challenges of distro switching

[Martin Langhoff]

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Daniel Drake <dsd at laptop.org> wrote:
> A mountain of packages and their corresponding effects on the system,
...

> It also invalidates many processes that myself and others have been
> training in the field, such as usage of rpm/yum, how to write spec
> files, etc.

These two points are incredibly important. We do not use Fedora
superficially -- we use it "in depth" to achieve some unique features.
And while the 'core dev' team is familiar with Debian/Ubuntu, Gentoo
and a few other linuxen, the OLPC ecosystem involves people who have
made important investments in learning this toolchain.

The third point is that the polish of the whole product comes down to
subtle interactions between the components. We work hard to make
everything Just Work for the components and hardware of a given
release, and it takes time and work. Doing it for another distro
takes... time and work.

cheers,



m
-- 
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 martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
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