Why vent? [LWN.net]

Why vent?

Posted Sep 4, 2008 13:55 UTC (Thu) by oblio (guest, #33465)
In reply to: Why vent? by pr1268
Parent article: Fedora Board meeting minutes (2008-AUG-26)

"I'm glad I don't use Red Hat or Fedora. Any Linux distribution that has to worry about petty issues as these instead of focusing on making technical, performance, and usability enhancements to both the kernel and userspace applications seems like either (1) crisis management or (2) misguided priorities."

"Or, maybe I'm just feeling a little insecure for using Slackware (NOT!)"

Slackware, aka the "1 man show distribution"?! I'd be ashamed if I were you to make such comments. Slackware has NO upstream contribution. No usability enhancements or such. Red Hat has invested more money in Open Source projects that we all use, than almost all other parties except IBM, Sun and Novell. As per priorities, IBM, Sun and Novell are doing what they're doing partly because of the pressure from Red Hat, the true and original "Open Source company".

This is a rant by a Debian/Ubuntu user. I still know who does the hard work in this community and who pays for it (at least partly, of course there are a lot of companies involved) ;)

And I still know where some respect is due.

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Why vent?

Posted Sep 4, 2008 14:47 UTC (Thu) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]

Slackware, aka the "1 man show distribution"?!

Nowadays, Slackware is the work of a bunch of online volunteers. Patrick Volkerding still does some coordination work, but it's certainly not a "1 man show" any longer.

No usability enhancements or such. Red Hat has invested more money in Open Source projects that we all use

That's odd... Slackware runs substantially faster than Red Hat and Fedora on equivalent hardware. And it's easier to use (my opinion). Maybe RH and Fedora need to retool their investment strategy.

Why vent?

Posted Sep 4, 2008 18:37 UTC (Thu) by oblio (guest, #33465) [Link]

"Slackware runs substantially faster than Red Hat and Fedora on equivalent hardware. And it's easier to use (my opinion). Maybe RH and Fedora need to retool their investment strategy."

You claim to be an old Linux user. I thought you understood by now that

faster != better

I won't bother to comment on their investment strategy considering that 1-5% of Slackware (call it an educated guess) is probably written by Red Hat people. 1-5% of the numbers of lines of code, doing 50% of the work (parts of GCC, GDB, Linux, glibc, GTK, and many, many more).

Why vent?

Posted Sep 4, 2008 19:06 UTC (Thu) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]

I will concede that some parts of Slackware are actually Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora contributions (mostly in the area of init scripts and various service daemons), but overall, Slackware is comprised of unadulterated upstream packages. I will also concede that the larger distros' developers often contribute to these packages. As do Slackware users.

As for your "faster != better" comment, well, I can likely get some support for the statement that bloat != better, and I'm convinced that the bigger-name distros are all about bloat. Which likely fuels my perception that Slackware is faster than $BIG_NAME_DISTRO^†.

And besides, the one huge annoyance that prompted me to write that Slackware is faster was/is the system responsiveness "stutter" I vividly remember experiencing with FC2/3 (caused by page faults according to a fellow LUG member). A friend told me that this still happens with Fedora 8 (usually while running Mozilla Firefox). I suppose that'll never get fixed...

^†I will even argue that Slackware versions 11.x/12.x have become bloated relative to earlier versions, but its bloat still can't hold a candle to the bloat I've seen Red Hat and Fedora go through.

Why vent?

Posted Sep 4, 2008 19:25 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Well of course they are more bloated than earlier versions... upstream software has bloated quite a bit. Developers usually write for the most current hardware and usually have larger than normal amounts of CPU/memory.

Even then though, Slackware is a conservative distribution which is usually a full cycle behind what is seen in Fedora/Ubuntu. It is aimed at people who aren't buying new computers every year and do not want every bit of new eye-candy. It is also conservative about what compilation options it will use (UTF-8 support was not a high priority so why turn it on)... which makes it zippier than those that turn it on.

By the time Slackware gets 13/14 it will be as bloated as Fedora is now, and less bloated then Fedora will be then. [And no, I am not alluding to Slackware being behind the curve etc... it knows its market and caters to it well.]