Purloined wholesale from SlashDot, and reposted. The hypocrisy of a vocal minority of FOSS-purists has been overwhelming. As Linus accurately points out, we’re all in it for selfish reasons. No one likes working on the boring bits, and we all contribute our best code to the things we care about at the moment.

“In the aftermath of Microsoft’s recent decision to contribute 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community, Christopher Smart of Linux Magazine talked to Linus Torvalds and asked if the code was something he would be happy to include, even though it’s from Microsoft. ‘Oh, I’m a big believer in “technology over politics.” I don’t care who it comes from, as long as there are solid reasons for the code, and as long as we don’t have to worry about licensing etc. issues,’ says Torvalds. ‘I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease. I believe in open development, and that very much involves not just making the source open, but also not shutting other people and companies out.’ Smart asked Torvalds if Microsoft was contributing the code to benefit the Linux community or Microsoft. ‘I agree that it’s driven by selfish reasons, but that’s how all open source code gets written! We all “scratch our own itches.” It’s why I started Linux, it’s why I started git, and it’s why I am still involved. It’s the reason for everybody to end up in open source, to some degree,’ says Torvalds. ‘So complaining about the fact that Microsoft picked a selfish area to work on is just silly. Of course they picked an area that helps them. That’s the point of open source — the ability to make the code better for your particular needs, whoever the “your” in question happens to be.’”

It has always amazed me that when it comes to a “server OS”, people fight Linux distribution wars. RedHat-based vs. Suse-based vs. Debian-based … Everyone thinks theirs is “better” and know what? Everyone is wrong. Everyone is also right. This is like arguing that the cheese burger in your Burger King Kids Meal is better than the cheese burger in someone elses McDonalds Kids Meal. It’s a goddamned cheese burger! Sure, one person may prefer charbroiled vs. however-the-fuck-McD’s-cooks-theirs, and sure maybe when comparing fat or cholesterol one is “better” than the other, but that’s that.

Linux isn’t “fragmented” as a lot of FUD-spewers would have you believe. The different distros are, at the kernel-and-console-level, only trivially different. When someone says something like “while Ubuntu has been many people’s desktop Linux choice for a few years now, with its Debian heritage, you can see what kind of server it could be. Slap that on the new Sun 1Us with the new Niagra T1’s CPU, the one that’ll have four, six or eight cores each, and go to town.” … I want to tear my hair out of my scalp, because if you slap ANY modern Linux distro on the same hardware you’ll get the same.. exact.. thing. (Never mind the assumptive start of that quote… I won’t get into THAT).

Linux, as a kernel, and GNU/Linux as an operating system, are “the same” (keep in mind the burger analogy) across the distros. The differentiators are installation, packaging, and GUI.

Installation

I believe I’ve installed every Linux distribution out there at least once. Suse, I feel, actually has “the best” installation system. Does that mean it’s “better” than the rest? No. “The best” is the difference between a cheese burger with 1 slice of cheese vs a cheese burger with 1 slice of cheese and some catsup. We’re not talking about lights-out here.

Packaging

Packaging actually has 2 pieces: how applications are packaged (called “packaging format”) and how those packages are organized/interrelate (called “package organization”).

First, I hate packaging formats. All of them. I still rue the day that binary distributions got popular. I recognize its necessity in order to make Linux accessible, and fully support it… I just hate how dependant we’ve become on them. Whenever the thought of “compiling from source” starting making Linux admins quiver, we lost a lot… Anyhow, almost every distribution used the RPM Package Management format. There are a few others out there (notably the DEB format used by Debian-based distros). RPM vs. DEB is a war among itself. They’re the same thing, although neither side can admit that. It’s cheese burger with fries vs cheese burger with onion rings.

Package organization, however, is a big thing… It’s also a big problem. Organization is left up to whomever makes the package. One packager might decide that a given application should be broken into smaller parts packaged separately, another might those parts in one package… One packager might put various files in one location, while another packager might decide to put them in another location. To someone who can think autonomously, this is but a minor obstacle. To someone who can’t think for themself, this is drive-through vs going into the burger place and ordering at the counter.

GUI

GUI is the only, and I mean ONLY thing that really differentiates distros at a non-trivial level- And for server OS’s, this is moot. If you run a GUI on your server’s you obviously don’t work in a big enough shop to be able to take advantage of the 1337 features of this distro vs. that distro, so your arguments are crap. If you want to argue about Linux on the desktop, that’s fine.. But that your little brain thinks that KDE or Gnome is so much better than the other means nothing on the servers. That distro X has “better GUI tools” than distro Y means nothing on the servers. Yes, some people will argue with me that running a GUI on a server is very important and should be part of the equation… Again, I don’t think you know what managing several dozen (or several hundred (or several thousand)) GUI-laden servers would be like. Anything less, and you’re essentially arguing your desktop IS a server, and you’re right. That’s not what we’re discussing though.