping it that way.

Indeed, so. open SUSE is stable enough, although on a few occasions, I
have fixed problems by restarting. (SIN!) :) In the past, I have
purchased paid Linux distros, although I haven't necessarily asked for
help (my bad).

I do wonder whether the Linux community has failed to make clear its open
source model; I'm no newbie to Linux*, although some questions I could
ask are of newbie category. Nevertheless, I might have been using Linux
intermittently for years without understanding what you're referring to.
First distro I tried was Xdenu; ran Debian as command-line-only for a
while on a 16 MHz 386 many years ago.

OpenSUSE is not because unpaid experimenters put their effort into
making it the latest and greatest, with stability and function second.

Geoff.

[Embedded P.S.: I do recall seriously thinking of purchasing OpenSUSE (or
simply SUSE?) for maybe $60, for the assurance that SUSE would see to it
that everything worked. At the time, though, I had good reasons for not
purchasing it.

In openSUSE's favor, it seems, are:

1) If one stays with repositories implicitly (explicitly?) recommended by
it, then apps are likely to work, or at least not cause grief. That seems
true of several modern responsible, well-supported distros.

2) Security updates are "pushed" -- I get lower-right rise-up (they don't
pop :) ) notices of updates, which leads me to believe that as soon as a
fix is considered safe to propagate, it's sent out.

As I see matters, both of these items are benevolent spinoffs from the
paid distro.

Kind thanks to you!

--
Nicabod =+= Waltham, Mass.
.

Quantcast