Re: tlug: PJE

[Chris Sekiya <chris@example.com>]

On Fri, 21 Aug 1998, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> Too bad, could be amusing and educational ;-)  By the way, don't feel
> bad about stealing a march on me.

*sigh* Okay, against my better judgement:

Package managers are evil.

Why do I think this?  Unlike about ninety-five percent of the rest of the
Linux community, I think that dumbing down Linux to make it appeal to the
masses is a really bad idea.

I believe that using prebuilt packages makes it too easy to become
distanced from the machine -- to not understand (or worse, to not care)
how the system works.  If you build things from source, you usually
understand how the system fits together.

I think everyone here knows that I'm rabidly anti-Microsoft.  I would
_love_ to see Linux displace Microsoft as the dominant OS.  If that
happens, however, I fear that Linux will _become_ a Microsoft-level
product -- because the user base will not care about quality products.

How did Microsoft products get so bad?  They didn't used to be terrible --
Word (version two, I think) was a damned fine wapuro.  I think Microsoft
discovered that their audience didn't actually care about optimal
products.  So, instead of improving their code, they sunk their efforts
into expanding their user base by adding possibly unstable features to
their code. 

Now Linux distro people appear to be targetting the same audience.  Linux
with StarOffice on the desktop.  Linux with Oracle in the server room.
We're getting all of the applications that we need to effectively replace
NT servers with Linux servers.

But we're not getting source code to those applications.

The great thing about Linux is that if something breaks, we can fix it.
We've got the source.  Postgres95 is dumping core when you try to create a
table?  No problem ... attach strace, see that it's dying in such-and-such
a syscall.  Oh, the size of a struct changed between kernel revs?
Recompile Postgres95.  Back in business.

Can't do that with Oracle.  Something like that happens, you've got to
wait for a fix from the supplier.  But, hey, it's running on Linux so it's
cool, right?

We're throwing away that which made Linux great, all in the name of
expanding our user base.

How does this tie into package managers?  Simple.  Package managers
trivialize the most basic requirement of system administration:
installation and removal of software.  Folks don't need to understand
_how_ things work, they just need to know how to type "rpm --install" (or
whatever).  The easier Linux administration is made, the wider the user
base.  The wider the user base, the less clued the user base becomes.  As
clues go down, expectations go down.  The rest follows.

God, I'm turning into Stallman.  Guess I'll have to grow my hair out.

Here endeth the rant.  I probably could have made my points a little
better, but it's been a rough day at the office and I'm tired.

-- Chris

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