[rescue] SGI Indigo2 & IRIX 6.5

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Mon, 1 Dec 2008, Phil Stracchino wrote:

> OK, fine, you don't like Linux.  Your position is noted.  It's not the
> optimal OS for real SGI hardware.  That, too, is noted.  You only weaken
> your position by stretching your arguments against Linux to the point of
> ridicule in order to scrape up things to bash it with.

If you thought I was serious, you've missed my point.  So far, the
argument has gone like this:

    "Linux rocks because you have so many choices of desktop environment"
    "Okay, but they all suck"
    "Ah, well don't blame Linux for that!"

You can't have it both ways.  My original contention was that the desktop
environment that -ships with- IRIX is really quite nice, fairly light on
system resources, and very well integrated into the rest of the operating
system distribution.  Linux, however, in its many varied distributions,
generally -ships with- desktop environments that are either severely
minimalistic (Xorg + twm) or bloated to silliness (GNOME, KDE), and that
none of the above is nearly as much a component of a cohesive whole as
Indigo Magic is in IRIX.

When you steer the argument to "Oh, well, none of those components is part
of Linux, so you can't blame Linux", that's a non-position.  IRIX, as a
product, was targeted at end-users and developers.  Linux distributions,
as products, when targeted at end-users and developers ships with one of
the above-mentioned suboptimal user environments.  I'm comparing them at
that level.  If you're going to absolve Linux distributions from those
problems merely because they aren't part of the linux-X.Y.ZZ.tar.bz2, you
need to accept all the other things that "Linux", as a kernel, doesn't
ship with, which includes all the extremely basic components I mentioned
earlier.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke < "There is great satisfaction in building good tools
Elgin, TX          > for other people to use."
USA               <                                     --Freeman Dyson