I've checked Linux out twice now. The first time I set it up about 1.5 years ago there was no serial support. The second time I set it up about 1 to 2 months ago (using the prerelease) there was serial support, but it took ages to set the machine up to do what I wanted it to do.
I wanted to set the machine up as an internet gateway for my home machines and so I had to recompile the kernal to include IP Masquerading and a few other modules. A few of the source code files had errors so I had to change those. When I finally got everything working the performance was actually worse than using Vicom Internet Gateway under MacOS.
Also, the fact that you have to use some cheesy x-windows UI really sucks. Therefore, I'm still using MacOS as my gateway.
Many times I see people saying Linux is the best OS out there. I really have to wonder if they really use it. It's stable, but so is Solaris, which we use for a server. The development tools are ok, but I think the best development platform out there is OpenStep (now Rhapsody).
As a cheap server platform Linux is acceptable, but I certainly wouldn't run a business on it, especially with its well-known security holes (we actually had to take our Redhat Linux machine off the network because it was hacked a few times).
My favorite OS is OpenStep. The UI is beautifully clean and I can run the best development environments in the world on it. Unfortunately, at the same time it's lacking many tools that I can find on MacOS, Linux, and Windows. No one OS is the best out there. It depends on what you're trying to do at that instance. |
