[OpenIndiana-discuss] Help with website

Richard L. Hamilton rlhamil at smart.net
Tue Oct 11 00:26:15 UTC 2011


On Oct 10, 2011, at 6:53 PM, Dan Swartzendruber wrote:

> 
> And this continues to miss the point.  This is what is so frustrating to me
> (going back years...)  Techies like you guys make a decision based on the
> technical merits, but 95% of the manager/sysadmin types are going to look at
> the learning curve (and don't bother telling me it doesn't exist or is
> trivial - maybe in your book, not in theirs), and ask "why on earth do we
> want to do X when our admins will have to learn all kinds of new crap???"
> FWIW, if zfsguru was more stable and didn't have a single dev, I would have
> switched to it in a heartbeat.  I know my way around most linuxes (and even
> freebsd) in my sleep, but honestly, it's beyond frustrating to find out that
> there is no obvious way to do the /etc/rc.local thing I kvetched about
> earlier (or an alternative, to put an entry in the crontab with '@reboot',
> oh wait, the opensolaris cron doesn't support that feature...)  And yes, I
> know none of these things are killers in themselves, it's the death of a
> thousand cuts.  Folks, I *want* opensolaris in some flavor to prosper, but
> when I hear evangelists complaining about "why should we make this MORE like
> linux, etc..."  The answer "SO PEOPLE WILL USE IT?!"  Sorry, I'm tired and
> out of sorts, and I saw freebsd lose this battle to linux years ago with the
> same short-sighted attitude and now it's happening again with OS (btw, does
> anyone have a comment about nexenta providing debian userland tools like
> apt?)


I'm interested in arrangements that allow traditional Solaris and GNU tools to coexist.  I'm not so interested in a pure Linux environment.  I doubt that coexistence is furthered by the choice of "apt" packaging.

One could also imagine a Nexenta branded zone under a more conventional Solaris environment.  But that doesn't address the differences between administrative tools.

I'm not opposed to compromise.  But I have zero use for an environment that is exclusively to the advantage of those familiar with Linux.  I've been using Solaris since 2.3 (late 1993 - 2.x x<3 weren't worth using, except for porting or familiarization).  Linux was barely around then, and not significant.  The only reason that it caught on is that it was free (to use or modify, but real support always costs), and a bit more accessible than the BSDs were at the time.

I have no more wish to conform to what's familiar to you than you do to conform to what's familiar to me.

Think of ways to provide co-existence or alternatives built on the same core, and I'm fine with that; I've tossed out a few ideas along those lines.  Keep making the case for having it entirely your way, and I'll say that I for one have no use for your case or anything, even millions of new users (yuck, unwashed masses), that comes with your case.

I've dialed it back a lot in this message.  I don't mind people wanting things their own way, as long as their way doesn't exclude mine.  They do that, and I don't handle it well at all, not with both of us on the same planet.




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