From owner-freebsd-advocacy Tue Nov 30 14:35:57 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mail.numachi.com (numachi.numachi.com [198.175.254.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 5463F157FD for ; Tue, 30 Nov 1999 14:35:27 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from reichert@numachi.com) Received: (qmail 18373 invoked by uid 1001); 30 Nov 1999 22:35:25 -0000 Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 17:35:25 -0500 From: Brian Reichert To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Goin' to the Bazaar! Message-ID: <19991130173524.E16736@numachi.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre4i Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In NYC, Dec 14-16th. I hope to see other FreeBSD people there... (Damn, I don't have any FreeBSD 'gear' to flaunt... :/ ) -- Brian 'you Bastard' Reichert reichert@numachi.com 37 Crystal Ave. #303 Daytime number: (781) 899-7484 x704 Derry NH 03038-1713 USA Intel architecture: the left-hand path To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Wed Dec 1 9:17:10 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from math.udel.edu (math.udel.edu [128.175.16.7]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 293B114C93 for ; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 09:16:22 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from schwenk@math.udel.edu) Received: from math.udel.edu (sisyphus.math.udel.edu [128.175.16.167]) by math.udel.edu (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.1) with ESMTP id MAA19693 for ; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 12:16:08 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <384557D8.ECEF0BDD@math.udel.edu> Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 12:16:08 -0500 From: Peter Schwenk Organization: University of Delaware X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.7 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en, fr, de, ko MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Some Observations Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I've recently switched back to FreeBSD 3.3 on my home computer (P5/233, 64MB, 9GB UWSCSI HD, Symbios Logic 875 host adapter, SoundBlaster 64AWE, IDE CDROM and Zip drives) after using RedHat Linux 6.x for several months. As a little background on myself, I'm a system administrator by trade that's familiar with Solaris, which is Sys V-style UNIX. I've been using both FreeBSD and Linux (Slackware, then RedHat) at home and work for roughly five years. I still consider myself a newbie. I also consider myself to be a software consumer, not a hacker. I'm a Walnut Creek FreeBSD subscriber since mid-2.2.x. That being said, I would like to present my observations about FreeBSD, in contrast with my recent Linux experiences, with the hope that they will help the FreeBSD community make a better product. Now's a good time to delete this message, if you don't care what I think. First of all, I consider FreeBSD to be a technically superior operating system when compared with Linux. I like the core team development model. Linux development seems too rag-tag. Where I believe FreeBSD lacks is in the area of initial setup. The setup program itself is fine. I've only recently had troubles with it (for some reason, the most recent install complained about the failure to install a distribution called 'local'). I just wish that the FreeBSD team made some different assumptions about which type of user will be using the software. Right now, it seems that the assumption is the software will be used on a server without a GUI. I think this alienates a bunch of new users. For example, xdm is turned off by default. Most people coming from other OSs expect a graphical login and a GUI to be immediately available. When compared with RedHat Linux 6.x, FreeBSD makes it much more difficult for newbie users to use removeable media. I tried both the Gnome and KDE GUIs briefly (operative word) , and I was unable to figure out how to access the floppy and cdrom drives from the GUI. Being used to UNIX, I know how to mount filesystems, but the average user will not know how to do this. The Gnome setup that RedHat uses comes with desktop icons for working with the contents of removeable media. I didn't use KDE under Linux. These may be more KDE and Gnome issues. I'm not very familiar with the inner-workings of either of them, but the point is RedHat makes the assumption that their target user is not very UNIX-savvy, and I think this a good assumption when a company wants to make serious inroads into the comsumer software market. RedHat and Linux in general are far from perfect from the software consumer perspective, but I believe that they are on the right track. It may be that FreeBSD's market focus is on the server end of things. This is fine, but it's hard to tell what the focus is. I'm going to keep FreeBSD on my home system for a while longer, just to see if I can work out some of the ease-of-use issues. This system is used by my wife and I, and I found I needed to do less explaining on how to do things when I had RedHat Linux on it. This being a home system and my being a software consumer not prone to tinkering, RedHat Linux is looking like a better option. This is a downer because a lot of the nut-and-bolts of FreeBSD works better. For example, the user-PPP of FreeBSD works a ton better than Linux's. I hated messing around with the 'ipchains' firewalling setup to filter out traffic that was keeping my demand-dial PPP link up longer than it needed to be. People suggested 'diald', and I thought 'Oh great, another piece of software to mess with and try to integrate into the RedHat way of doing things. No thanks.' So now I'm back with FreeBSD, but for how long? I need to decide how much ease-of-use outweighs how well the system works behind the scenes. I would be interested to see what you folks in this mailing-list think of my opinions. -- PETER SCHWENK | UNIX System Administrator Department of Mathematical Sciences | University of Delaware schwenk@math.udel.edu | (302)831-0437 <-NEW!!! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Wed Dec 1 10:56:49 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from sol.cc.u-szeged.hu (sol.cc.u-szeged.hu [160.114.8.24]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E0A0515015 for ; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 10:56:41 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from sziszi@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu) Received: from petra.hos.u-szeged.hu by sol.cc.u-szeged.hu (8.9.1b+Sun/SMI-SVR4) id TAA08165; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 19:55:53 +0100 (MET) Received: from sziszi by petra.hos.u-szeged.hu with local (Exim 2.05 #1 (Debian)) id 11tEkk-0001o0-00; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 19:45:22 +0100 Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 19:45:22 +0100 From: Szilveszter Adam To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Some Observations Message-ID: <19991201194522.A5515@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org References: <384557D8.ECEF0BDD@math.udel.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii User-Agent: Mutt/1.0i In-Reply-To: <384557D8.ECEF0BDD@math.udel.edu>; from schwenk@math.udel.edu on Wed, Dec 01, 1999 at 12:16:08PM -0500 Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hi! Just some personal opinion on this... On Wed, Dec 01, 1999 at 12:16:08PM -0500, Peter Schwenk wrote: > I've recently switched back to FreeBSD 3.3 on my home computer (P5/233, > 64MB, 9GB UWSCSI HD, Symbios Logic 875 host adapter, SoundBlaster 64AWE, > IDE CDROM and Zip drives) after using RedHat Linux 6.x for several > months. As a little background on myself, I'm a system administrator by > trade that's familiar with Solaris, which is Sys V-style UNIX. I've > been using both FreeBSD and Linux (Slackware, then RedHat) at home and > work for roughly five years. I still consider myself a newbie. I also > consider myself to be a software consumer, not a hacker. I'm a Walnut > Creek FreeBSD subscriber since mid-2.2.x. Well, I have been a PC user since I went to High School, which is less than 10 years ago. (Earlier there were virtually no PCs available in Hungary) Before that I used the legendary Commodore 64. My background is not computer-related and not even scientific: I am a law student. (*grin*) I have used various Windows variants from the 3.x and 9.x branch and also NT and had some (user) experience with Red Hat and Debian Linux. So my experince is nothing compared to yours. > Right now, it seems that the assumption is the software will be used on > a server without a GUI. I think this alienates a bunch of new users. > For example, xdm is turned off by default. Most people coming from > other OSs expect a graphical login and a GUI to be immediately > available. When I first installed FreeBSD, (3.1, BTW) I was surprised to see how easy the process was. My friends here at the dorm were amazed when I told them that after only 2 hours the whole system including X was up and running. (I did an ftp install, that's why it took this much) I very much appreciated the hand-holding I received during the setup process. It was much better than, say the Debian install program, which is sometimes very hard to figure out. As for graphical logins, well that is gainig acceptance, although I do not know what happens when the autodetection of the video card fails (it is getting more and more rare, admittedly) and therefore the X server cannot