At this point some users of other distros may be thinking "so what? My distro is much better anyway!"
Others might be secretly grinning while thinking "Look! A Mepis user rooting for Mageia!" "It seems that this guy is coming from the moons of Coockoo-land or Mepis is not such a good distro after all!"
Neither is true. Well, maybe I'm a bit crazy indeed...some colleagues say it is a vital requirement for my job! :P
But that has nothing to do with my support to Mageia, or the fact that I am learning to use Mandriva, or that my main OS is Mepis.
To me, the crazy ones are those who push only to favor their distro. That "MY distro is THE distro" mentality, in conjunction with a constant mudding of all the other distros is, in my honest opinion, what keeps many away from Linux. True, I have my favorite distros: Mepis, Mandriva, Pardus, Antix...
Also, some Linux flavors out there don't please me much. But the fact that I dislike them does not mean those distributions or their communities are useless. If there are 2 people following them, that means those distros have something to offer. Is that so hard to understand? Still, some Linux fans, or better said, Distro Trolls, don't seem to understand it.
True, something happened among the ranks of Mandriva and that led to the birth of Mageia. Should we then be forced to choose one or the other? Should we, users of other distros, throw mud at both of them so that our distro may have less competition?
I have a question. Who are we competing against? Are we competing against someone? So, is choosing free software the equivalent of entering a giant arena?
This is not right. I don't even see free software as the competition against Microsoft or Apple. Why? Because Open Source belongs to a different model. Open Source is about learning, sharing and improving. The greedy ideology of the traditional business model and its compulsive "kill or be killed" philosophy do not fit well in Open Source mentality.
Let Microsoft and Apple do the competition against each other. Also, let them keep directing lots of resources trying to kill Free Software. So far, they haven't been successful in spite of all their money. They are wasting money trying to kill an idea...an idea that grows slowly, but that keeps growing thanks--paradoxically--to their abusive business practices.
Instead of competing against them --or against ourselves-- let's invest our time more wisely: let's support each other...let's root together for Mageia!!!
Many people are going to say that Linux is hindered by the enormous diversity of distributions. In my opinion, that trait is actually what keeps Linux alive.
ResponderEliminarYou are right. Distro trolls want the Linux world to turn into a cosmic Battle Royal...and that benefits no one, except the ones that do not care about freedom.
Yes. They say that Linux will be better if it becomes only one distribution, if it limits its plasticity, if it adopts only one way of doing things, and if it gets dumbed down so much that people may forget their responsibilities as computer users when using it...
ResponderEliminarOOPS! That resembles something a lot, but I can't get what... :P