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Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:31:04 -0800
From: Andrew Sharp <andy.sharp@lsi.com>
To: "Ariyamannil, Jobi" <Jobi.Ariyamannil@lsi.com>
Subject: Re: TUXSTOR Linux version
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On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:16:33 -0700 "Ariyamannil, Jobi"
<Jobi.Ariyamannil@lsi.com> wrote:

> Hi Andy,
> 
> I am attending a meeting at IBM next week and I may be asked about
> the linux version we use for Orion. Is it Debian? What release?  Any
> specific reason for picking those?

Hi Jobi,

This is a question that constantly comes up when dealing with people
that aren't knowledgeable in the space, but have heard the word
'Redhat'.  Because of that it can often cause unease if you don't say
that word, because it's the only one they know.  I have found that it
is often quite desireable to avoid the unease by underlining that we
know what we're doing and they needn't worry about it.  The downside of
not defusing this is that when they don't hear the one word they know,
they start with the "OMG, they're not using Redhat!" and that goes all
the way up to the CEO, who calls Abi, who does what CEOs do and lays
down an edict that thou shalt switch to Redhat, whereupon the wheels
come off the car.

Hence, the way I usually handle this is two fold.  One, if they are just
curious, non-technical kn0bs, then I say something along the lines
of ...that's something that the Linux experts are handling, we leave
that to them.  I try not to mention that I'm talking about myself.  If
it's technical people asking, then I'd probably want to know why
they're curious about it in order to be able to better answer the
question for them.  The basic answer is that we are putting together
the environment ourselves.  We are leveraging the Debian ecosystem to
make that task efficient and maintainable.

The reason that we do it this way is that this is the correct way to
put together an embedded device based on Linux and an open source based
userspace.  And we like to do things the correct way ~:^)

Hope that wasn't too long for you ~:^)
