i happen to come across this article tonight that at least for a newbie still learning at least highlights some things, some of you out there use a debian or red hat or etc distro of linux regardless on what distro you use i believe some things you will read about this article at least in my opinion are true ( key word here people my opinion )

http://linuxcanuck.wordpress.com/2008/12/0...ld-do-about-it/

after reading it, tell me if you find it useful, truthful, or a lie, etc look forward to all your comments

I think the article is too long and also misses some very important points regarding the fundamental differences between the two operating systems, the punctuation in the article is horrible too.

I can get Slackware (or almost any other distro) free, that means free as in free beer and free as in I can download the source code and change it to my preference if I have the technical skills.

When I can do the same with a Windows edition then it will be a fair comparison.

The last paragraph in the article shows the author's true misperception:

My advice is to to speak up for Linux and promote unity in the Linux community. It is okay to have friendly rivalry between distros, but we need to guard against larger and more insidious forces attacking from the outside, and to protect that which we have in common. If Linux is going to change let it be from the inside out.

He/She totally misses the point here of using a free operating system. There is no "friendly rivalry" between the distros, they are each released according to the wishes of the people behind the distro. Don't like a distro? Move on and find one that works for you (or make your own!). Apart from a few differences in file system locations and init scripts most distros are remarkably similar.

I'd like to point out that most of those befuddled Windows weenies were annoying the hel_l out of Windows forums before they decided that their stupidity should be shared with another OS.

Secondly I agree with what Slackula posted, but would request the chance to add more (I am a bit of a *nix advocate).

Firstly, most of the people that complain about the different packaging systems are vendors. I.E., they don't want to be arsed with developing the different packages (which isn't really that hard). However they are usually not proficient enough to know anything about LSB. I'll admit that LSB isn't perfect, but why are developers not prompting it if it's that important to them?

It's also interensting that so MANY people don't understand that "Linux" is actually GNU/Linux. That's right, just the kernel is Linux. Don't like the Linux kernel but the rest is good (the GNU part that Mr. Stallman has been so instrumental in getting together for us)? Go ahead and strip it out and use Hurd or OpenSolaris or BSD or.... Granted that only adds to 'confusion', but what would a Windows weenie know about the kernel powering their system?