There are many here generalising that Linux is bloated, slow, and lacking in innovation. Well I would have to generalise that none of you have seriously tried to use Linux, at least not in the last 2 years.
I do not have a Windows partition of any sort on any of my 3 PC's hard drives; although I do have a VMware image for Win98SE that runs a couple of CAD/simulation tools for my Eng. degree.
AT VERY WORST - Linux is only equally as lacking in innovation as Windows. At the worst. As far as bloated apps go - the apps themselves are not bloated! FAR FROM IT! Linux is positivly the BEST OS I have seen in terms of apps actually utilising shared libraries. Those who have been unfortunate enough to use Redhat will know what I mean, if they have ever tried to install an RPM and found the myriad of dependancies that aren't met. Those dependcy failures show you just some of the libraries that it is using, rather than inventing it's own code or linking statically..
Again: In general the apps themselves are not bloated; it's the number of apps. You may have got the bloated concept from a "install everything" distro like Redhat. Well I have to tell you - try installing a barebones Debian or Slackware setup and work it up to the way you like it; much less bloat in the way. I highly recommend Debian, btw - I can search hundreds of thousands of free software packages and have one of them downloaded and installed with the necessary dependancies at the click of a button.
Just the other day I wanted a Finite Element Method software package (for evaluating a system of Partial Differential Equations - in my case simulating electric fields with varying dielectric structures). I thought "Surely apt wouldn't have something like that, I need to go to the labs and use Matlab or Mathematica"... but hey! There's freefem - and whilst it isn't the greatest, it did the job (sort of
. I guess you could compare apt to aminet, except far better
-> Yes, Mozilla is bloated. But there are other browsers such as Galeon, Moz. firebird, etc. that are not. For ascii-only terminals you can even use Lynx. -> Yes OpenOffice.org is bloated. But there is Abiword, too. -> Yes, Gnome 2 & KDE are bloated desktop environments. But you don't have to use them. -> yes, Bind 9 is overkill for your LAN, but there is dnsmasq -> yes, Anjuta C/C++ IDE may be overkill for your syntax highlited editor needs, but there's scite, etc. etc.
As far as bloat goes - yes, I still agree that Linux will use more of your HDD than a lot of other OSs, but the power, functionality and flexibility of the GNU/Linux stuff is often by far leaps and bounds above what you care to be comparing to. Remember, there is no central control over the development of the Linux desktop. Some of the bloat is in duplication of libraries - the OSS world is competitive and irrational; everyone doesn't just use one GUI API, they have over a dozen to choose from. There isn't just one printing system, there are at least half a dozen that I have tried. There are competing X font servers, etc. But the point is you get choice, and the competition enables continuous quality and innovation (and a lot of copying of that innovation between each other AS WELL AS external sources).
The "Unix" architecture that we saw emerge in the 80s was never meant for the single user desktop. There is just so much extra stuff in the Unix world that single user desktops don't have to worry about, apart from multiuser permissions! Batch scripting, job control, scheduling maintenance tasks, logging service activities (for your web, SQL, email servers), post-processing those logs (with your batch/scheduling tools), security updates, development, synchronising data/accounts/services software with other servers, backup systems, service priorities, monitoring & imposing RAM/CPU/HDD/network limits on users, intrusion detection, and general administration.
It takes a lot of unique tools and OS concepts (compared to a single user OS like AmigaOS) to achieve all this with some kind of flexibility and modularity. That's why Linux is "complicated" and "bloated".
Last time I remember it was 1999... I was fighing with ipfwadm and squid back then. Man, that squid crashed a lot...
By the way what is used as a proxy now usually? And for firewall rules?
You had trouble with squid? A company I work(ed) for has been using the same box with Squid, running Debian potato, since '98 with nary a crash at all, let alone reboot. It served a 16 line dialup ISP which had around 500 users, as well as the 10 or so PCs internally 24/7.
Squid is the main http proxy in use, there are others with different features/specialities. iptables is the firewall technology in use today. I cheat and use fwbuilder - a drag and drop "object" (rule/protocol/network/host grouping) based GUI firewall builder. It makes firewall/NAT rules a joy to make. Coincidently, webmin has been a godsend for me. A sort of web frontend to just about every Linux administration task you can think of, from setting up cron jobs, SQL admin, Samba shares, firewall rules, starting/stopping services and even rebooting. Great for remote administartion of multiple machines.
As far as innovation goes. I'd like to see (apart from our favourite - AmigaOS
a platform that has noticably more innovation going on. Perhaps the Linux kernel & "Unix" feel isn't inspiring for you (I think it does good for a server/multiuser platform) but must insist that Linux application development would have to have a great deal of innovation going on.
Holy crap what a massive rant... sheesh I'm almost embarrassed
- Paul
