[Opensim-users] Why not a real OS

[dz]

Folks,

Not to add to the religious fervor....    but there's a couple things that
are just NOT right about letting the mis-information slide.

It's very popular for proponents of each side to wave magic metrics and
declare victory in a race that could have just begun.     People don't come
to this list to ask your opinion about Linux vs.Windows  IN GENERAL, they
want to know what easiest with OpenSim.

Its extremely disappointing to me to see that discussion drown out by the
"know-it-alls" spewing their answers.

OpenSim uses .NET as a platform,  as such, If you intend to RUN OpenSim, you
can do it either as a native .NET application under windows, or on
non-windows OS using the open-source MONO environment.

Among the advantages of using Windows servers:
    Historically, it has provided better operating performance for regions.
    Most of the developers seem to be prefer the Microsoft toolchain.
    There are no threats of c## "subterfuge" by MS ( the risk of these seems
very small)

Among the advantages of Mono OS independence:
    Wider range of server platforms ( via  OS and hardware independence )
    Like all smaller free software efforts, the best way to support it is to
USE it and make it better

If you select MONO based server platforms, it will pay for you to do your
homework on your selection.  Contrary to prior posts, many of the popular
Linux releases  (UBUNTU in particular) are notorious for NOT supporting the
latest release of MONO.   That is not to say that you cannot build the
latest version of MONO, but the "regular" repositories of supported software
won't have it.   All religious preferences aside,  If you want to pick a
linux distro with the latest and greatest MONO has to provide  I would
recommend you go to the Novell  SuSe distribution.

There are always arguments on both sides of the questions that touch the
religion wars off.  For me, in this project, the most telling sign that
Windows is the "preference" of the core developers  is that there is still
little or no support for the MONOdevelope IDE.  Make and build on Linux from
source still depends on the old-school command line tools.  Lots of people
are comfortable enough with their Linux skills to cope with that
requirement..

Personally,  I'm one of the "irrational" believers that we vote loudest with
our actions, so I pay to host linux machines for our internal OpenSim
development machines, and generally make it known I prefer NOT to pay
Microsoft whenever that option presents itself.   Your Satisfaction is not
guaranteed by adopting that plan  :)

D.
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