OT: Linux flavors...

[Fairlight]

You'll never BELIEVE what Bill Campbell said here...:
> 
> I went through a period where I was modifying Caldera's SRPMS to create
> custom RPMS tailored to some systems we were building including things like
> win4lin support.  I learned much more than I really wanted to know about
> kernel building while doing that.  I've also had to do some hacking on SCSI
> drivers to get ADFs working on scanners, but that was quite a while ago.

I learned more than I wanted to know when I -needed- HFS support to read
images off a Mac floppy for work, and the kernel had been updated but the
maintainer of the HFS module hadn't stayed current.  Thankfully it wasn't
the most challenging of ports.  When he finally did his upgrade a year
later, I was gratified to see that I'd done mine right.

Today, I just shoot anyone that gives me Mac floppies.  :)  (J/K)

> Today, I just want it to work with minimal hassle.

Amen, and I concur wholeheartedly.

As someone that used to build -every- kernel from 0.99.99pld through
1.2.[final], I dropped the ball when 1.3 came out.  I just didn't have the
time or inclination to stay on the bleeding edge anymore.  I just got to a
point where I figured the system was working for me, I didn't need the new
features particularly since my machine is fairly old, and it wasn't really
necessary to do it locally when I had other boxes outside where I was
already managing newer kits.  Arcadia's linux half stayed at RH 5.2 until
about three or four months ago.  Now it's SuSE 9.0.  The only bad thing
about staying like that is that I couldn't actually compile things like
MySQL without newer glibc's and such.  Actually, I have a Cobalt Linux
system that I'm terrified of updating the glibc on.  Same issues--I want to
run some software that -needs- a later glibc (and/or is dependant on
other things that required it), but if I make -one- mistake, it's a lump of
plastic and metal, as there's no keyboard, no VGA, nada.  I believe I could
do it, sure.  Do I think it's worth the risk?  Not really. 

I just don't really care anymore.  Software comes out, and Jay or someone
else will mention it, and unless I've had reason to know about it, I very
well may have no clue what they're referring to.  The OSS pool of software
(of which probably < 40% is actually 'completed' packages[1]), has become
increasingly impossible to keep up with.  Sourceforge and Freshmeat are all
but useless under the floodtide of new software and redundant efforts.

I just use or procure what I need for any given project, learn it if
necessary, and move on.  In my spare time, I seek out things that interest
me.  *shrug*  Rolling every kernel by hand, especially during development
trees?  LTS.  I'm not that young anymore.  One one hand, I learned a lot.
OTOH, it feels like I wasted a lot of time--and after a point I probably
did.

[1] No software is ever complete.

mark->
-- 
Bring the web-enabling power of OneGate to -your- filePro applications today!

Try the live filePro-based, OneGate-enabled demo at the following URL:
               http://www2.onnik.com/~fairlite/flfssindex.html