Personal suggestion for fixing the Linux situation

[Richmond]

On 07/16/2010 10:25 AM, Peter Alcibiades wrote:
> Here is how I would go about tracking down these things.  Just to recap,
> the things we are seeking to track down are these four:
>
> -- not all and only installed fonts are visible and useable
> -- revPrintField does not work properly
> -- virtual desktops don't work
> -- editor slows down, freezes and crashes
>
> Are there other priority areas?  There are other niggles, but are there
> other real basic functionaliry showstoppers?
>    

The other one that "gets a bit much" is that the Dictionary is glacially 
slow.

> My suggestion for going about tracking this down is quite different from
> what most people here will instinctively want to do.  The general view here
> is that Linux is an enormously complex mix of components, so the thing to
> do is pick some large general purpose distro and standardize on it.  I do
> not believe this to be the solution.  In fact, it is a wrong diagnosis of
> the problem.  This approach, which regards each distro as a distinct OS, is
> actually part of the problem.
>
> Were I in charge of the effort I would proceed in EXACTLY THE REVERSE WAY.
> I would seek to find the minimum installation set, and within that, the one
> closest to the way packages are released by the developer, that will allow
> the reproduction of the problems.
>
> You can argue about which distro will most readily meet these requirements,
> but if you want to start from something fairly simple and mainstream and
> not start compiling the whole thing from scratch, the contender that leaps
> out at you is Slackware.  I accept, there could be an argument for going
> even further down, like Slitaz or TinyCore.  Maybe that is worth a try as
> well, but they are not, as Slackware is, deliberately as untweaked as
> possible.
>
> So I  would propose doing a minimal install of slackware, with nothing but
> the basic system and the most basic window manager, probably OpenBox.
> Maybe Metacity without Gnome desktop environment, if you want to be as
> close as possible to mainstream what it will have to run on.  But no
> Firefox, no OpenOffice, no apps at all.
>
> If you can reproduce the problems on this sort of minimal install, then you
> are much closer to the source, because you have basically ruled out all
> distro specific issues.  If not, then start to add stuff until you do get
> the problems.
>
>    

This is exactly the right way to proceed.

> I understand that on this list there is a, well, a precoccupation, with
> Ubuntu as a distro for use.  This is not about use however, this is about a
> tool to get to the source of the problems.
>
> I'm prepared to do serious work on this, but am not capable of writing
> patches to the IDE myself, and before getting started on the project, would
> welcome comment, and would like us to have an agreed approach, so what do
> you all think of the above?  It would also be nice to have some feedback
> from Edinburgh, to the effect that given contributions from us, they will
> do their bit also.
>
>    

Seems to me that Richard Gaskin is doing the intermediary stuff.

> Peter
> _______________________________________________
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