* Daniel Lawson <daniel(a)meta.net.nz> [2004-06-30 06:46]:
I get fairly frustrated with the attitude that seems to dominate overall major linux development which says that we have to mimic Windows. GNOME and KDE have done this, Samba is perpetually doing this.
I don't think you can compare these at all: KDE and GNOME are willingly doing so; noone is forcing them.
That makes it *worse* in my opinion.
Samba is the same thing as WINE: intended to shoehorn Linux into places where Windows rules.
And for situations where you want to run a heterogenous network, that's fine and dandy. I don't consider the client OS to count however. There is no real reason we shouldn't have windows boxes authing via NIS or LDAP or whatever we want, and whatever distributed file system running to serve them network content. Why is the standard approach to this "Run samba, put up with the inconsistencies, and just hope the samba dev team can play catchup quicker than their opposition can cheat them". Don't get me wrong here, I think the samba team are doing a great job. I just wish they were directing their efforts on something *new* for linux.
Yes, I find it frustrating that everyone is just aping the Microsoft interface. Aping Apple would certainly be better -- but it's not going to be easy, considering how viciously Apple are guarding their assets (just try to find an accurate Aqua theme for one of the desktops..).
Yeah well. I'm saving for a G5. Or a powerbook. Not sure which. Daniel