be configured correctly. What does the install do then? (I do not know) When I installed RH way back, it did not recognize my S3 Virge GX2 card and therefore started asking all sorts of questions that a newbie for sure will not be able to answer like "What is your RAMDAC type?" etc. I think it is much better to do system setup first and fiddle with X afterwards because that way if something goes wrong you already have a running system from where you can send email to a mailing list or read a HOWTO. Also I do not find it to be a good idea if a user gets the idea that a GUI is part of the OS. IMHO It is not (although I saw the differing opinions on /. recently) and it never was until M$ put their WM in kernel mode "for performance reasons". Here in Hungary almost everybody started off using DOS and Win 3.x so they do not have this disbelief and are much less offended by the command line. In fact Norton Commander and its DOS clones are the favorite File Managers even on Win98 systems today here. So while having a GUI is nice to start with, it is not essential. If you are prepared what to expect than you will not find this a problem. I did grow to like CLI so much that I do not leave it whole day long but only to see picture files or to start up the Real Player which does not have CL mode:-( > > When compared with RedHat Linux 6.x, FreeBSD makes it much more > difficult for newbie users to use removeable media. I tried both the [SNIP] You suggest this might be a Gnome or KDE issue. No, it is not. It is a matter of having "users" in the /etc/fstab entries for floppy drives etc by default. the icons can be installed later:-) I know that this might be strange to someone who came from Windows, but you can get used to this as well. If the SA feels he/she can trust the local users to use their floppies etc then the entry can be added to fstab. But it is best left to the SA to decide. Otherwise we would slowly but surely end up where WinNT did, being rather useable out of the box, but as a member of CdC put it, you have to do those 450 minor modifications to your default install just to make it reasonably secure. I have not seen any place where all of them would have been done on every box running NT. (This does not pertain to faulty software which is a differnt story, this is just configuration and lax defaults.) Also I am aware that eg Caldera OpenLinux goes even further by automatically mounting and unmounting these media as they are inserted and ejected. Good idea but I cannot wait to see the first message of the type: "The system needs the floppy No 5644646456, please put it into the drive and press OK" They were so much of a nuisance under Win...but again this is just me, maybe me only... > I'm going to keep FreeBSD on my home system for a while longer, just to > see if I can work out some of the ease-of-use issues. This system is > used by my wife and I, and I found I needed to do less explaining on how > to do things when I had RedHat Linux on it. This being a home system > and my being a software consumer not prone to tinkering, RedHat Linux is > looking like a better option. This is a downer because a lot of the [SNIP] Well, my most frequent observation in this area is this: If someone buys a new TV set they will at least hastily read the Manual, at least the first pages. If someone wants to use an OS, they expect it to be useable without learning. Strange, eh? Most have never read a book about Windows either but that is OK because many are forced to use PCs at work etc when they do not want to so they do not learn it. But nobody forces you to choose Linux or *BSD... so I think what people should do is do a little more perusal of the excellent docs that both Linux and the *BSD projects provide, including FAQs, websites etc that you can use even without installing the system first. This is often a problem with English-speaking people, what should others say who may not have the OS and docs translated into their mother tongue while Windows usually *IS* available...without trying to understand how things work, it will not lead very far... I am not saying you have to be expert on this (I could not use a PC then:-) but you can and therefore should go further than just "I-click-that-huge-button-just-to-see-what-it-does"... I think the FreeBSD project and esp Jordan who is taking care of the installer went to great lenghts to make things easy for newbies and enjoyable to experienced users alike. I would like to say thanks to him and everybody who at any point has worked on this wonderful product. I myself would like to donate some docs to the project but right now we have exam sessions giong on so this is not a good time to do it, but I always get sad when I see that people do not read them and ask the most basic "How do I trun on the PC" type questions on (often wrong) mailing lists... > > I would be interested to see what you folks in this mailing-list think > of my opinions. Well, here it is... Sorry if I had been very long...and sorry for offending anyone, it was not my intent... Cheers: Szilveszter ADAM -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Szilveszter ADAM * JATE Szeged * email: sziszi@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu * * Homepage : none * alternate email: cc@flanker.itl.net.ua * * Finger sziszi@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu for PGP key. * * I prefer using the door instead of Windows(tm)... * To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Wed Dec 1 11:22:53 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from serenity.mcc.ac.uk (serenity.mcc.ac.uk [130.88.200.93]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5A9441515A for ; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 11:22:49 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org) Received: from dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org ([130.88.200.97]) by serenity.mcc.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 1.92 #3) id 11tFKu-000HLN-00; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 19:22:44 +0000 Received: from localhost (jcm@localhost) by dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id TAA86438; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 19:22:43 GMT (envelope-from jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org) Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 19:22:43 +0000 (GMT) From: Jonathon McKitrick To: Szilveszter Adam Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Some Observations In-Reply-To: <19991201194522.A5515@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, Szilveszter Adam wrote: >Also I do not >find it to be a good idea if a user gets the idea that a GUI is part of >the OS. IMHO It is not (although I saw the differing opinions on /. >recently) and it never was until M$ put their WM in kernel mode "for >performance reasons". Here in Hungary almost everybody started off using DOS >and Win 3.x so they do not have this disbelief and are much less offended by >the command line. In fact Norton Commander and its DOS clones are the >favorite File Managers even on Win98 systems today here. So while having a >GUI is nice to start with, it is not essential. If you are prepared what to >expect than you will not find this a problem. I did grow to like CLI so much >that I do not leave it whole day long but only to see picture files or to >start up the Real Player which does not have CL mode:-( I'm starting to agree. I love GUIs and there are many jobs that can't be done any other way. But we should HAVE to have them. I find i always open an Xterm because i get WAY more done with Midnight Commander than i do with any GUI file manager. But i think advancing users should be comfortable with both. Yes, i love nice looking GUIs and i usually start mine right up before doing anything else. But then i open an Xterm and go to work... >No, it is not. It is a matter of having "users" in the /etc/fstab entries >for floppy drives etc by default. the icons can be installed later:-) I know >that this Actually, it's a little different in BSD, admittedly a bit of an annoyance. I wish it were as easy as an fstab entry. But it would be nice if there were a way after installing to integrate KDE or Gnome into the system more. I think Mandrake Linux has it right in this area. -jm To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Wed Dec 1 12:17:56 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from sol.cc.u-szeged.hu (sol.cc.u-szeged.hu [160.114.8.24]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BC0B2150FA for ; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 12:17:51 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from sziszi@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu) Received: from petra.hos.u-szeged.hu by sol.cc.u-szeged.hu (8.9.1b+Sun/SMI-SVR4) id VAA12517; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 21:17:52 +0100 (MET) Received: from sziszi by petra.hos.u-szeged.hu with local (Exim 2.05 #1 (Debian)) id 11tG26-0002JH-00; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 21:07:22 +0100 Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 21:07:22 +0100 From: Szilveszter Adam To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Some Observations Message-ID: <19991201210722.A8249@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org References: <19991201194522.A5515@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii User-Agent: Mutt/1.0i In-Reply-To: ; from jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org on Wed, Dec 01, 1999 at 07:22:43PM +0000 Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hi! On Wed, Dec 01, 1999 at 07:22:43PM +0000, Jonathon McKitrick wrote: > > >No, it is not. It is a matter of having "users" in the /etc/fstab entries > >for floppy drives etc by default. the icons can be installed later:-) I know > >that this > > Actually, it's a little different in BSD, admittedly a bit of an > annoyance. I wish it were as easy as an fstab entry. But it would be > nice if there were a way after installing to integrate KDE or Gnome into > the system more. I think Mandrake Linux has it right in this area. OK, so yet another case where I was speaking without thinking. This is bad. I have just checked and the two systems (Linux, FreeBSD) are different. Sorry, I did not know... next time I will check. This makes things more difficult, of course.... I do not know Mandrake Linux, I have only seen it on pictures, but it is becoming the trend to ship the system with KDE (most) or Gnome (only RH 6.x and derivatives) as default. Yes it is nice. I use Enlightenment with Gnome so me too, like eye candy...but not all the time. The only probs I had with Gnome intergration into the system were that most of the stock sysutils on it (nice bar gauges, etc) only work on -RELEASE and since I track -STABLE they simply refuse to start... but then we have enough of sysutils in ports...and maybe with tinkering you could even change the way these utils (Gnome Diskfree etc) are configured. Maybe I will look into this some time... Cheers: Szilveszter ADAM -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Szilveszter ADAM * JATE Szeged * email: sziszi@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu * * Homepage : none * alternate email: cc@flanker.itl.net.ua * * Finger sziszi@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu for PGP key. * * I prefer using the door instead of Windows(tm)... * To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Wed Dec 1 13: 7:15 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from math.udel.edu (math.udel.edu [128.175.16.7]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D2F7C151FB for ; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 13:06:57 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from schwenk@math.udel.edu) Received: from math.udel.edu (sisyphus.math.udel.edu [128.175.16.167]) by math.udel.edu (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.1) with ESMTP id QAA25609 for ; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 16:04:59 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <38458D7A.94BDC53@math.udel.edu> Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 16:04:58 -0500 From: Peter Schwenk Organization: University of Delaware X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.7 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en, fr, de, ko MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Some Observations References: <384557D8.ECEF0BDD@math.udel.edu> <19991201194522.A5515@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Szilveszter Adam wrote: > Hi! Howdy. [lines removed] > What does the install do then? (I do not know) When I > installed RH way back, it did not recognize my S3 Virge GX2 card and > therefore started asking all sorts of questions that a newbie for sure will > not be able to answer like "What is your RAMDAC type?" etc. I think it is > much better to do system setup first and fiddle with X afterwards because > that way if something goes wrong you already have a running system from > where you can send email to a mailing list or read a HOWTO. RedHat 6.x hasn't failed to detect anything I've got, but I've only presented it with less-than-cutting-edge hardware. I don't really know what it does if the X configurator fails. I would imagine that it doesn't make the default runlevel 5. If the aim is to make FreeBSD more newbie-friendly and try to attract disgruntled Windows users, then I would say that a GUI should be the default. The Linuxes seem to be moving into that market. I would guess that FreeBSD would like a piece of the action. [lines removed] > > > Also I do not > find it to be a good idea if a user gets the idea that a GUI is part of > the OS. It has been my experience that most users don't care what is considered part of the operating system. They just want to do their work in a simple way. I has also been my experience that most users take to GUIs more easily than a CLI. When I consider what a person like my wife wants to do with a computer, I'm becoming more hesitant to use FreeBSD because the Linuxes seem to have done a better job of getting the system newbie-ready out of the box. [lines removed] > No, it is not. It is a matter of having "users" in the /etc/fstab entries > for floppy drives etc by default. the icons can be installed later:-) I know > that this > might be strange to someone who came from Windows, but you can get used to > this as well. If the SA feels he/she can trust the local users to use their > floppies etc then the entry can be added to fstab. As was pointed out by someone else, this doesn't work. I would love to hear how to make mounting removeable media easier for non-root users, however. [lines removed] > But it is best left to > the SA to decide. Otherwise we would slowly but surely end up where WinNT > did, being rather useable out of the box, but as a member of CdC put it, you > have to do those 450 minor modifications to your default install just to > make it reasonably secure. I have not seen any place where all of them > would have > been done on every box running NT. (This does not pertain to faulty > software which is a differnt story, this is just configuration and > lax defaults.) Also I am aware that eg Caldera OpenLinux goes even further > by automatically mounting and unmounting these media as they are inserted > and ejected. Good idea but I cannot wait to see the first message of the > type: "The system needs the floppy No 5644646456, please put it into the > drive and press OK" They were so much of a nuisance under Win...but again > this is just me, maybe me only... It's hard to explain to someone who's only exposure to computers in the past has allowed them to directly access the removeable media how to use the mount command, plus some workaround is needed for non-root users (sudo?). I'm thinking that 'mtools' might be an option, but that's CLI, and I don't want to take the time to explain that to someone like my wife (no, she's not an idiot, just easily turned off to computers if the going gets tough). Again, the out-of-box Gnome setup that RedHat has seems to get it right. I can almost hear the people out there yelling, "Well, go back to RedHat, %#&^&#$!." But I want to stick with FreeBSD, if I can relatively pain-free. I was also thinking about 'amd' and whether or not it can be used to automatically mount media. Any done this? Could it be part of the setup out-of-the-box? I don't know. [lines removed] > If someone buys a new TV set they will at least hastily read the Manual, at > least the first pages. I'm different here, and I would suspect the majority of people are also. I just plug it in and turn it on. If something doesn't work as expected, then I look at the book. I think its the same way with most computer users. At least that's my feeling. [lines removed] > I think the FreeBSD project and esp Jordan who is taking care of the > installer went to great lenghts to make things easy for newbies and > enjoyable to experienced users alike. I would like to say thanks to him and > everybody who at any point has worked on this wonderful product. I agree whole-heartedly. It's an amazing product. It blows my mind that a group of people puts so much time and energy into something that they give away for free. I'm thankful everyday that I've got an alternative OS to use. That's why I haven't stopped my subscription to FreeBSD even though I haven't been using it for almost a year. This is my only means of support to the project, since I can't contribute code. [lines removed] > Well, here it is... Sorry if I had been very long...and sorry for offending > anyone, it was not my intent... Thanks! > > > Cheers: > > Szilveszter ADAM > [lines removed] -- PETER SCHWENK | UNIX System Administrator Department of Mathematical Sciences | University of Delaware schwenk@math.udel.edu | (302)831-0437 <-NEW!!! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Wed Dec 1 14: 9:48 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from sol.cc.u-szeged.hu (sol.cc.u-szeged.hu [160.114.8.24]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4CD1515067 for ; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 14:09:35 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from sziszi@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu) Received: from petra.hos.u-szeged.hu by sol.cc.u-szeged.hu (8.9.1b+Sun/SMI-SVR4) id XAA18247; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 23:09:05 +0100 (MET) Received: from sziszi by petra.hos.u-szeged.hu with local (Exim 2.05 #1 (Debian)) id 11tHll-0002qH-00; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 22:58:37 +0100 Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 22:58:37 +0100 From: Szilveszter Adam To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Some Observations Message-ID: <19991201225836.B8249@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org References: <384557D8.ECEF0BDD@math.udel.edu> <19991201194522.A5515@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> <38458D7A.94BDC53@math.udel.