Mike Saunders Andgraham Morrison

Stuart Nick Mike Bob Crispin Graham Alex Shevek Mike Saunders and Graham Morrison ventureoutside LXFTowers to meet a few readers and discuss life, Linux and the lack of cheap parking in Bath. couple of months agoweannounced that we “When Iinstalled it, it came with an AU file saying ‘My name is wanted to arrangeaninformal gathering wherea Linus To rvalds and IpronounceLinux Linux’”.Sheveksaysthis with few of us could get to meet a few of you. We had what we all presume is a subtle Finnish accent. A no agenda, but we wanted to discusshow Linux “Linux is afairly close Anglicisation of Leinux though”,responds should grow,what its strengths and weaknesses are, and how Alex, who worksincomputer security. This seems to bring speech we can all do more to help promote its use. After an XFactor- synthesisers to the mind of Bob,our youngest participant and a style competition to whittle down the numbers, we arranged programming student: “I’ve been experimenting with Festival”, he to meet six of our readersinalocal hostelryonacold and says. Alex picks up the lead: “I did try Festival with the sentence‘I rainy evening in October. am reading in Reading’” he says, “Justtosee.But it wasfine with We met in a cosy room in a public house, a room with walls no hints.” coveredinthe typical paraphernalia of the English drinking “There’ssomething similar on Yo uTube nowinthe comments establishment. That meant mirrorswith whitewriting, blackboards section”,our Mikeadds,“it canspeak out what you’veposted. And without any, posters 90% of the comments on Yo uTube are rubbish, like ‘LOL U SUXOR’. and nostalgic Now you can actually type it and go “Mmm. Perhaps”. “Atablewassetasidefor flotsam. Asingle oval Crispin, a Java programmer,then says something sensible. table was set aside “The thing that irksmeabout Yo uTube is that avideo stream will us,andoverourfirstdrink for us,and over our alwaysbeslowerfor information than reading”,hesays. “You can wearrangedourselves.” first drink we sit through a10min video blog, and Icould have read that in about arranged ourselves. a minute.” It felt likeaclandestine gathering at the Prancing Pony,beforethe Bob chips in. “It’s a similar story with the BBC iPlayer in Linux. eight of us head east to tackle the shadow growing on the horizon. Yo useek ahead 10 seconds,and youend up waiting acouple of Shevek, the group’s agent provocateur,kicked offthe minutes for it to catch up.Seems to work well on Windows though, proceedings by explaining how Linux should be pronounced, funnily enough.” thankstoanaudio file that wasincluded on one of his first Now we’ve all got comfy and sated ourselves on fine food, let’s distributions from the early 1990s. see if we can put the world to rights… 48 Linux Format Christmas 2008 LXF113.roundtab 48 28/10/08 2:13:1 pm Readers’ round table Distributions lexkicksthingsoff properly.“In away,Linux has arrived and some of the excitement has kind of gone. AIt’shere, it’sgoing to stay.And it justworks. There’s less of the ‘OhI’m trying to getSETI installed onto my machine’ any more,”he says. Shevekseems interested: “Linux versus Windows has always been awar whereonly one side is ever fighting,”hesays. “And the other side wassimply trying to getonwith the job.The people who were actually creating were never the ones creating the conflict. The oneswho were running around creating all the excitement were largely ignored by the people writing the software.” “I find I just use Ubuntu”,adds Crispin. “Because I just install it and it works. I’vebeen through all the Slackwaresand the Red Hatsand SUSEand whatever,and each time… Imean, it used to be fun editing my own xorg.conf.But after a while you tend to get, ‘I’ll install it and then I’ll get around to configuring it’.” Alexresponds: “No,Iexpect my distrotoset up all the hardware for me unless there’s a legal reason why they can’t.” But it lookslikeUbuntu might be toomuch of agood thing for Crispin. “I’ve got a ThinkPad, and I wanted to install my monitor on it, and the monitor wasadifferent resolution to the display,”he says. “And it wasaweirdATI driver thing, and Iactually had to edit the xorg.conf,and I’d forgotten how to do it!” That browndistro Shevek Which bringsBob back intothe conversation: “The only problem Occupation: My current job title is “Chief Scientist” which I kind of like. I’vehad with Ubuntu is the sound driver,whereit’sgot Realtec HD FavouriteDistribution: If I have to run it,Gentoo,for maximum flexibility, probably on the or Intel HD audio,becausetheyhaven’tquitefinalised the binary base for speed. specification forityet. And of course,ALSAisplaying catchup on Quote: Linux versus Windows has always been a war where only one side is ever fighting. that one.So it’s a case of hacking it.” “I think really there’salot less differentiation in terms of the mainstreamdistributions these