[advocacy-discuss] "What is OpenSolaris" page

[Moinak Ghosh]

Sean Sprague wrote:
> Hello Moinak, hope that you are well.
>
>>   Since you are long-time Solaris users familiar with it's nuances, 
>> how long
>>   does it take you to flip your PATH so that /usr/bin is in the front 
>> ? How
>>   long will it take an OpenSolaris n00b to figure out it's nuances 
>> and update
>>   the PATH settings so that he can use the familiar GNU tools ? Would he
>>   even care to do such a change if the operating env feels weird and 
>> unfamiliar
>>   right from the start ?
>
> Well here we find the crux of the "problem" (if it exists). 
> OpenSolaris is trying very hard to be a "get it, burn it, boot it" 
> (GIBIBI (tm)) operating environment. What we have not really addressed 
> is the necessity to *learn* something about UNIX (and *not* GNU; 
> bcoz...) whilst they are experiencing OpenSolaris. This is key; and 
> irreplaceable. If you learn UNIX (an interface thereto) and its 
> utilities, then you can make a choice as to whether to move on to 
> utility sets like those provided by GNU. Only in that way can you 
> achieve a good grounding in "UNIX". If you start with using the 
> GNU-style interface to utilities, then you are "lost" in terms of 
> backwards-compatible understanding.

   Understood. But it is a difficult goal and cannot be achieved unless 
you get
   adoption. Adoption becomes negligible if  you plonk an unfamiliar tooling
   onto peoples hands. Once you have adoption it becomes easier to coax more
   Unix understanding into people. You can't do that if all the great 
Unix stuff
   are simply bit patterns on a shiny polycarbonate platter in a 
waste-basket.

Regards,
Moinak.

>
> Regards... Sean.