[ Thanks to Kelly
McNeill for this link. ]
“There has been a lot written about the possible fragmentation
of Linux over the past year. Many Penguinistas (AKA: Linux
enthusiasts) label these articles as FUD. (Communication
intentionally created for the sole purpose of creating FEAR,
UNCERTAINTY, and DOUBT about products that might otherwise have a
fair chance at competing.)”
“What I would like to do is point out examples of operating
system fragmentation that are quite common but do not appear to
disturb the mainstream IT press much. They have a different label
for it, they call it “DLL Hell.” But when you really stop to
examine it, a very large part of the Windows family of operating
systems is made up of these DLLs. (A DLL is a dynamic link library
intended to allow multiple programs to share the same code without
having to physically include the code multiple times. Theoretically
this saves space in the executable files themselves and in memory
in case more than one program that uses a particular DLL are
running at the same time.)”
“As we all know, the company that published Windows also decided
they were going to write applications. Every so often they would
decide that in order for their applications to have a “richer” user
experience they would need to “innovate,” and make changes to the
operating system. So when you install their application on your
computer it also replaces key DLL files on the system. In marketing
speak, they have “enhanced” the operating system for free, giving
“added value” to the consumer. (According to Esko they have
fragmented the OS.) “