[nzlug] Dell are sooo pwn3d

[Mark Foster]

On Fri, 29 Jun 2007, Ross wrote:

> Craig Box wrote:
>> With a finite amount of support, and a perfectly serviceable file system
>> otherwise available, how much developer and support effort should be
>> diverted from other tasks to support this?  And ReiserFS?  And JFS?  Etc 
>> etc
>> etc..
>> 
> Now that's a much better argument.
>> Too much choice is a bad thing.
>> 
> I'm not sure I agree with this however, a main reason I choose to use Linux 
> is because of the choices it offers, I don't think there is too much 
> choice..... not from this end-user's perspective anyway.
>

As a clooful end-user, perhaps. But its a fair point, a lot of people look 
at the Linux market and rapidly get confused, and decide that supporting 
multiple vagarities of the same thing is just too hard.

And from the end-users point of view, being greeted with too much choice 
is almost as bad as none at all; some people just throw their hands in the 
air and go the way that everyone else does (read: Windows).

At least in the Mac world, theres always been a 'staple baseline'.  In the 
Linux world too much choice can be both a blessing and a curse.

I tell ya what; if there were only a few distros to choose from (instead 
of the massive number of variations and sub-variations we now have) we 
would probably find it easier to 1) gain migrants, and 2) get support from 
vendors who've been largely MS-based for a number of years...

Just some personal conjecture to add to the mix...

Mark.