days,” saysAlex. “Theyall provide command that says‘install boost’and so on. On Ubuntu, youcould support forbroadly the same hardware–ornot. Theyall have say ‘apt-get install boost’, on Gentoo you can say ‘emerge boost’. largely the same level of components, such as a C library, Firefox, So the traditional distributions,SUSEand RedHat very much have that sort of thing.” dropped the ball.” This seems to bring Shevektothe boil. “I contest that Alexisobviously something of aRed Hat fan: “I think we do statement most strongly,” he says. “Ubuntu has stormed the entire have boost,I’m pretty sure, in Red Hat and CentOS”,he says. part of the market that SUSE has been trying to target for years. “What version?” counters Shevek. And theydid it becausetheyhavethis ideathat it doeshaveto “But Red Hat Linux is quite old”,says Mike. work. Whereasit’sactually very difficult to makeaRed Hat system But Shevekwas expecting that. “It’saversion that nothing do anything meaningful. workswith,”hesays. “You’revery luckyifyou canfind anything “You cannot type from any Red Hat system, ‘some-install- that will install with boost 1.34.Almost everything uses command java ant’ and all the local utilities. Yo ucannot type any Asynchronous IO these days,which is only in 1.35.” Christmas 2008 Linux Format 49 LXF113.roundtab 49 28/10/08 2:13:9 pm Readers’ round table Crispin leapstoRed Hat’sdefence: “It’sgoing to be old by its excellent policyofpatching bugs. When youstart adding all this very nature. It needs to be stable.” stuff together,it makes a very stable distribution that just works. But Shevekcan’tbedissuaded, and lays his distribution cards It’s all very well having a (Red Hat) support policy, but they can’t on the table.“Anything that lagsbehind Debian stable is frankly patchanything in. If Icall these guysand ask them to install the stone-age, becauseDebian stable is two yearsbehind. Anything latest version of Firefox they’re going to tell me to get stuffed.” behind Debian stable shouldn’tbeattempting to hold anypart of the market place. I’veonly had to deal with RedHat in parts, and Old vs stable the reason RedHat has the marketplaceithas is becauseit Crispin and Alex rally: “That depends on whether it’s enhancing satisfiesthe corporatetick listbyproviding commercial support. It what’sthereorit’sfixing what’sbroken,”saysCrispin, Followedby has nothing to do with what they provide.And what they provide Alexsaying “A lot of people don’tneed that extreme levelof as a Linux distribution is useless.” support. They just want answers when their Postfix server is no Crispin doesn’tagree.“Idon’tthink it is useless. Ithink it fills a longer taking connections. gap. It fills the corporatedata centrething wheretheyneed the “I’dprobably go with CentOS,”Alexcontinues. “If Iwereusing it support. They need something that is stable.” out the box, for say something like Postfix or something likethat Alexagrees: “Thereisalot of usefor even an old version of Red and we’requitehappythat we have the experrtsinhousethat can Hat Enterprise–justout of the boxifyou want an SMTP server,if resolve any problems. you want MySQL or PostgreSQL.It’s there. There are still an awful “I’d pick Red Hat Enterprise if I were using a third-party lot of servers out there. If it’s a database server,or it’s a print application that required support,”headds.“If Iwerebuilding server,aSamba something extensive myself,and building my own special-purpose server,or an SMTP appliance, whereout of necessityI’d need to replacepartsofthe “Anythingthatlags server.” distribution, then I’duse whatever Iwas most familiar with. In my “It just sits in a case that would be CentOS/Fedora.” behindDebianstableis corner,adds Crispin. “Is that what you use at home?” asks Graham. franklystone-age.” Shevek “But it’sthe support “Yep”,responds Alex. “Fedora at home,and CentOS at work. It’s thing that’svital to a justthat I’vegot yearsofexperienceonRed Hat now. Iknowits big corporatebody.Theyfeel the need forthat persononthe end gotchas,and Ican work around them. Ialsoknowthat no of the phone.You buy something likeWindows, and you’ve distribution is perfect.” allegedly got support. And you pay for the support.” Crispin adds: “I would probably useRHEL, but it depends on To calm thingsdown, we ask Shevekwhich distribution he the sizeofthe company,”hesays. “If youcan getasmall company would choose. whereyou knowsomeone in-houseisaLinux sysadmin, then “For commercial servers, Debian every single time,” he says. CentOSwould be cheaper becauseyou don’thavetopay forthe “Without support?” asks Graham. support, but you’vestill gotthe RHEL updates. But when I’m “Without support.” sitting at home,Iuse Ubuntu because it just works.” Graham goes on: “I think youhavetohavesupport. Yo uhaveto “A lot of people just want to install Linux where there’s clear have the cover.

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