While installing Red Hat Linux 9, one of those clever pictures that shows up during the lengthy install shows a picture of a fortune cookie with the text: 
"Red Hat Linux: Better than duct tape"
There is plenty of credit to go around in open source software, and Red Hat is welcome to share in it, but isn't duct tape identified with Perl? If so, what does Red Hat offer that is better? They do ship perl5.8.0, so it is at least *as good* as duct tape!

It should work perfectly the first time! - toma

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Re: Better than duct tape?
by rob_au (Abbot) on May 26, 2003 at 04:40 UTC
    Well actually, there has been some concern raised with regard to the version of Perl shipped with Red Hat Linux 9.0 - See this summary from the perl5-porters list prepared by Rafael Garcia-Suarez and posted on http://use.perl.org. In short, set the environment variable LANG to C before building any modules.

    As to the original reference of Perl as the duct tape of the Internet, I seem to vaguely remember some references dated back to 1997 or so. Searching with Google returns a number of references, but alas I haven't been able to find the original essay in which I read this term.

     

    perl -le 'print+unpack"N",pack"B32","00000000000000000000001001011110"'

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      Perchance you are thinking of Larry Wall's "When's the last time you used duct tape on a duct" quote? This appeared in his Perl, the first postmodern computer language talk.

      I know there are prior references, but I can't find them either. I was sure there were some in the man pages, but that's not so for Perls between 5.005_03 and 5.8.0

      _____________________________________________
      Come to YAPC::Europe 2003 in Paris, 23-25 July 2003.

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        I was rather amused when I actually used duct tape on a duct a few months ago. I was installing a sink in the laundry room, and had to fix the dryer vent hose.

        The time before that was when building a cooling manifold for my PC.

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Re: Better than duct tape?
by Abigail-II (Bishop) on May 26, 2003 at 12:00 UTC
    Eh, no, duct tape isn't identified with Perl. If you'd ask 100 frequent users of duct tape, I bet more than 80 don't even know what Perl is. Nor is Perl identified with duct tape for that matter. Just because someone one used a catchy phrase comparing Perl to duct tape don't mean that on next months YAPC you see lots of people wearing T-shirts depicting images of rolls of duct tape.

    A certain brand of cigarettes has identified itself with camels; that doesn't mean Perl can't as well.

    Abigail

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      Hmm, that sounds like a good idea. How about this for a graphic: A roll of duct tape with a few inches pulled, so it looks like the number "6". Has "Perl" written on the roll, and a parrot with a speech bubble saying "*squak* all your interpreter are belong to us".
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Re: Better than duct tape?
by greenFox (Vicar) on May 26, 2003 at 05:55 UTC

    I noticed that too, must have been the weekend for Red Hat installs :)

    I thought the quote in relation to Perl was "The duct tape of the Internet". Either way Perl doesn't have any rights to the duct tape analogy, in the RH instance it is just the marketroids doing their thing.

    As an aside I was surprised that the Jargon File entry on Perl doesn't mention the duct tape analogy since it has the Swiss-Army chainsaw one, maybe someone should submit a patch!

    --
    Life is a tale told by an idiot -- full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. William Shakespeare, Macbeth

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Re: Better than duct tape?
by porkpilot (Deacon) on May 26, 2003 at 10:36 UTC
    As an operating system for PC-type hardware, I have found RedHat Linux 6.2 (heavily patched) to be far superior to duct tape. Generally speaking, though duct tape has the (far) better installer, the UI is monochrome (generally silver) and installing duct tape applications is sticky at best.

    Please note that I am not vouching for any RedHat Linux since 6.2, however. ;-P

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Re: Better than duct tape?
by Zaxo (Archbishop) on May 26, 2003 at 05:01 UTC

    I think that refers to managers who insist on inferior commercial products getting duct taped to the floor while LFS is installed.

    After Compline,
    Zaxo

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      Only vaguely related, but at a tech support company I worked at years ago, they were getting the entire office renovated at once. Were to put all the routers and switches? Can't have downtime... They were hung like plants from the (suspended!) ceiling with duct tape. The odd thing is that it held for 2 days until it was all taken down.

      -Lee

      "To be civilized is to deny one's nature."
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Re: Better than duct tape?
by Juerd (Abbot) on May 26, 2003 at 07:58 UTC

    They do ship perl5.8.0, so it is at least *as good* as duct tape!

    Actually, as rob_au points out, it's not exactly 5.8.0. RedHat released broken software *AGAIN*. Go RedHat! Tradition is a good thing!

    Update: Abigail-II has a good point. I don't read p5p (I do read the summaries but not the individual posts) so I didn't know this. Still, I think RedHat should not be using snapshots.

    Juerd # { site => 'juerd.nl', plp_site => 'plp.juerd.nl', do_not_use => 'spamtrap' }

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      RedHat released broken software *AGAIN*.

      As Jarkko pointed out on p5p, Redhat first contacted Jarkko to discuss which snapshot was the best to use. You can't blame Redhat for giving some weight to the pumpkins advice.

      Abigail

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Re: Better than duct tape?
by John M. Dlugosz (Monsignor) on May 28, 2003 at 20:05 UTC
    I'm sure a lot of things are better than duct tape, especially for certain applications.
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