From: alsaggaf@athena.mit.edu (M. Saggaf) Subject: Re: Splitting comp.os.linux, again Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1992 23:24:30 GMT
In article <pgr.212606.25Oct1992@prg.ox.ac.uk> pgr@prg.ox.ac.uk (Partially Grown Rhododendron) writes:
>In <1992Oct25.170301.1223@athena.mit.edu>, M. Saggaf <alsaggaf@athena.mit.edu>
>writes:
>[quote from my article]
>
>If somebody is interested in GCC, they read the appropriate newsgroups
>in the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Ditto for X. And bugs related to
>either of them, or just about anything else. None of these need, or
>should, be under the c.o.l.* hierarchy since they are *NOT* generally
>Linux specific.
>
>The fact that people are postings articles of this nature at the moment
>is only showing that people are inappropriately posting to c.o.l.
>(If people posted appropriately, there wouldn't be a need for the split
>in the first place, of course -- if there was some way of encouraging them
>to them that would seem to be a more productive route than a c.o.l split.)
>
If we follow this line of thought, we can conclude that we don't even
need comp.os.linux. After all, linux is but a Unix clone (a darn good
one), and comp.unix.misc would suit us just fine! But why stop there,
Unix is but an operating system, so why not lump all such groups under
one comp.os.misc?
Let's face it, linux users are interested in gcc and X only from the
linux perspective. You can tell them to post articles related to gcc
and X in some other groups all you want, but that does not mean that
they will comply. In the past I have seen many requests along the
lines of 'please take that elsewhere' and 'you could've have asked
that in such and such group', only to be ignored by most posters.
In Usenet, there is no correlation between where people should post,
and where they actually do. People WILL post countless articles about
X problems in c.o.l, even though they SHOULD post in *.xfree. People
WILL post hundreds of articles about programming in the linux group, no
matter how many times you tell them where they SHOULD post. If we ignore
this and not create groups for these topics, all these posts would
end up in c.o.l.misc, and we might as well not split the current group
at all.
>[...]
>> I will restate here only the summary of my previous proposal, [...]
>Well, out of the list I agree with *.announce and *.misc (ditto with the
>main proposal).
>
>> *.programmer
>Linux programmers? Oh, you mean kernel hackers. There is an active
>mailing list for that. Or do you mean a more generic term? In which
>case, it is not Linux specific (just GCC then talk in either comp.lang.c
>or gnu.bugs.gcc).
>
Hmmm, I think you actually didn't refer to my original article (it may
have expired, what with all this traffic), so you misunderstood the
purpose of most the subgroups I suggested. My original article
addresses all you concerns. Here are parts of it
[ *.programmer
To discuss various topics related to using gcc, porting applications
(where is SIGBUS?, what corresponds to sgtty in POSIX?, ..etc), and
programming in the Unix environment in general (many people who come
to linux have only programmed in DOS before). Crossposts from this
group to comp.lang.c and comp.unix.wizards would make sense.]
>> *.apps
>How many *Linux* specific applications are there? Not many that I can see.
>
[To discuss the various applications available for linux and their
merits (is olvwm better than vtwm?), wither they have been ported (is
there any BBS software for linux?), and where they could be found.]
Available for linux does not mean linux-specific.
>> *.windows (or *.x)
>This is covered by the windows.x.i386unix RFD. No need for Linux specific.
>
[To discuss topics related to X11 and MGR. These could be pleas for
help to run the packages (could somebody post their Xconfig file for
NEC 5G?), as well as running applications in them (is there any way to
use the cursor keys in minicom inside an xterm?). There would be
crossposts from this group to comp.windows.x and the yet-to-form
comp.windows.x.xfree86. However, they will all be from the linux
perspective. People who do not use X11 or MGR will largely ignore
this group.]
>> *.hardware
>How much Linux specific hardware is there? None that I can see.
>
[This is a very relevant group. This will mainly discuss what hardware
linux runs on (does linux support AHA1522? does linux run on EISA
machines? ..etc.), what configurations are optimal to run linux (how
much disk space do I need to run linux? is 2MB RAM enough for linux?),
what hardware is problamatic (beware of Maxtor 7132 with rev < 52), as
well as where to find good cheap hardware. There will be crossposts
from this group to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.]
There is no linux-specific hardware. There is hardware that would run
linux, and hardware that won't (or be problematic).
>> *.advocacy
>No comment on this. I don't really see any point in it, though. Argue
>about it if you like :-)
>
I won't :-). I think it's an appropriate group though.