Re: [tlug] I'd like to help TLUG, but...

["Jonathan Q" <jq@example.com>]

On 5/2/2007, "Shannon Jacobs" <shannon.jacobs@example.com> wrote:

<Snip lots of foolishness>

<Keep some foolishness here>
>I always felt that one of the most preposterous criticisms of Linux
>was that "Linux doesn't scale for large real-world problems", but at
>this point I do believe that "Linux user groups don't scale to the
>real world." Me? I'm still interested in the real world über alles.
</Keep>

Actually, those criticisms were not always invalid. Go back a ways and
you can find where Linux didn't perform well on systems with more than
four CPUs. Go back a little farther, and you can find where it didn't
perform well with more than two. And where it had SMP but it didn't
perform all that well. Go back farther still and you can find where it
didn't support SMP at all.

Even today, on a single really big system such as a 64-way Sun, I'm
pretty sure Solaris would perform better than Linux.

Of course, Windows has had and still has the same sort of scalability
issues, and Linux scales up well in massively parallel systems, probably
better than Windows does. I'm just saying that those criticisms
regarding large-problem scalability were not necessarily preposterous;
they've just been addressed fairly well in the past few years.

As far as LUGs "not scaling to the real world" goes, don't look now,
but this is the real world. It's the real world of computer
professionals and computer hobbyists.

If that's not your real world (and it's pretty obviously not; your real
world is one in which you like your computer to just work; our real
world is one in which we like to work on our computers), fine. But you
have no grounds on which to criticize either us for having built a LUG
that meets *our* needs and goals, or TLUG for being that LUG.

I suggested a while back that you would probably be far better server by
a Mac than Linux. That was not meant in any disparaging way; many
TLUGgers also have and love Macs. I'm typing this on one, and I think
it's a wonderful machine. Having read your latest posts, I am now even
more sure that you would be better-served by a Mac. It will meet all
your needs without requiring you to have a lot of technical proficiency
and without any pressure to become a computer hobbyist (either from the
system or from other Mac users) and it is not difficult to find Mac user
groups that are extremely evangelistic about Macs. In my experience, Mac
users as a group are far more evangelistic than Linux users as a group.
They really beat the drum for Macs, and it seems like that's what 
you're looking for.

Linux users, while we do advocate the use of Linux and other Free
software, especially in business, mostly don't take that approach. Many
of us believe that level of advocacy is more properly the domain of
distributors or more formal advocacy groups/self-styled advocates, and
also believe that in due course, through the efforts already underway,
Linux will certainly succeed in all markets and may well become the
dominant operating system on the desktop, in the data center, and on
embedded platforms.

However, if it doesn't, we'll still be happy using it. When many of us
started using Linux, few people had even heard of it. We were happy
using it then. Now, most people still use Windows, but most people have
at least heard of Linux,and it has become very easy to use and has
pretty good driver support and not much is difficult in Linux anymore. I
believe that Linux will be very popular in the 2-5 year time frame, but
if I'm wrong, I don't care that much. It'll still meet *my* needs and
I'll still be using it. TLUG meets *my* needs and I'll still be a
member. That's a sufficient amount of real-world scaling for me (and a
lot of others).