David Jenkinson wrote:

> Having an ancient package tool is something to be proud of. If it's done
> right first time, why change it?

Hmmm. So are you still running CPM? Or maybe Slackware 1.0? They were "done
right" the first time, say many who still use these ancient systems.
(TTBOMK everything I can do on non-X Slackware I could do on my Osborne 1
and my Kaypro 3 with CPM. )


> And tgz will work on any unix,

Huh? You know this how?

> wheras
> rpm or deb will work on those flavors only.

Um, you mean you can't install an RPM or a .deb on Slackware? Do your
research.


> Such fragmentation of the
> origional unix systems into incompatible subsets let Microsoft into the
> market in the first place.

Well, I suppose a logical construct could be made with the above as a
hypothesis, but not a very strong or convincing one. Unix started out
'fragmented' and didn't grow to become fragmented. Each hardware
manufacturer wrote their own version of "unix". Eventually two flavors got
more popular than others... SysV and BSD. But even those were heavily
tweaked for various hardware (PDP, Gen. Data, Sequent, Pyramid, DEC Alpha,
IBM-AIX, HP-HUPX, Apple-AUX, etc.)

If you accept the hypothesis that "Linux != Unix (minix, etc.)" than
Microsoft has been around a lot longer than Linux:
http://www.li.org/linuxhistory.php

Al