From hinsen@lmspc1.ibs.fr Wed Oct 29 07:33:52 1997 Received: from ibs.ibs.fr for hinsen@lmspc1.ibs.fr by www.ccl.net (8.8.3/950822.1) id HAA11784; Wed, 29 Oct 1997 07:09:58 -0500 (EST) Received: from lmspc1.ibs.fr (hinsen@lmspc1.ibs.fr [192.134.36.141]) by ibs.ibs.fr (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id NAA20657; Wed, 29 Oct 1997 13:08:31 +0100 Received: (from hinsen@localhost) by lmspc1.ibs.fr (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA03395; Wed, 29 Oct 1997 13:06:56 +0100 Date: Wed, 29 Oct 1997 13:06:56 +0100 Message-Id: <199710291206.NAA03395@lmspc1.ibs.fr> From: Konrad Hinsen To: richmc@entropy.ucsc.edu CC: CHEMISTRY@www.ccl.net, jefff@caldera.com, anna@redhat.com In-reply-to: <9710281803.ZM16728@entropy.ucsc.edu> (richmc@entropy.ucsc.edu) Subject: Re: CCL:G:Model Builders for LINUX > they say that the reason they don't want to support Linux is becuase they would > have to put together their own distribution of Linux in order to provide any > type of support. Further, they conveyed the general attitude that Linux > development moves too quickly for them to take a chance and port to Linux (I > volunteered to type 'xmkmf' for them). Actually, their (second) argument does point to a problem with Linux. If you want to provide support for a program running under a certain system, you must have a machine running it and support people knowing it reasonably well. Linux is not really a well-defined system; strictly speaking, "Linux" is just the kernel. There are endless combinations of system libraries, utility programs, file system layouts etc. out there, all of which under the generic name "Linux". A possible solution would be to offer support only for a well-defined distribution (or a few of them) without any modifications. Whether this works in practice is of course an open question - I am not aware of anyone using such an approach. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Konrad Hinsen | E-Mail: hinsen@ibs.ibs.fr Laboratoire de Dynamique Moleculaire | Tel.: +33-4.76.88.99.28 Institut de Biologie Structurale | Fax: +33-4.76.88.54.94 41, av. des Martyrs | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/ 38027 Grenoble Cedex 1, France | Nederlands/Francais -------------------------------------------------------------------------------