response to G David Lewis
August 25, 2008
I agree that the OS in itself has greatly changed over the years as is the goal of open source. I was simply stating that one can achieve powerful results using all of the utilities that existed in the linux systems of old. Linux has been improved and it has become easier to use over the years, but the original linux and GNU utilities are still powerful and useful. For instance, many people I know still use the vi text editor and find it both useful and flexible. The core of the system, and its basic utilities, has been, and will probably always be, static. Thank you for your interest. I did not intend to mislead anyone and would like to remind you all that this blog is mostly for me to spout my opinions, which I admit are usually not thoroughly researched or proven.
August 26, 2008 at 1:31 am
I fully understand and agree with the sentiment of your original post, however I feel that the way you worded it could be easily misconstrued by casual readers and interpreted as saying that Linux per se isn’t a fully up to date and modern OS. That perhaps Linux was in the realm of obsolete OSen like the Amiga or OS/2, which it most obviously isn’t.
Linux is a fully modern, stable, and actively developed platform with thousands of applications available for it, not to mention it being the most diverse OS in use today able to run on the largest supercomputer clusters to the smallest firmware devices.
It is true that any of the original stack of software that ran on the first Linux kernel is still just as available and useful today as then, however this makes up for just a small subset of the total software available for the system and, while worthy of praise for its continuity, is certainly not the greatest aspect of this wonderful platform, IMHO.
I apologize for coming across so strongly in my original post, however, when speaking of something so near and dear to me as Linux; even the slightest deinigration get my dander up. That said, keep up the good work!