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> But that fragmentation did not happen. Lots of distributions exist, but they have all followed roughly the same course and, for the most part, do not differ b

by debacle 15y ago

> But that fragmentation did not happen. Lots of distributions exist, but they have all followed roughly the same course and, for the most part, do not differ by all that much. From an end user's standpoint, this is completely untrue. Just look at the various package management software and philosophies across all of the distros. It's a mire.

excuse-me 15y ago
But you can get the same software on all of them. Gimp might come from different per-distribution repositories, there may be a different command line app to grab it, but it's there. In the old days you had Autocad for Sun but not for HP. The 3D modelling package ran on SGI but not on Sun. And our microwave antennea simulation package was only on HP. We literally had 3 different brands of Unix workstations in a lab, with different unixes dedicated to running a single app. At least with X you could run any of them on your own desktop seamlessly.
- debacle 15y ago
  It's there, but it's a different version, and getting the version you want (if it's the latest version) still requires you to whip out gcc most likely, unless someone on the Internet has already done the work for you.
  - jamesgeck0 15y ago
    Unless you use relatively unpopular software, or you want updates the same day a new version comes out, chances are that someone has probably already done the work for you.
    - debacle 15y ago
      Maybe for debian, but when I tried updating PHP for PHP5.3 it was impossible to find a CentOS package, even a year after PHP5.3 was out. We had to roll our own, which was fine, but the average end user (or the programmer wearing the sysadmin hat) doesn't have the capability to do that.
      - tedsuo 15y ago
        If your distro can't (or won't) keep up with a mainstream package like php, and you need it to, maybe it's time to switch? Which is easy, because all of your software will run on whatever flavor you switch to. The ability to easily jump ship like that is what makes it "not fragmented."
      - jamesgeck0 15y ago
        Oh, yeah. I forgot about CentOS. Distributions targeted at enterprise are harder; I use a third party repo for Asterisk and FreePBX, but I think I did have to compile a few dependencies.

by debacle 15y ago

excuse-me 15y ago

But you can get the same software on all of them. Gimp might come from different per-distribution repositories, there may be a different command line app to grab it, but it's there. In the old days you had Autocad for Sun but not for HP. The 3D modelling package ran on SGI but not on Sun. And our microwave antennea simulation package was only on HP. We literally had 3 different brands of Unix workstations in a lab, with different unixes dedicated to running a single app. At least with X you could run any of them on your own desktop seamlessly.

debacle 15y ago
It's there, but it's a different version, and getting the version you want (if it's the latest version) still requires you to whip out gcc most likely, unless someone on the Internet has already done the work for you.
- jamesgeck0 15y ago
  Unless you use relatively unpopular software, or you want updates the same day a new version comes out, chances are that someone has probably already done the work for you.
  - debacle 15y ago
    Maybe for debian, but when I tried updating PHP for PHP5.3 it was impossible to find a CentOS package, even a year after PHP5.3 was out. We had to roll our own, which was fine, but the average end user (or the programmer wearing the sysadmin hat) doesn't have the capability to do that.
    - tedsuo 15y ago
      If your distro can't (or won't) keep up with a mainstream package like php, and you need it to, maybe it's time to switch? Which is easy, because all of your software will run on whatever flavor you switch to. The ability to easily jump ship like that is what makes it "not fragmented."
    - jamesgeck0 15y ago
      Oh, yeah. I forgot about CentOS. Distributions targeted at enterprise are harder; I use a third party repo for Asterisk and FreePBX, but I think I did have to compile a few dependencies.