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii User-Agent: Mutt/1.0i In-Reply-To: <38458D7A.94BDC53@math.udel.edu>; from schwenk@math.udel.edu on Wed, Dec 01, 1999 at 04:04:58PM -0500 Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hi! On Wed, Dec 01, 1999 at 04:04:58PM -0500, Peter Schwenk wrote: > RedHat 6.x hasn't failed to detect anything I've got, but I've only presented it > with less-than-cutting-edge hardware. I don't really know what it does if the X > configurator fails. I would imagine that it doesn't make the default runlevel 5. [SNIP] If so, it *surely* will not turn disgruntled Win users off:-) I ought to know, because this particular incident was *why* I decided to stick to Win for a while and watch how Linux develops, until it gets more user-friendly:-) > > It has been my experience that most users don't care what is considered part of > the operating system. They just want to do their work in a simple way. I has > also been my experience that most users take to GUIs more easily than a CLI. When [SNIP] I am afraid that with the new generation of PC users who only know of Win9x, PnP etc the situation will become quickly the same here too... I think it is not a good development...but there are some signs of hope, too. At the University where I study, about 95% of students use a shell account on almost a daily basis to check their mail. (Of course most will never know that they had been UNIX users for years. They just type Pine because they had been instructed to do so...yet there is no yelling about the non-GUI software, much more about the inadequate bandwith to the Net:-))) > As was pointed out by someone else, this doesn't work. I would love to hear how > to make mounting removeable media easier for non-root users, however. Yes, I was completely wrong on assuming that the mount commands are the same... see, I am not experienced... now only risk an assumption that amd can be used to achieve what we want... but running amd opens up another set of possible problems... [SNIP] > be used to automatically mount media. Any done this? Could it be part of the > setup out-of-the-box? I don't know. [SNIP] Well, maybe it would be possible (I strongly suspect that OpenLinux does something similar with the "automatic" mounts and umounts..) but I would not like to have this on by default. It should be documented and maybe an easy way provided to turn it on but not more... on a box that is connected to the Net, running non-vital services is a Bad Thing(TM) Of course, if it is just standing in the room with only a family accessing it, this may be OK. [SNIP] > I'm different here, and I would suspect the majority of people are also. I just > plug it in and turn it on. If something doesn't work as expected, then I look at > the book. I think its the same way with most computer users. At least that's my > feeling. Maybe you are right but what I was trying to get at is: a) You are paying attention to a new appliance because you are aware that you might accidentally break something in it if you do not handle it properly (at least here in Hungary, because you do not have the money to buy another one and you cannot sue the manufacturer for high amount of damages because their product was not user-friendly enough. It is your problem.) So you'd better read the docs. Why not do this for an OS that is better documented than any coffee-maker machine and also more complex?:-) b) I do not like the fool-proof approach that is gaining momentum everywhere. Maybe it is my problem that I am a bit jelaous that I had to learn all those things while others do not have to...please ignore this part. Everybody has bad traits. Hope I am not getting to boring... I was merely trying to stimulate the discussion a bit by offering my very limited insight and my little knowledge. Cheers! Szilveszter ADAM -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Szilveszter ADAM * JATE Szeged * email: sziszi@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu * * Homepage : none * alternate email: cc@flanker.itl.net.ua * * Finger sziszi@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu for PGP key. * * I prefer using the door instead of Windows(tm)... * To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Wed Dec 1 14:25:44 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from shell.futuresouth.com (shell.futuresouth.com [198.78.58.28]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2A17A15189 for ; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 14:25:29 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from fullermd@futuresouth.com) Received: (from fullermd@localhost) by shell.futuresouth.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id QAA26376; Wed, 1 Dec 1999 16:23:48 -0600 (CST) Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 16:23:48 -0600 From: "Matthew D. Fuller" To: Peter Schwenk Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Some Observations Message-ID: <19991201162348.N22444@futuresouth.com> References: <384557D8.ECEF0BDD@math.udel.edu> <19991201194522.A5515@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> <38458D7A.94BDC53@math.udel.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre3i In-Reply-To: <38458D7A.94BDC53@math.udel.edu> X-OS: FreeBSD Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wed, Dec 01, 1999 at 04:04:58PM -0500, a little birdie told me that Peter Schwenk remarked > Szilveszter Adam wrote: > > > Hi! > > Howdy. Hidi-ho! > RedHat 6.x hasn't failed to detect anything I've got, but I've only presented it > with less-than-cutting-edge hardware. I don't really know what it does if the X > configurator fails. I would imagine that it doesn't make the default runlevel 5. > If the aim is to make FreeBSD more newbie-friendly and try to attract disgruntled > Windows users, then I would say that a GUI should be the default. The Linuxes > seem to be moving into that market. I would guess that FreeBSD would like a piece > of the action. I'm wondering if maybe some sort of options, if X is installed but not configured ([ ! -x /etc/XF86Config ] or some such), it would prompt if you want to run XF86Setup. Obviously, there's a lot of pitfalls, but something similar perhaps... > > No, it is not. It is a matter of having "users" in the /etc/fstab entries > > for floppy drives etc by default. the icons can be installed later:-) I know > > that this > > might be strange to someone who came from Windows, but you can get used to > > this as well. If the SA feels he/she can trust the local users to use their > > floppies etc then the entry can be added to fstab. > > As was pointed out by someone else, this doesn't work. I would love to hear how > to make mounting removeable media easier for non-root users, however. ... > It's hard to explain to someone who's only exposure to computers in the past has > allowed them to directly access the removeable media how to use the mount command, > plus some workaround is needed for non-root users (sudo?). I'm thinking that sysctl -w vfs.usermount=1 -- Matthew Fuller (MF4839) | fullermd@over-yonder.net Unix Systems Administrator | fullermd@futuresouth.com Specializing in FreeBSD | http://www.over-yonder.net/ FutureSouth Communications | ISPHelp ISP Consulting "The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is because I haven't figured out how to light the middle yet" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Dec 2 8:43:24 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from serenity.mcc.ac.uk (serenity.mcc.ac.uk [130.88.200.93]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6BE0014C8C for ; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 08:43:19 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org) Received: from dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org ([130.88.200.97]) by serenity.mcc.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 1.92 #3) id 11tZIO-000Kcr-00; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 16:41:28 +0000 Received: from localhost (jcm@localhost) by dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id QAA93953; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 16:41:27 GMT (envelope-from jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org) Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 16:41:27 +0000 (GMT) From: Jonathon McKitrick To: "Matthew D. Fuller" Cc: Peter Schwenk , freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Some Observations In-Reply-To: <19991201162348.N22444@futuresouth.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, Matthew D. Fuller wrote: >sysctl -w vfs.usermount=1 I just tried this with my Zip drive and it says operation not permitted. Do i also need to change the permissions on the /dev/da0 entry? -jm To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Dec 2 9:22:29 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in (theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in [144.16.71.