3t$1@xivic.prima.de   
   From: Wolfgang.Schelongowski@gmx.de   
      
   [Subject changed for obvious reasons]   
      
   Adam  writes:   
      
   >Wolfgang Schelongowski wrote:   
      
   [choice of distro]   
      
   >> 2) based in a non-English country (here: Germany) - software companies   
   >>     in the USA have to learn that there are other countries besides the   
   >>     USA with different languages and different customs (yes, I've been   
   >>     burnt _severely_ before)   
   >   
   >What happened there?  I assume by "different customs" you mean much more   
   >than just the currency symbol, date format, thousands separator, et al.   
      
   Example 1: DCF77. Time signals transmitted from Mainflingen near   
   Frankfurt on 77.5 kHz. It isn't only useless for you because you   
   won't be able to receive it, you won't even be able to create   
   the same in the USA because they're too large.   
      
   Example 2: Mediathek. Easy access to broadcasts previously sent by   
   German TV stations - without advertisements. How many percents of the   
   inhabitants of the USA would be interested in any of that at all?   
   And quite possibly their IPs wouldn't be allowed to access these   
   servers.   
      
   Example 3: ISDN. It's much more common here.   
      
   As to my "yes, I've been burnt _severely_ before", that relates   
   to a job I had some two dozen years ago. I'm changing the names to   
   protect both guilty and innocent parties. At that time I worked at   
   Murx Brothers Productions (short: MBP). MBP had recently hired   
   Paul Pain as my bosses bosses boss. Paul was the most dangerous   
   type of PHB - he had enough knowledge to be dangerous, his head in the   
   clouds, knew all current buzzwords, and had an unbroken record   
   of leaving jobs before whatever he had caused hit the fan.   
      
   He had MBP sign a contract with an USA based company I'll name   
   Bobb because they sold an office product I'll name Bobbix. The   
   contract stated that MBP would port Bobbix to German language and   
   _from a fixed date_ onwards would have to pay for a fixed number of   
   licenses of Bobbix, no matter how much MBP would be able to sell.   
   All against the warnings those inside MBP who were technically   
   competent. At that time, I was merely watching from the sidelines   
   because my job was in data communications. However, my unit and   
   MBP's unit dealing with Bobbix had the same secretary, and our units   
   were on the same floor.   
      
   After MBP had cleaned up the code of Bobbix (all texts visible to   
   users[1] went to special files which were easily editable by   
   non-programmers) then came the next version - back to nearly square   
   one. Then there was the task of convincing Bobb that   
   1) "words have sex in foreign language" according to a certain   
      Terry Pratchett; e.g. English "the" may be German "der", "die", or   
      "das".   
   2) there's also declination and conjugation of which English has close   
      to nothing - I'm not even comparing it to Latin or Finnish, just   
      German.   
      
   [1] Texts for debugging which would not be visible to users but   
       e.g. were written to log files could remain in English for   
       obvious reasons.   
      
   Maybe a visit from John Cleese would have helped. Remember the Roman   
   Centurian in the "Romanes eunt domus" scene of "The Life of Brian".   
      
   It all ended in a product which could never be sold here, so there   
   was a great loss - remember the license fees? Of course, Paul   
   quit MBP early under a flimsy excuse. [deletia] The last thing I heard   
   of him was that he had a job in the USA (yeah, Europe's too small when   
   your name is too well known) where he appeared to have just ruined   
   another company. MBP sacked a lot of the little indians. Bobb had now   
   acquired the know-how to enter the international market, and   
   introduced a new product I'll name Bobbix* which IIRC they sold   
   directly - I've seen it on the CeBIT.   
      
   >Thanks for the insights!  openSUSE was one of several distros that was   
   >recommended to me here in this NG.  I now have 12.1 (the newest one on   
   >their website last week, dated November 2, 2011) installed and will be   
   >playing with it.  "Targeting those who merely want to drag and drool"   
   >(nice expression!) might count as one point against it for me.   
      
   I herewith confess of my free volition that I've read that expression   
   many years ago somewhere on Usenet.   
      
   >                                                                You also   
   >leave me wondering whether /I/ would be facing different (German)   
   >customs when using it!   
      
   Rather unlikely. SuSE has been Novell for quite some time. Besides,   
   they wouldn't ignore a market of the size of the USA, and there's   
   the UK really close - the can even receive DCF77 in the southern   
   parts. In Europe, you can't really escape having different cultures   
   close by. Everything is much smaller here.   
      
   >I'm surprised at the number of people in this newsgroup who /aren't/   
   >using Mandriva or its derivatives.  (It doesn't bother me at all; I'm   
   >just curious.)  What does this group offer them that a newsgroup or   
   >forum for their particular distro doesn't?   
      
   Low volume, not troll and troll-feeders infested, advice directed to   
   others which is useful to me. And Mandriva was among the distros   
   interesting to me. However, the news from the CEO makes me fear   
   that Mandriva is doomed, and he's just buying time. Well, time will   
   tell.   
      
   >                                            Is a gathering of friendly,   
   >knowledgeable, helpful people specific to Mandriva?   
      
   Specific is just a little bit too strong.   
      
   >> D) I'm typing this on a 350MHz SuSE 6.4 which has been my workhorse   
   >>     for practically all text oriented things for about twelve years.   
   >>     It has a few (cough) non-standard add-ons, and it does DHCP,   
   >>     DNS, and wwwoffle (WWW proxy) for every other local machine   
   >>     attached to it. And I still start the GUI (KDE) manually, and its   
   >>     internet presence is about once a fortnight.   
   >   
   >That sounds good (and stable), but I'm looking for something a bit   
   >newer.  I assume security advisories and fixes and package updates for   
   >everything on that system ended a long time ago, and that it can't   
   >always handle newer versions of some apps.   
      
   Of course. E.g. I'll never open the sshd-port and others to the   
   Internet. Hmmm... I believe that I don't open _any_ ports to the   
   Internet. Javascript is not allowed, too.   
      
   >>     Sing it: "Patches, I'm depending upon you, son ..."   
   >   
   >http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/clarence_carter/patches.html   
      
   Thanks for the URL.   
      
   >                  Besides learning about new distros and their quirks,   
   >I'll have to figure out which one's the best match for me and what I do.   
   >  I know that part is totally subjective, and also that (1) no distro is   
   >going to reach 100% on whatever subjective scale I use, and (2) that   
   >probably any of several would be "good enough".   
      
   "Live's a long song - but it ends far too soon for us all." Jethro Tull   
      
   >Thanks again for your very informative comments on all those distributions!   
      
   I would really liked to have seen Old guy's reasoning about his choice   
   of distribution but I understand and respect the reason why he can't   
   talk.   
      
   [I'm currently rather busy so I can't promise when I'll reply to   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)