[ale] [EXTERNAL] Re: What divides Linux Distros?

[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 7 Feb 2021 19:51:50 -0500
Solomon Peachy via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 08, 2021 at 12:07:08AM +0000, Beddingfield, Allen via Ale
> wrote:
> > In all fairness, SUSE is using it because of Red Hat.  Red Hat
> > jumped off that cliff first - probably because the arrogant and
> > deranged fool...errr...I mean developer who created it works for
> > them.  
> 
> Oh, For fucks' sake.

> 
> Can we _PLEASE_ stop the personal attacks on authors of Free Software?

Hell no! Allen called Poettering an "arrogant and deranged fool", and
that's a very supportable position. As far as arrogant, please see
minutes 24:00 to 25:00 of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdUmlGxVo0

I think he looked like a fool in that interlude. As the speaker (who
was interrupted constantly) said to Poettering, "Do you know what
shellscripts are?" Poettering consistently solves problems in the
most complex and heavy handed manner possible, as evidenced by his
software.

As far as deranged, saying his software is deranged is a very
supportable position. He writes software like a guy who solves 1000
piece picture puzzles as a hobby. Besides systemd, his Pulseaudio, the
land of a thousand hidden mutes, has, in the past, screwed up my sound
so badly that I finally 86'ed it from my system, so now I don't use
Zoom or Skype.

> 
> Sure, maybe Lennart Pottering is a ranking member of the Crab People
> who somehow blackmailed everyone into his evil schemes.  Maybe his
> cabal is why Trump and Loeffler lost in Georgia, because those voting
> machines were running Linux ...with systemd!  And maybe he traveled
> to Wuhan to deliberately infect the first few folks with COVID-19?

I see now you're engaging in Poettering's favorite rhetorical method,
the fallacy. In the preceding paragraph, you've put forth an ad-hominem
fallacy, attacking Allen with unproven accusations. Allen never said any
of that stuff. Even more so, your preceding paragraph is a Straw Man
fallacy, misrepresenting Allen's position and attacking that fictional
position.

Frankly, you're insulting all our intelligences, even those who love
systemd.

[snip remainder of voluminous ad hominem/strawman fallacy]

> Or maybe, just maybe, SUSE is using it because it is objectively 
> _better_.  According to whom, you might ask?  The ones doing the work
> of putting together, maintaining, and supporting SuSE.  The same goes
> for Red Hat, after literally years of uphill effort working out the
> kinks via Fedora.  

Or maybe, just maybe, it's the marketers who consider it objectively
_better_, because if you're selling consulting, education and certs,
you make more money with a complicated OS than a simple one, as
admitted by a former Red Hat CEO:

http://asay.blogspot.com/2006/10/interview-with-red-hat-cto-brian.html

Search for the word "complexity". And don't *even* try to make an
argument that this interview pre-dated systemd --- the point is that
Red Hat was looking for complexity to turn into profit. They found that
complexity with systemd.

> And the same for Debian.  And even "we'll do our
> own zero-sum thing just so we can completely control it" Ubuntu.

Debian made a mistake after a long and bitter argument, and since
Ubuntu was based on Debian, they went along.
 
SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2020 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/thrive