(Thread moved over from "Has anyone got dvd::rip to work in CentOS?")
Items designed for Windows 95 don't always work on Windows XP or Windows 2003 server.
Yes, but I'm not sure that analogy really represents the situation I'm speaking of with Linux. Items designed in the past may not work with current technologies. That's not a hard concept to grasp, the same way I don't expect my CD player to play casette tapes.
I'm not talking about diffeences in release times. I'm not surprised, nor bothered, that perhaps some software written for Linux kernel 2.4 doesn't work on 2.6.
But assuming two different distros have the 2.6 kernel, then why shouldn't they both be capable of running the same software?
I must admit that partly I'm questioning this because I'm a little annoyed. The first Linux distro I tried was Fedora, and only afterwards was it clearly explained that it's a sort of "permanent beta", where stability was not guarunteed. I'm sorry, but I read the Fedora web site carefully, and it does not explain clearly what it is. I thought it was a reasonable candidate for consumer use.
But then someone recomended CentOS, because it's more stable. No one said "... but it's really designed more for being a server.". Nothing was said along those lines.
Now, after spending weeks getting things like Japanese support, my Palm Pilot to work, Gnome configured, and many other trials and errors, *now*, when I want to get a DVD writing program, people are saying "Oh, well, really CentOS is not really all that good for those kinds of purposes". Where was this advice before?
In fact, I'm looking at the CentOS web site now, and in it's "Goals" section it says, among other things: * easy maintenance * friendly environment for users and package maintainers Noticibly lacking is anything saying "a server oriented OS", or "not really intended to run consumer level software". Where was I supposed to come to understand that CentOS was not only a "stable enterprise class OS" but also limited in exactly how many applications it would be able to accomodate?
So I'm sorry if I'm sounding like a whiner at this point, but if I have to change to another distro and again go through all the growing pains of learning how to use it as well I think I might run back to Windows world. I mean, I've come to really like Linux for a lot of reasons, but I'm getting a little tired of the "this Linux for that, that Linux for this" confusion that only hardened Linux gurus can sort out.
Dave