[Coco] Ann: FUSE Support for Toolshed

[Joel Ewy]

John W. Linville wrote:
> Forgive me for presuming that someone running RH8 might not exactly
> be "keeping current" with current events in Linux.  :-)  If you are
> already using Ubuntu, then you should know what you are getting.
>   
My problem is that I have way, way, way too many computers.  But that
does give me a chance to play with a lot of different operating
systems.  I'm just reluctant to risk wrecking computers I actually use
by installing more bloated operating systems if I don't need to.  But I
would like to get Firefox, Thunderbird, and OOo 2 running on the K6-2. 
And for that I need a more recent OS.  It's tempting to just do a DSL
frugal install.  But on that particular computer I think I want just a
little more OS than that, cool and useful as it is.  Like, I want a C
compiler, at least.
> A few thoughts:
>
> FC3 came-out about 2.5 years ago, about the same time as the first
> Ubuntu release.  So, you aren't really making a fair comparison.
> FC6 is a more fair comparison to Ubuntu 6.10.
>   
True enough.  This wasn't an objective comparison.  I'm just
extrapolating a trajectory for Fedora from past experiences.  I used to
really love RedHat, but was pretty disappointed by the early Fedora
releases.  I'm not really comparing FC3 to current Ubuntu so much as to
previous RedHat.

My baseline is that if an OS is no more irritating than something from
Redmond or Cupertino, and I don't have to pay $120 for the privilege of
being hacked off, it's a win.  But if I can't even install it, it does
me no good.
> Upgrading RH8 directly to FC6 probably won't work.  Then again,
> upgrading RH8 to Ubuntu probably won't work either. :-)
>
>   
Quite true.  Which is one big reason it's still running RH8 on that
machine!  :)
> FC6 includes XFCE as an installation option, although you will have
> to customize your installation choices if you want it.  Personally,
> I think XFCE is too big for how crappy it is. :-)
>
>   
I'm not quite sure what your criteria for 'crappy' are.  Mine largely
feature size and performance.  I will say that I've noticed that some
things are a slightly less polished in Xubuntu compared to GNOME-based
Ubuntu.  But the differences are really pretty minor, and I expect the
gap to narrow in future releases.  Personally, I care much more about
whether it will run well on the hardware I have on hand than about how
many dockable applets it has, or whatever.  And I notice a significant
difference in performance between Xubuntu and Ubuntu on systems ranging
from Pentium 200 - Pentium III 700.  I start using the Gnome-based
Ubuntu on systems like an Athlon 900 and above.  I haven't really
checked into how big XFCE is, but I do know that I can install a basic,
usable Xubuntu system on a 6G drive with Firefox, Thunderbird, and OOo
2, using 1G for swap, and leaving plenty of room for people to store
email and word processor documents.

Compared to DSL, (which uses fluxbox, I think) XFCE may be way too big
for how crappy it is.  But I hardly see how that makes GNOME or KDE any
better!  :)
> Intalling any modern distro on a decrepit PC like you describe is
> likely to cause heartache.  If you insist on using hand-me-down PCs,
> then please do use Ubuntu.  :-)  
>   
Oh, come now!  This PC isn't decrepit.  I'll show you decrepit PCs! 
Neither is it a hand-me-down.  I actually paid money for most parts of
it -- some of it even in the 21st century.  I do have plenty of
hand-me-down machines though.  Some out of dumpsters, as well.  And
that's one of the things that is so utterly cool about Linux, whether
it's Ubuntu, DSL, or Fedora.  I can install it on an old machine without
spending money, or getting special dispensation, and make it useful again.

> Neither distro is likely to support all your old ISA cards either...

Actually, I don't have any ISA cards in the K6/2-450.  All PCI and AGP. 
But Ubuntu and DSL both do still support plenty of ISA cards.  And I
suspect Fedora could be made to as well.
> FWIW, Red Hat employs more GNOME developers than Canonical does.
> Make your own judgements as to what that implies for support and
> cool features.
>
>   
Maybe they can pay them to quit adding "cool" features for a while and
work on performance.  :)
> FWIW, only the first 2 CDs are required for a basic install of FC6.
> If you want to do an over-the-network install, you only need to
> download and burn a small boot image.  (This option actually works
> pretty well at my house.)  And yum is quite useful for installing
> any additional packages without dealing with RPM dependencies yourself.
>
>   
That's cool.  I think I still have a Celeron 900 I got out of a
dumpster.  Maybe I'll try FC6 on that.  I don't think I've really used
yum much yet.  It's not so much that I dislike dealing with the
dependencies, though it can sometimes be frustrating.  It's more that I
can't stand the thought of all my hard disk space being consumed by
ridiculous junk that's utterly unrelated to the functionality that I'm
trying to install.
> So, I maintain that most of the positive press about Ubuntu is
> from people who don't know the current state of the other distros.
> The rest is from people that honestly thinking supporting proprietary
> drivers is a positive move. :-(
>
>   
Well, I don't pay much attention to press one way or another.  I've had
very good experiences with *Ubuntu recently, and all my good experiences
with RedHat are in the past.  I'm not going to badmouth RedHat, and I
really do hope I can use some version of Fedora in the future.

As for proprietary drivers, I'm not aware of any that are officially
supported.  In order to get any of the proprietary stuff you have to
enable extra package repositories in dselect, apt, or synaptic.  I could
be wrong, but I think a default Ubuntu install is pretty Open Source pure.
> Anyway, just don't buy the Ubuntu hype -- make an informed choice.
> And as others have said, all of them are better platforms than Vista.
>
>   
Agreed.
> John
>
> P.S.  I would apologize for an OT post, but OT seems to be more the
> rule than the exception here lately...
>   
I'm probably already in everybody's kill-file now for OT and excessive
verbiage.  I'll stop now.  I promise.

JCE