[ale] What divides Linux Distros?

[JEFFREY LIGHTNER]

My favorite answer to this kind of question was given to me by a consultant years ago.   

Initially I'd learned cpio on AT&T UNIX and continued to use it for years through other UNIX variants.   Later I began seeing people using tar instead but had not really found anything that made tar seem like a better answer.

The product the vendor was installing used tar bundles and suggested doing tar backups.   I asked the consultant why one would prefer tar over cpio or vice-versa.   His one word reply:

"Religion"

Almost all arguments I've seen since then have essentially boiled down to that though people will go to great lengths to "explain" why their "preferences" are somehow more valid than the "preferences" of others.

By the way I did quit using cpio for most purposes years ago in favor of GNU tar which  has far more flags than the early UNIX tar commands had.

P.S.  I'm a member of the church of systemd.  :p



> On 02/06/2021 10:07 AM DJ-evia Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
> 
>  
> On 2/6/21 2:10 AM, Steve Litt via Ale wrote:
> > On Fri, 05 Feb 2021 20:55:50 -0500
> > Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> >> I LIKE systemd. Best tool yet for getting a ton of crap running on a
> >> huge array of bare metal and virtual. About as complex as tar.
> >>
> >> Some people just can't wrap their head around and bitch nonstop. 
> > 
> > Try runit. Or s6.
> > 
> 
> I'm not a fan of systemd, but why would I change distros just for a 
> different init? I'm still waiting for PulseAudio to work and struggle
> to make systemd do what I want beyond pre-installed stuff. I miss the 
> days of init.d/ scripts - at least then I could tell when something 
> would be run. 
> 
> And don't get me started about how systemd has screwed the fstab and 
> made running fsck 100x harder by removing the touch /forcefsck 
> capability.
> 
> Still, some things aren't worth it to me. There may be hundreds of 
> distros, but in the business world, there are maybe 5. Trying to 
> suggest running anything except one of those 5 is counter productive.
> What do those 5 distros all have in common?  They use systemd and they 
> are the most popular distros.  I'd have just as much luck pushing a 
> BSD desktop - i.e. none.
> 
> Sure. I can understand that some people can and will avoid systemd.
> That's great.  Let me know when one of those 5 most-popular distros 
> drops it.
> 
> Redhat/IBM giving away RHEL for small needs is both good and bad for 
> Linux. It is sorta like how Microsoft nearly gives away MS-SBS.  As 
> soon as a small company's needs outgrow about 50 users, they are 
> already trapped. Trapped by current skills. Trapped by comfort.  And 
> it will make every school training IT people use RHEL, so all those 
> people will run it at their homes. Brilliant, just like a drug dealer 
> with "the first taste is free" promotions.
> 
> IMHO.
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