Linux is not about choice [was Re: Fedora too cutting edge?]

[Les Mikesell]

Olivier Galibert wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 10, 2008 at 08:06:53AM -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
>> Zfs isn't the only interesting thing about opensolaris and Sun does give 
>> you the candy if you take the whole package. It is only the Linux terms 
>> that keep you from adding the parts. Solaris has an entirely different 
>> attitude about backwards compatibility which makes the mention slightly 
>> on topic for this conversation. I can't, for example, imagine them ever 
>> changing a device name arbitrarily and breaking a previously working 
>> configuration while Linux has no such respect for its users' previous 
>> work.  Fedora may not be the place for it, but I would seriously like to 
>> see a distribution based on the OpenSolaris kernel and the same user 
>> programs you'd find in a current Linux or *bsd distro.
> 
> Given that it's the user programs that have the lack of respect for
> previous configurations (Linus considers backwards-compatibility very
> important), I doubt you'll see any change for the better.

Is it a user program that has changed my /dev/hdX into /dev/sdX more or 
less arbitrarily - or turns what used to be detected as eth0 into eth2 
when a different kernel is booted?  Admittedly it has been a while since 
I've used Solaris, but I can't recall anything like that ever happening 
with it.  In a unix-like system where access to everything is through 
its device/file name, what is more fundamental than that?

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com