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id BE66914CA6 for ; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 09:22:16 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in) Received: (qmail 7986 invoked by uid 211); 2 Dec 1999 17:21:37 -0000 Received: from localhost (sendmail-bs@127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 2 Dec 1999 17:21:37 -0000 Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 22:51:37 +0530 (IST) From: Rahul Siddharthan To: "Matthew D. Fuller" Cc: Peter Schwenk , freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Some Observations Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > It's hard to explain to someone who's only exposure to > > computers in the past has allowed them to directly access the > > removeable media how to use the mount command, plus some > > workaround is needed for non-root users (sudo?). I'm > > thinking that > > sysctl -w vfs.usermount=1 Actually, there's another long-standing bug relating to floppies (maybe its fixed in the last couple of months however): if you mount a write-protected floppy rw (as root), and mistakenly try to write to it, any attempt to unmount it after that crashes the system. Speaking on this topic, I've set up one FreeBSD box in a crowd of linux boxen, and the faster boxes (including the FreeBSD one) run KDE (personally I sometimes use GNOME/E or XFCE) plus the slower ones (486's) are mainly used command-line. No one has any problem with FreeBSD's user-friendliness, with KDE running on top of it. Many of the command-line programs (more, ftp, ping) have nice refinements compared to the linux or traditional unix versions. I don't think from a normal user's point of view, apart from the removable media thing, there are any deficiencies in FreeBSD+usual desktop environments, compared to linux. (Yes, the removal media issue is a problem, though floppy use is increasingly rare now. Quick fix for floppies is mtools: only for DOS format, I believe, but one normally uses DOS-formatted floppies anyway.) However, I did do the work of setting up the system first. A newbie would certainly find Redhat, etc, much easier "out of the box". Even relatively experienced people may feel nervous with FreeBSD: I recently failed in an attempt to install FreeBSD/OpenBSD on a new email server. (They installed linux, and its working fine, so I can't really complain...) I think the BSD's would certainly benefit from a "desktop" distribution which installs various GUI's with the standard frills automatically and easily. If some enterprising person would set up a company to market BSD "distributions" a la RedHat, it would be nice. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Dec 2 11:48:45 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from shell.futuresouth.com (shell.futuresouth.com [198.78.58.28]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EACBB150B6 for ; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 11:48:37 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from fullermd@futuresouth.com) Received: (from fullermd@localhost) by shell.futuresouth.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id NAA16627; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 13:47:08 -0600 (CST) Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 13:47:08 -0600 From: "Matthew D. Fuller" To: Jonathon McKitrick Cc: Peter Schwenk , freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Some Observations Message-ID: <19991202134708.V22444@futuresouth.com> References: <19991201162348.N22444@futuresouth.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre3i In-Reply-To: X-OS: FreeBSD Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thu, Dec 02, 1999 at 04:41:27PM +0000, a little birdie told me that Jonathon McKitrick remarked > On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, Matthew D. Fuller wrote: > >sysctl -w vfs.usermount=1 > > I just tried this with my Zip drive and it says operation not permitted. > Do i also need to change the permissions on the /dev/da0 entry? Yes. It works this way: 1) Only root normally can use mount(2). That sysctl allows normal users to use it as well. 2) You can only mount something (/dev/foo) that you have write access to (do you only need read if you mount ro? Not sure...) on a mount point that you have write access to (or do you have to own it?) (Excuse the ambiguity, I've never tried mounting as anything but root) So the permissions all need to be set appropriately. I believe fd* are the only ones that be default allow mortals to tamper with them. -- Matthew Fuller (MF4839) | fullermd@over-yonder.net Unix Systems Administrator | fullermd@futuresouth.com Specializing in FreeBSD | http://www.over-yonder.net/ FutureSouth Communications | ISPHelp ISP Consulting "The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is because I haven't figured out how to light the middle yet" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Dec 2 12:11:20 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from shell.futuresouth.com (shell.futuresouth.com [198.78.58.28]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4633714C0F for ; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 12:11:14 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from fullermd@futuresouth.com) Received: (from fullermd@localhost) by shell.futuresouth.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id OAA18625; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 14:09:25 -0600 (CST) Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 14:09:25 -0600 From: "Matthew D. Fuller" To: Rahul Siddharthan Cc: Peter Schwenk , freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Some Observations Message-ID: <19991202140924.W22444@futuresouth.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre3i In-Reply-To: X-OS: FreeBSD Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thu, Dec 02, 1999 at 10:51:37PM +0530, a little birdie told me that Rahul Siddharthan remarked > > > > sysctl -w vfs.usermount=1 > > Actually, there's another long-standing bug relating to floppies > (maybe its fixed in the last couple of months however): if you > mount a write-protected floppy rw (as root), and mistakenly try > to write to it, any attempt to unmount it after that crashes the > system. Other similar problems exist with writing past the end of a block device when it tries to flush the buffers. However, that's neither here nor there (there's a long-standing bug relating to the x86 architecture that allows you to install Windows too ;) > Speaking on this topic, I've set up one FreeBSD box in a crowd of > linux boxen, and the faster boxes (including the FreeBSD one) run > KDE (personally I sometimes use GNOME/E or XFCE) plus the slower > ones (486's) are mainly used command-line. No one has any problem > with FreeBSD's user-friendliness, with KDE running on top of it. Ick! I'll stick with [c]twm, thanks... > Many of the command-line programs (more, ftp, ping) have nice > refinements compared to the linux or traditional unix versions. > I don't think from a normal user's point of view, apart from the > removable media thing, there are any deficiencies in > FreeBSD+usual desktop environments, compared to linux. (Yes, the > removal media issue is a problem, though floppy use is > increasingly rare now. Quick fix for floppies is mtools: only > for DOS format, I believe, but one normally uses DOS-formatted > floppies anyway.) I've only used ufs floppies once. Normally only use floppies at all for installation. However, in a 'lab' sort of environment when people are working with 'small' datasets they carry on floppies, a which sysctl and creation of a small icon/script to mount them is pretty simple to pull off. > However, I did do the work of setting up the system first. A > newbie would certainly find Redhat, etc, much easier "out of the > box". Even relatively experienced people may feel nervous with > FreeBSD: I recently failed in an attempt to install > FreeBSD/OpenBSD on a new email server. (They installed linux, and > its working fine, so I can't really complain...) And here is the crux of the problem. Once the system (including X and wm of choice) is up and running, few people have problems (those that do tend to be more problems of taste than 'what the fsck do I do?'). It's getting it up and running that's a pain. > I think the BSD's would certainly benefit from a "desktop" > distribution which installs various GUI's with the standard > frills automatically and easily. If some enterprising person > would set up a company to market BSD "distributions" a la RedHat, > it would be nice. And this is *HARD*. I have a fair bit of experience with FreeBSD/X, and computers in general, and I *STILL* often have trouble getting X configured right. Granted, this tends to be on 1-4 'generation' old hardware, but that seems to be what a lot of people start by installing on, and also what we as a community encourage. "Don't toss that 486, put FreeBSD on it and learn it, then you can put it on your P3-500 once you know it!". I just helped a friend install FreeBSD on a 486/33 with a Mach32 video card. No luck getting X up until I stopped trying to use the Mach32 X server and switched to the vanilla SVGA. Tell me that's not unintuitive. Plus the 'which parts of X do I install?' bit is bewildering. Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't see how well we can even *INSTALL* X in a semi-generic config on a wide range of systems, much less configure. On that note, maybe if we made the X dist selection similar to our main dist selection; have a 'minimum', 'basic' (which must include the headers etc, which I didn't have on my first X install; made compiling X stuff a PITA), 'heavy', and 'everything', with at least some explanation of what they contain (servers, fonts, extras, etc), that might help a bit. At least, on the install. Having it reboot and come up in a GUI? I can't imagine how it could be done in the general case, there's just too wide a range of hardware, from a 512k Cirrus to a 64M Voodoo27, some of which just doesn't work like the docs say. I think the best we could do would be to have an option to boot up into XF86Setup. On a closing note, I think it's important to notice the reason this *HASN'T* been done so far. The FreeBSD team is commited to making a quality product, and a touted feature that works for 25%, 50%, or even 75% of the populace is not an option. If it works for 3/4 of the people, but for 1/4 of the people it fails and leaves them stranded (even if it only SEEMS like they're stranded), that'll do more damage to us as a community than if it didn't exist at all. And something like this is nigh on impossible to do with 95% success. I doubt anyone thinks it's a bad idea (presuming it's easy to adjust; I never run XDM on my personal machines, only on i.e. lab machines), it's just that actually doing it takes a lot of preparatory work and a WHOLE lot of elbow grease to get it working in the first place, and constant labor to keep from sliding downhill. And with our general server-orientation and experienced-UNIX-person-orientation, nobody has stepped forward with both the ability, resources, and willingness to see it through in the long term, and nobody wants another spectacular short-term effort that rots before it ever sees the -RELEASE light of day. -- Matthew Fuller (MF4839) | fullermd@over-yonder.net Unix Systems Administrator | fullermd@futuresouth.com Specializing in FreeBSD | http://www.over-yonder.net/ FutureSouth Communications | ISPHelp ISP Consulting "The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is because I haven't figured out how to light the middle yet" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Dec 2 12:18:25 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from probity.mcc.ac.uk (probity.mcc.ac.uk [130.88.200.94]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2483E14EB9 for ; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 12:18:20 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org) Received: from dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org ([130.88.200.97]) by probity.mcc.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 1.92 #3) id 11tcfE-000Bh7-00; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 20:17:16 +0000 Received: from localhost (jcm@localhost) by dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id UAA95010; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 20:17:16 GMT (envelope-from jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org) Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 20:17:15 +0000 (GMT) From: Jonathon McKitrick To: "Matthew D. Fuller" Cc: Rahul Siddharthan , Peter Schwenk , freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Some Observations In-Reply-To: <19991202140924.W22444@futuresouth.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, Matthew D. Fuller wrote: > >Other similar problems exist with writing past the end of a block device >when it tries to flush the buffers. However, that's neither here nor >there (there's a long-standing bug relating to the x86 architecture that >allows you to install Windows too ;) Wait, you mean this is a *feature*, not a bug? -jm ------------------ Bayliss: "And that's another thing... you never say 'please' and 'thank you.'" Pendleton: "Please stop being an idiot. Thank you." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Dec 2 14:50:51 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from phreebsd.org (edslppp251.dnvr.uswest.net [216.160.165.251]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3F60E14C5A; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 14:50:46 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from geniusj@phreebsd.org) Received: from localhost (geniusj@localhost) by phreebsd.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA00495; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 15:48:07 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from geniusj@phreebsd.org) Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 15:48:07 -0700 (MST) From: Jason DiCioccio To: chat@freebsd.org Cc: advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Vulnerability postings.. Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Am I the only one that is not annoyed by the guy who is posting 3rd-party programs as exploits for FreeBSD and making them sound like they come with FreeBSD? It's giving FreeBSD a pretty bad reputation having 5 in a row posted like that.. I say we send hitmen after him :-) -JD- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Dec 2 15:26:20 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix, from userid 758) id 5E94E15174; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 15:26:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4C50E1CD42C; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 15:26:17 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kris@hub.freebsd.org) Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 15:26:17 -0800 (PST) From: Kris Kennaway To: Jason DiCioccio Cc: chat@freebsd.org, advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Vulnerability postings.. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, Jason DiCioccio wrote: > Am I the only one that is not annoyed by the guy who is posting 3rd-party > programs as exploits for FreeBSD and making them sound like they come with > FreeBSD? They do come with FreeBSD :-) > It's giving FreeBSD a pretty bad reputation having 5 in a row > posted like that.. I say we send hitmen after him :-) In my response to the bugtraq post I corrected which ones were actually our fault and which not. Kris To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Dec 2 15:49:24 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from ind.alcatel.com (postal.xylan.com [208.8.0.248]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7C38C14A05 for ; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 15:49:21 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Received: from mailhub.xylan.com (mailhub [198.206.181.70]) by ind.alcatel.com (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.1 (ind.alcatel.com 3.0 [OUT])) with SMTP id PAA17692; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 15:48:00 -0800 (PST) X-Origination-Site: Received: from omni.xylan.com by mailhub.xylan.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4 (mailhub 2.1 [HUB])) id PAA24089; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 15:48:00 -0800 Received: from softweyr.com (dyn0.utah.xylan.com) by omni.xylan.com (4.1/SMI-4.1 (xylan engr [SPOOL])) id AA21442; Thu, 2 Dec 99 15:47:57 PST Message-Id: <38470535.B5579F1F@softweyr.com> Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1999 16:48:05 -0700 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr LLC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (X11; I; FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE i386) X-Accept-Language: en Mime-Version: 1.0 To: "Matthew D. Fuller" Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Some Observations References: <19991202140924.W22444@futuresouth.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG "Matthew D. Fuller" wrote: > > (there's a long-standing bug relating to the x86 architecture that > allows you to install Windows too ;) That comment just got you immortalized in the fortune database. ;^) -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Dec 2 15:59:38 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from wopr.caltech.edu (wopr.caltech.edu [131.215.240.222]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 41C9714C2B; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 15:59:33 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mph@wopr.caltech.edu) Received: (from mph@localhost) by wopr.caltech.edu (8.9.3/8.9.1) id PAA85577; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 15:59:24 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mph) Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 15:59:24 -0800 From: Matthew Hunt To: Kris Kennaway Cc: Jason DiCioccio , chat@FreeBSD.ORG, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Vulnerability postings.. Message-ID: <19991202155924.A80952@wopr.caltech.edu> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: ; from kris@hub.freebsd.org on Thu, Dec 02, 1999 at 03:26:17PM -0800 Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thu, Dec 02, 1999 at 03:26:17PM -0800, Kris Kennaway wrote: > In my response to the bugtraq post I corrected which ones were actually > our fault and which not. Just for the record, installing angband sgid was not a result of me smoking crack. It is written to be installed that way, aside from the fact that the author knows squat about security. (The source does not ship with an install target, so I did write the code to install sgid.) Grepping for "uid" in the source should make it clear that set[ug]id functionality is intended. As of today, the port installs non-sgid, but this requires two mode 1777 directories, breaks the high-score file, and probably lets players do bad things to each others' ability to play the game. Matt -- Matthew Hunt * Stay close to the Vorlon. http://www.pobox.com/~mph/ * To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Dec 2 18: 9:28 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix, from userid 758) id 32BD014CF4; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 18:09:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 169021CD744; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 18:09:24 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kris@hub.freebsd.org) Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 18:09:24 -0800 (PST) From: Kris Kennaway To: Matthew Hunt Cc: Jason DiCioccio , chat@FreeBSD.ORG, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Vulnerability postings.. In-Reply-To: <19991202155924.A80952@wopr.caltech.