[linuxiran] Re: [Kde-i18n-fa] farsi in RedHat 9

[Aryan Ameri]

On Sunday 04 May 2003 08:47, Hossein S. Zadeh wrote:
> On Sat, 3 May 2003, Aryan Ameri wrote:
> > I don't care weather they are big or not. Infact they are only
> > number one in US, in Europe SuSE is No 1, in Latin America
> > Connectiva is No 1,
>
> Hi there,
> This is not intended to start a flame war; I actually agree with some
> of the things you've said. OK, that said, here we go:
>
>
> Well, I do care if some distro is big in the US or not (even though I
> do not live in the US). This is because most of my clients want
> applications such as Oracle, SAP, DB2, etc. The geek-factor alone
> doesn't cut it unfortunately. I have been trying to convert most of
> my clients to PostgreSQL, but sometimes we just don't have a GPL
> replacement. For example, I have a client with more than 15,000
> customers. They use a distributed database system. The database gets
> more than 200 heavy hits per second (on each server). Just having the
> systems working under such a heavy load, sync-ing the data between
> different servers in different geographical locations, making
> "point-at-time" backup and recovery, etc. is not something that any
> software besides Oracle and/or DB2 can do (at this point in time).

Agree. PostgreSQL guys have promised to fill this gap in a couple of 
years. But for the time being, I agree with you.

Just one thing, Both Oracle 9i and IBM DB2 also run on Debian.


> I personally am following PostgreSQL development closely, and will
> deploy it as soon as it has these features, but I know that it is
> still a few years off :-(
>

> > Yes, there are many things wrong with RedHat, I will list a few of
> > them here:
> >
> > 1) RedHat patents it's software. They have used this method before
> > (Regarding Ingo Molnar's work on kernel). Patents are heavily
> > disliked in the GNU/Linux world.
>
> There has been lots of discussions on this very issue lately. Some
> GPL developers started to talk about patenting their software, as
> defending patents is legally much easier than defending GPL in a
> court of law (especially under current climate in the US legal
> system).
>
> That said, I agree with you.

Software patents are wrong. RedHat did make some arguments at the time 
to defend it's actions, but i don't buy their argument.

People always ask wether GPL is enforceable in a court or not. I 
actually don't think this is a question at all. It is not a question of 
wether GPL is enforceable or not. GPL is just a copyright method (from 
legal point of view). And copyright has showed in the years that it is 
enforceable and it does have teeth. So why make the fuss?
 
> > 2) Their distro by default runs too many services in the boot
> > sequence. Like M$ they assume the the user is dumb, and therefore
> > they start all the services by default, so that they make it *user
> > friendly*. Sorry but I am not dumb. Services make the boot sequence
> > take longer, and they are also a security risk. Why does RedHat for
> > example always start CUPS even though I have no printer? Not
> > mentioning that CUPS is a great security treat.
>
> I agreed with you up to a couple of versions before. I beleive they
> now only start the services you chose during installation, and they
> also instal and activate a decent set of IPTables rules (if you
> choose "high" security during installation).

I admit that I never chosed high security. But by default they even 
don't use iptables and still prefer ipchains to it. 


> > 4) They are slow with security upgrades. When applications announce
> > security patches, it usually takes RedHat two months to incorporate
> > these patches back into their distro. For Debian, it takes about 48
> > hours. Sorry, but many can't run a system with known
> > vulnerabilities.
>
> I cannot comment on that. I am under the impression that most Linux
> distros (except TurboLinux) have been very good with security
> updates. Do you have any example of otherwise?

I can't find the reference right now, but there was one critical ssh 
patch which took them 2 months to packport into their distro. People on 
the Debian-User mailing list at least seem to remember that well.


> I feel a sense of passion about apt, and a sense of haterade of rpm;
> so I am not going to comment on this. I just would like to mention
> that both rpm and apt have been new tools (at their time) to achieve
> the same goal. apt is more advanced than rpm, but they still have a
> long way to go to get to the same level of maturity of estblished
> Unix tools.

You can say that again.


> Probably not the right place to say this, but as far as I am
> concerned KDE is already bloated (well, just compare it to other GUIs
> such as AfterStep). That said, this is a kind of "bloat" I am happy
> to live with.

KDE 3.x is faster and more efficent than 2.x This shows that KDE 
developers do care about making efficent software. But to some point I 
still agree.


> > GNU/Linux is not Unix, every single application which runs on
> > RedHat also runs on all other GNU/Linuxes (and vice versa). And
> > talking about
>
> I don't agree with this point (unfortunately). Applications rely on
> system libraries, and as each distro comes with its own set of
> libraries, applications are not (unfortunately) movable from one
> distro to another. Have you tried to run a, say, Suse application of
> a, say, Mandrake system?
>
> Of couse it you have the source, it is only a matter of recompiling
> the application. But this is not always feasible. Have you ever
> wondered why, on KDE ftp site, there are releases for Debian, and
> Suse, and RedHat, etc.?

These are binaries. You can still get the KDE source and compile it on 
any distro right? 

Ofcourse to a point I agree with you, but the fact that you can not use 
SuSE Yast tools under Mandrake isn't because of lack of libraries. 
Rather it is because Yast is non-free software. 

Generaly speaking, nearly all of the common libraries in GNU/Linux is 
free software. As nearly all applications are also free software, that 
means that you (at least theoricaly) are able to run any application on 
any distro. Correct me if I am wrong.

> Alternatively you can get software which is statically linked. But
> this defeats the purposes of having libraries (not to mention the
> software will be much bigger to run and slower to load).
>
> > the number of available binaries, nothing perhaps beats 8000
> > binaries which come with Debian Woody.
>
> I think Suse is the clear winner here, but this is not a pissing
> contest, is it?  ;-)

I never used SuSE heavily. But I can see that 8.2 is 5 CDs I guess, 
while Debian Woody is 8 CDs. So?

Ofcourse, you may also take a look at apt-get.org and see the wealth of 
available deb packages made by community. No distro is able to beat the 
debian community when it comes to packages. There are even folks in 
debian, like ralph nolden, who package KDE sonner than KDE itself ! for 
example Debian packages of KDE 3.1.1 where available 1 day before KDE 
released 3.1.1 ;-)

Cheers
-- 
/* The best part about banging your 
head against a wall is when you stop.
Same with using windows */

Aryan Ameri