[ILUG] Is Linux dying?

[David Giles]

On Saturday 03 July 2004 21:39, Steven Satelle wrote:
> Or not dying, being smothered? Having seen the announcement by aib  that
> they were going  to move to linux, with sun java desktop as their
> platform of choice I decided to grab a download of it to see what it is
> like, being in a current mode of trying all the distro's (in the last 2
> weeks I've gone from deb to mandrake to fc2) I thought I'd try out SJD
> before switching back to debian. I went to sun.com and lo and behold I
> cant download it I can only buy it. But I dont want to buy, I only want
> to try. 

<snip>

It's snakes and ladders really.  On the plus side you can now download a 
single iso 9.1 Personal Edition full install from Suse, where previously you 
could only get the live version (or do an ftp install).  It's missing lots of 
'essentials' but this is easily rectified by adding in one of the ftp sites 
as a source of installation.  I _think_ YAST has now been made open source (I 
haven't checked my facts on this one!).  It would seem the Novell take-over 
has been having a positive effect.

- Libranet 2.8.1 is now available for download.
- Debian alive and well.  Installer released soon will bring it to an even 
wider audience.
- etc. etc. <paste your own good news here>

It's the old 50% H20 in the beverage container.  I'm purposefully avoiding the 
free beer/free free issues, as maybe I'm not the most informed person around 
(but learning, maybe the big corps are too).  Linux is not dying, it's just 
changing.  Yes, the commercial imperative is a part of the scene now, but to 
me it seems the community is flourishing too.

I'm not disagreeing as such, it's important to beware of negative trends 
(ridiculous software patents etc.), but see the postives as well.

All the best,

David