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, Matthew Hunt wrote: > Just for the record, installing angband sgid was not a result of me > smoking crack. It is written to be installed that way, aside from the > fact that the author knows squat about security. (The source does not > ship with an install target, so I did write the code to install sgid.) > > Grepping for "uid" in the source should make it clear that set[ug]id > functionality is intended. I suspected as much, but couldn't find anything to prove it when I checked the source briefly. > As of today, the port installs non-sgid, but this requires two mode > 1777 directories, breaks the high-score file, and probably lets > players do bad things to each others' ability to play the game. Hmm. This isn't exactly a great solution either, but it's probably all you can do - I suppose it's better than the previous situation, which would give attackers all of the above plus more. I doubt there's much else we could do short of fixing the source (maybe print a warning about the above at install-time?). Thanks for jumping on this so fast.. Kris To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Dec 2 18:25:32 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from wopr.caltech.edu (wopr.caltech.edu [131.215.240.222]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1130214FC8; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 18:25:26 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mph@wopr.caltech.edu) Received: (from mph@localhost) by wopr.caltech.edu (8.9.3/8.9.1) id SAA16321; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 18:25:13 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mph) Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 18:25:13 -0800 From: Matthew Hunt To: Kris Kennaway Cc: Jason DiCioccio , chat@freebsd.org, advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Vulnerability postings.. Message-ID: <19991202182512.A15563@wopr.caltech.edu> References: <19991202155924.A80952@wopr.caltech.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: ; from kris@hub.freebsd.org on Thu, Dec 02, 1999 at 06:09:24PM -0800 Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thu, Dec 02, 1999 at 06:09:24PM -0800, Kris Kennaway wrote: > could do short of fixing the source (maybe print a warning about the above > at install-time?). Thanks for jumping on this so fast.. The known problems with the solution are displayed at install time. I'm not in a position to do a security audit for the code, and I bet it really sucks. The linker warns about it using tmpnam(3), which is probably bad, too. Thank you, too, for taking action on this and your explanation of the problem. Matt -- Matthew Hunt * UNIX is a lever for the http://www.pobox.com/~mph/ * intellect. -J.R. Mashey To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Dec 2 20:26:27 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in (theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in [144.16.71.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 94B9615040 for ; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 20:26:07 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in) Received: (qmail 8997 invoked from network); 3 Dec 1999 04:24:28 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO theory5.physics.iisc.ernet.in) (144.16.71.125) by theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in with SMTP; 3 Dec 1999 04:24:28 -0000 Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1999 10:00:14 +0530 (IST) From: Rahul Siddharthan To: "Matthew D. Fuller" Cc: Peter Schwenk , freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Some Observations In-Reply-To: <19991202140924.W22444@futuresouth.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > I think the BSD's would certainly benefit from a "desktop" > > distribution which installs various GUI's with the standard > > frills automatically and easily. If some enterprising person > > would set up a company to market BSD "distributions" a la RedHat, > > it would be nice. > > And this is *HARD*. I have a fair bit of experience with FreeBSD/X, and > computers in general, and I *STILL* often have trouble getting X configured > right. Granted, this tends to be on 1-4 'generation' old hardware, but > that seems to be what a lot of people start by installing on, and also > what we as a community encourage. "Don't toss that 486, put FreeBSD on > it and learn it, then you can put it on your P3-500 once you know it!". > I just helped a friend install FreeBSD on a 486/33 with a Mach32 video > card. No luck getting X up until I stopped trying to use the Mach32 X > server and switched to the vanilla SVGA. Tell me that's not unintuitive. > Plus the 'which parts of X do I install?' bit is bewildering. Maybe I'm > missing something, but I can't see how well we can even *INSTALL* X in a > semi-generic config on a wide range of systems, much less configure. Well, installing X shouldn't be harder on FreeBSD than on linux. I don't agree with a graphical boot-up and so on which you appaently see in Corel Linux, for instance. But the linux distros do tend to configure X correctly a lot of the time. Even if that doesn't work, the install can ask you to configure X manually (typing in the card specs, and all that). What I was really driving at was that after installing X, some friendly (ok, perhaps windows-like) desktops could also (*optionally*) be installed and autoconfigured. (Gnome, KDE, Afterstep, Windowmaker, ....) And then the option of a xdm/kdm/etc graphical login can be supplied. A "desktop" CD distribution would have room for all this and more. All this after installing X, which is the hard part. You're right that the FreeBSD developers have other (and better) priorities. Thats why I said it would help if some company like Red Hat (Walnut Creek?) would do the "dirty work" of packaging it. Everything already exists in the ports, etc. Note that all the frills can be *optional* -- anyone who wants to install a bare-bones FreeBSD can still do so. > Having it reboot and come up in a GUI? I can't imagine how it could be Only after X is configured and confirmed to be working. And only as an option. > On a closing note, I think it's important to notice the reason this > *HASN'T* been done so far. The FreeBSD team is commited to making a > quality product, and a touted feature that works for 25%, 50%, or even > 75% of the populace is not an option. If it works for 3/4 of the people, > but for 1/4 of the people it fails and leaves them stranded (even if it > only SEEMS like they're stranded), that'll do more damage to us as a > community than if it didn't exist at all. Thats equally a problem with linux (and has always been) but doesn't seem to be stopping them. Of course, its the commercial companies that have taken the initiative, and the brickbats when things don't work; but linux is generally perceived as reliable, and the lack of hardware support is blamed on the hardware vendors and not on linux itself. I don't think FreeBSD needs to worry about 1/4 of the "people" being stranded and getting a bad impression, when (as of today) 3/4 of the people have never heard of it at all. > term, and nobody wants another spectacular short-term effort that rots > before it ever sees the -RELEASE light of day. This should be a third-party add-on. The BSD people like to show off their commercial-friendly licence, so why aren't more people jumping? Why are all the "packagers" going for linux instead? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Dec 2 23: 8:57 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from smtp03.wxs.nl (smtp03.wxs.nl [195.121.6.37]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9630E14A26 for ; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 23:08:54 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from asmodai@wxs.nl) Received: from daemon.ninth-circle.org ([195.121.197.198]) by smtp03.wxs.nl (Netscape Messaging Server 3.61) with ESMTP id AABAC1; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 08:08:10 +0100 Received: (from asmodai@localhost) by daemon.ninth-circle.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) id HAA00794; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 07:31:12 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from asmodai) Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1999 07:31:12 +0100 From: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai To: Peter Schwenk Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Some Observations Message-ID: <19991203073112.B93461@daemon.ninth-circle.org> References: <384557D8.ECEF0BDD@math.udel.edu> <19991201194522.A5515@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> <38458D7A.94BDC53@math.udel.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: <38458D7A.94BDC53@math.udel.edu>; from schwenk@math.udel.edu on Wed, Dec 01, 1999 at 04:04:58PM -0500 Organisation: Ninth-Circle Enterprises Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG -On [19991202 00:00], Peter Schwenk (schwenk@math.udel.edu) wrote: >That's why I haven't stopped my subscription to FreeBSD even though I >haven't been using it for almost a year. This is my only means of >support to the project, since I can't contribute code. You forget one VERY important thing. Our handbook and FAQ are currently 2.x based. Why won't you go over it and look what doesn't seem right with 3.x, then see what it should be, type it in a mail and mail it of to -doc? That way we can assure that the documentation stays somewhat up-to-date. So this is a call to all of you non-coding FreeBSD users. Check our documentation. We don't ask that you know DocBook/SGML, we will do the translation. -- Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven/Asmodai asmodai(at)wxs.nl The BSD Programmer's Documentation Project Network/Security Specialist BSD: Technical excellence at its best Learn e-mail netiquette: http://www.lemis.com/email.html Necessity is the mother of invention. