[RULE] Hi everybody

[M. Fioretti]

On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 12:26:22 at 12:26:22PM -0500, James Miller (jamtat at mailsnare.net) wrote:
> I'd like to just make some general observations on some things that have
> been mentioned here recently.
[snip]
> 
> First, I'd just like to observe that Debian seems to me a much
> better choice than RH on which to develop a sub-distro friendly to
> older hardware. That might seem like kind of a counter-productive
> assertion to make on a list already dedicated to a certain distro
> (RH), but I just don't know how or where else to say it.  I hope it
> doesn't seem like I'm trying to show disrespect or lack of
> appreciation for RULE developers - on the contrary, I am amazed by
> their talent, devotion and especially concern.

James,

we don't feel offended in the slightest. First of all, thanks a lot
for your compliments (even on Michael's behalf, as he's the one who
has done almost all the actual coding so far). The decisions to use for
Red Hat are explained in the project faq. Let's elaborate on them,
however:

1) As Raul remembered just yesterday, the problem is NOT in the
   distribution. If GNOME, KDE, Mozilla, and so on, are
   inherently... overfeatured, shall we say, people without a lot of
   time and skills will not gain that much switching distro. Period.

   If, on the other hand, we make kdrive widely known and documented,
   and figure out how to recompile functional, not bloated apps, every
   distro can build on that. For the record, I'm trying in these days
   to do this on abiword: lightweight, but compiled by default to
   require Gnome... :-( . I'll report to the list when I'm done.

The lines below are pasted from a private email answering your same
question. Please note point 3!!

2) The reasons to go for Red Hat (Fedora, we should say now...) remain
   the same still valid from the beginning

       Red Hat is more oriented to non technical users and GUI
       desktops, still has a very large user base, a lot of very
       active mailing lists, many binary packages ready to install,
       plenty of specific docs for non geeks

   In addition to this, I, Michael and others have to use it anyway on
   the job and never had the time to practice other distros.

   The conclusion is that yes, you could do everything we are doing
   with RULE/Red Hat/Fedora starting from any other distro, but:

        we did it as we were able to do it, in the way that still
        seems to require the smallest effort

        the support "universe", especially for non technical users, is
        less intimidating than the others, even if it cannot be
        official

3) Last but not least, everybody willing to start "RULE for
(slackware/mandrake/debian/whatever"), just come in and restart from
the installer in a dedicate subproject. He'll be welcome!

-- 
Marco Fioretti                 m.fioretti, at the server inwind.it
Red Hat for low memory         http://www.rule-project.org/en/

A good man is intelligent, and a bad man is also an idiot. Moral and
intellectual characteristics go together - Jorge Luis Borges



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