Linuxocentrism

It's amazing how linuxocentric the world has become. Thus, I was discussing the installation of a piece of GPL software on a box, one not admined by our group, with one of my colleagues. I'd already investigated — and discarded — the idea of installing sudo on the machine, when I realised how many of the necessary tools where missing. But my colleague, buoyed up with linux induced optimism, was unable to conceive of either a non-Linux system or one without the full spread of development tools:

Them	You've installed [a specific bit of monitoring software], haven't you?
Me	[ guardedly ] Yes. Why?
Them	I'm going to install it on the Library Station to monitor tape mounts. I've talked to the admins and they're happy with it. All I've got to do is raise a change for it...
Me	[ trying to temper the enthusiasm] I don't think it's quite that easy
Them	...all I need its the RPM. Where is it kept?
Me	You do realise it's running Solaris, don't you? So an RPM would really be any use...
Them	[ crushed ] Oh. [ cheering up again ] Well, maybe [ the beloved vendor ] could give me a packaged version...
Me	I doubt it. I think that you'll probably have to build it from scratch but...
Them	OK, I'll go and get the tarball. Which version do I need?
Me	...first you need to check whether the admins have got a working compiler — I doubt they'll have bothered since it's not supposed to be a general purpose machine.
Them	I'll go and check [ he goes and returns ] No. They don't think they've got one. But they're going to have a look around to see what they can find. I just assumed everything was like Linux...

There then followed a painful conversation in which I explained to him the concept of a chargeable extra and how, in the bad old days, the vendors deliberately hobbled the C compiler shipped with the system in such a way that it could only rebuild the kernel. And my colleague's eyes were as big as saucers.

Oh, to be young and idealistic again...