[Beowulf] OS for 64 bit AMD

[Joe Landman]

Robert G. Brown wrote:

> I've been following your discussion with great interest, as you both
> make excellent points.  Let me add a few comments.

[...]

>   b) 90% of this discussion is occurring because vendors of commercial
> linux software don't understand the concept of linux packaging and
> participating in a dynamic process.  This is neither here nor there --
> it doesn't get Joe off his hook -- but it is an apropos observation
> because if companies that sold software (open source or not) actually
> learned how to build for linux and participate in the various
> distribution forums a lot of this problem would go away.

Oddly enough I don't see myself on "a hook" (metaphorically or otherwise).

What I do see is quite simple, though I am not going to discuss it in 
this forum, as I finally figured out that we are all rehashing the great 
vi vs emacs war (or pick your favorite religious battle).  Call this the 
great distro war, or whatever.  The point is that there are ways that 
large swaths of people work which is incompatible with arguments from 
either side, and never the twain shall meet.  I see this all the time, 
as do others as indicated from the comments here.  There are large 
swaths of users who decry with great vehmenance any closed source system 
whatsoever.  There are large swaths of users who eschew anything without 
a support contract attached to it.

Rather than respond to the rest of RGB's post (how is it you have 
managed to clone yourself and produce so much text in short intervals of 
time???) I am for the most part backing away from a public discussion of 
this.  I see little value in the overall discussion, as the likelyhood 
of a user in one swatch changing their mind to become a user in the 
other swath is quite unlikely.

There is one point that is worth noting, and that is that business users 
tend to look at things quite a bit differently than academic users, and 
companies like mine have to straddle this particular fence as we have 
customers in both camps.  We do have our biases, and we are always 
willing to listen to other points of view, but in the end, the users 
need to decide what is the correct mode of operation for them.  Our 
customers tell us what they want and we work with them based on that.



-- 
Joseph Landman, Ph.D
Founder and CEO
Scalable Informatics LLC,
email: landman at scalableinformatics.com
web  : http://www.scalableinformatics.com
phone: +1 734 786 8423
fax  : +1 734 786 8452
cell : +1 734 612 4615