[conspire] (forw) Re: [Felton LUG] feltonlug.org website online

[Rick Moen]

FeltonLUG volunteer Steve Adams generously put together a badly needed
prelminary Web site for the group.  (Yay him.)  I praised this work, but
mildly objected on factual grounds to his assertion on those pages that
Ubuntu Linux is the leading enterprise Linux distribution.  Despite
ongoing efforts to sell suport contracts for Ubuntu LTS, available
evidence suggests just flat-out 'no', by a country mile.

Resulting thread spilled over to this afternoon, when the listadmin
suddenly rejected this closing post -- correcting yet more mistakes made
on account of (IMO) unthinking Canonical, Ltd. boosterism, so I'm
forwarding it here so the (significant) effort isn't wasted.  

Listadmin also revealed the surprising news that FeltonLUG's mailing
list (a Google Group) is _moderated_, which he apparently configured for
the puzzling reason of antispam.  Folks, if you think full moderation is
necessary to keep spam off mailing lists, you haven't understood the
spam problem.

Suddenly, odd FeltonLUG posting delays are explained.  Note:  As fully
moderated operation is non-standard, it should always be disclosed.
FeltonLUG does not do so.

I'd really like to see this 'Ubuntu is best because it's easy to
install'.  _Every_ goddamned desktop distribution has been easy to
install for well over a decade, and it wasn't even Canonical, Ltd. that
did that work, but rather Klaus Knopper.  It's past time that this
insultingly obvious propaganda ceased.



----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2016 15:01:31 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: felton-lug at googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [Felton LUG] feltonlug.org website online
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Quoting Steve Adams (efersept at gmail.com):

> Hey Rick, first off I did not think you were starting an argument and
> just wanted to clarify that it was not my intent either. I have no
> problem talking about this and have no stake in Ubuntu or canonical. 

More than fair enough, and I'll be glad to clarify that in no way did I
think you were shilling for Canonical, Ltd.  

> I have not tried ultimate edition but have used mint and bohdi. They
> were all exceedingly easy to install and set up as most Ubuntu
> derivatives have been in my experience. However I do not recall either
> being exceptionally simpler than Ubuntu although bohdi's install time
> was very fast. 

You were relatively lucky in the compatibilty of the installer with your
hardware.  (I would also guess you were skillful in avoiding problematic
hardware in the first place.)  Quite a lot of other people have been not
so lucky, and/or hapless in their dependence on problem hardware.

However, let's face it, _every_ desktop Linux distribution since around
2000 has been extremely easy to install, offering what we jokingly call
a 'forehead install' default mode.  So, this whole notion that Ubuntu
has a distinct advantage is a total crock.

I can tell you why that change happened starting in 2000, because I was
peripherally involved.  In 1999, my colleagues at my firm Linuxcare in
San Francisco developed an 80Mb compressed ISO of a Linux distribution
for business-card-sized CD media, which we called the Linuxcare Bootable
Business Card, or Linuxcare BBC.  (This wasn't the change I speak of,
but it led to that change.)  The Linuxcare BBC gathered a bunch of
hardware autoprobing tricks, mostly from then-optional Debian packages,
and built them into the BBC as scripts you could run to autoprobe
hardware and autoload the correct drivers for them.  The team also
hacked some code to do a new trick called pivot-root, to remount the
root filesystem from a RAMdisk after booting the mini-CD.  (In this
regard, the BBC was the very first 'live CD' distribution.)  The BBC was
a sensation at the first LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, where we
released it, but was little-known outside technical users, who adopted
it as a Swiss Army knife to solve problems.

A fellow in Germany named Klaus Knopper was very interested in both of
these things, and asked us how we did pivot-root (which we told him).
Then, starting in September 2000 and building on our work, he released
the first version of Knoppix, the first truly widely popular live CD
distribution.  In contrast to the BBC, Knoppix took the bolder step of
building all the hardware autorecognition tools the BBC used into the
live-CD startup scripts, i.e., they ran automatically.

This was bold because quite a few hardware components that were then
common freaked out and froze the PC when aggressively autoprobed.  The
BBC's stance of providing those tools but not running them automatically
was more conservative, albeit requiring a bit more of the user, as
befits a utility disk.


_Now_, getting to the point, Ubuntu is 'exceedingly easy to install' 
primarily because it copied wholesale the hardwre autoprobing from
Knoppix (along with pivot-root).  In that, it is the child of Knoppix
and grandchild of the Linuxcare BBC.

But _so is every other desktop Linux distribution_.[1]

And that is my problem with assertions of Ubuntu exceptionalism.  It's 
frankly untrue, ignoring Linux history that I know rather well because I
was there.


[1] Note that Ubuntu's installer starts from a graphical live-CD desktop.
This is copied straight from Knoppix.  One distinctive thing Ubuntu
_does_ do to create the perception of 'exceedingly easy to install' is
to apply canned answers to installation choices that on many other
distros would be prompts with default choices and ability to elect
something non-default if the user wishes.  The result is to make the
Ubuntu installer highly inflexible but soothing to the nervous who find
informaiton threatening.  For such users, though, other distributions
apply this allow-the-user-no-choices treatment more stringently.  In
particular, Knoppix itself, the live CD, features an optional
bulk-installer as an icon on the graphical desktop.  If you click that
icon, you are asked one question, whether you're sure you want to
bulk-copy Knoppix to overwrite the local hard drive.  If you say yes,
you are asked nothing else until the end when, IIRC, you're asked to
supply a name, password, and a couple of other things like a hostname.
Now, _that_ is 'exceedingly easy to install' taken to extremes.


tl;dr:  'Easy to install' hasn't been a valid differentiator for over 16
years.  Let's get real.


----- End forwarded message -----