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Dec 2 23:17:10 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from ind.alcatel.com (postal.xylan.com [208.8.0.248]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 371BF14D6E; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 23:17:05 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Received: from mailhub.xylan.com (mailhub [198.206.181.70]) by ind.alcatel.com (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.1 (ind.alcatel.com 3.0 [OUT])) with SMTP id XAA21293; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 23:14:26 -0800 (PST) X-Origination-Site: Received: from omni.xylan.com by mailhub.xylan.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4 (mailhub 2.1 [HUB])) id XAA18109; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 23:14:26 -0800 Received: from softweyr.com ([204.68.178.39]) by omni.xylan.com (4.1/SMI-4.1 (xylan engr [SPOOL])) id AA10282; Thu, 2 Dec 99 23:14:19 PST Message-Id: <38476DD7.A16B35D@softweyr.com> Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 00:14:31 -0700 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr LLC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (X11; I; FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE i386) X-Accept-Language: en Mime-Version: 1.0 To: Rahul Siddharthan Cc: jkh@freebsd.org, freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Some Observations References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > > Well, installing X shouldn't be harder on FreeBSD than on linux. > [...] What I was really > driving at was that after installing X, some friendly (ok, > perhaps windows-like) desktops could also (*optionally*) be > installed and autoconfigured. (Gnome, KDE, Afterstep, > Windowmaker, ....) This is already done in the 3.3 installer. If you choose to install X, sysinstall presents you with options for several window manglers and such and lets you install them as well. A step futher would be to create "profiles", say one that installs both WindowMaker and wdm, or KDE and kdm, enlightenment and gdm. > And then the option of a xdm/kdm/etc graphical > login can be supplied. A "desktop" CD distribution would have > room for all this and more. All this after installing X, which is > the hard part. Not so much anymore, though it would be nice to add support for plug-n- pray monitors to XF86Setup. > You're right that the FreeBSD developers have other (and better) > priorities. Thats why I said it would help if some company like > Red Hat (Walnut Creek?) would do the "dirty work" of packaging > it. Everything already exists in the ports, etc. Note that all > the frills can be *optional* -- anyone who wants to install a > bare-bones FreeBSD can still do so. All we would really need is for someone to take the time to create meta ports that simply depend on the other ports. The profile I mention above, for instance, would merely need to depend on wdm and windowmaker. > > Having it reboot and come up in a GUI? I can't imagine how it could be > > Only after X is configured and confirmed to be working. And only > as an option. That would certainly go a LONG way to satisfying most of the complaints. Keep in mind that XF86_VGA16 will run in 640x480 mode on just about anything. > > On a closing note, I think it's important to notice the reason this > > *HASN'T* been done so far. Apparently you haven't run an install on 3.3; it has been started at least. I recently re-partitioned the disk on my laptop, erasing the Win98 and BeOS partitions and dedicating the whole disk to FreeBSD, and upgraded from 3.1 to 3.3. I was pleasantly surprised to see the menu of window manglers. I'm certain Jordan would love to add X user profile meta-kits that install an entire customized look-and-feel. If you look at the kde11 port in x11, you'll see that creating such a meta-port is really quite trivial. In fact, here is the meat of it, untested as of yet. I'll try it out tomorrow when I have time to fool around with it and try to get it committed this weekend: # New ports collection makefile for: window-maker-login # Version required: around December 1997 # Date created: 4 December 1997 # Whom: Wes Peters # # $FreeBSD$ # DISTNAME= window-maker-login CATEGORIES= x11 MASTER_SITES= # empty DISTFILES= # empty MAINTAINER= wes@freebsd.org RUN_DEPENDS= wmaker:${PORTSDIR}/x11-wm/windowmaker \ wdm:${PORTSDIR}/x11/wdm EXTRACT_ONLY= # empty NO_BUILD= yes do-install: # empty .include > > term, and nobody wants another spectacular short-term effort that rots > > before it ever sees the -RELEASE light of day. > > This should be a third-party add-on. The BSD people like to show > off their commercial-friendly licence, so why aren't more people > jumping? Why are all the "packagers" going for linux instead? Three reasons: 1) mind share 2) market share 3) advertising column-inches in the press But I repeat myself. ;^) -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu Dec 2 23:32:18 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from ind.alcatel.com (postal.xylan.com [208.8.0.248]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AC03C14DAE for ; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 23:32:14 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Received: from mailhub.xylan.com (mailhub [198.206.181.70]) by ind.alcatel.com (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.1 (ind.alcatel.com 3.0 [OUT])) with SMTP id XAA21345; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 23:31:30 -0800 (PST) X-Origination-Site: Received: from omni.xylan.com by mailhub.xylan.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4 (mailhub 2.1 [HUB])) id XAA27344; Thu, 2 Dec 1999 23:31:30 -0800 Received: from softweyr.com ([204.68.178.39]) by omni.xylan.com (4.1/SMI-4.1 (xylan engr [SPOOL])) id AA10697; Thu, 2 Dec 99 23:31:27 PST Message-Id: <384771DA.C38BB92@softweyr.com> Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 00:31:38 -0700 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr LLC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (X11; I; FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE i386) X-Accept-Language: en Mime-Version: 1.0 To: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai Cc: Peter Schwenk , freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Some Observations References: <384557D8.ECEF0BDD@math.udel.edu> <19991201194522.A5515@petra.hos.u-szeged.hu> <38458D7A.94BDC53@math.udel.edu> <19991203073112.B93461@daemon.ninth-circle.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai wrote: > > -On [19991202 00:00], Peter Schwenk (schwenk@math.udel.edu) wrote: > >That's why I haven't stopped my subscription to FreeBSD even though I > >haven't been using it for almost a year. This is my only means of > >support to the project, since I can't contribute code. > > You forget one VERY important thing. > > So this is a call to all of you non-coding FreeBSD users. Check our > documentation. If you can write prose, there are other contributions you can make as well. You can write articles for trade magazines (and get paid!), or for online pubs like Daemon News, Slashdot, or maybe even Linux Weekly News. Or, if you feel like superman, you can write a book. ;^) -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Fri Dec 3 1:28:31 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from zippy.cdrom.com (zippy.cdrom.com [204.216.27.228]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9CCC7150BD for ; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 01:28:29 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) Received: from zippy.cdrom.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zippy.cdrom.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id BAA15163; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 01:26:23 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) To: Rahul Siddharthan Cc: "Matthew D. Fuller" , Peter Schwenk , freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Some Observations In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 03 Dec 1999 10:00:14 +0530." Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 01:26:23 -0800 Message-ID: <15159.944213183@zippy.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > (typing in the card specs, and all that). What I was really > driving at was that after installing X, some friendly (ok, > perhaps windows-like) desktops could also (*optionally*) be > installed and autoconfigured. (Gnome, KDE, Afterstep, > Windowmaker, ....) And then the option of a xdm/kdm/etc graphical We do have an option to do that from the installer now. :) - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Fri Dec 3 1:41:48 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in (theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in [144.16.71.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 1425F150DF for ; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 01:41:16 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in) Received: (qmail 9765 invoked from network); 3 Dec 1999 09:41:41 -0000 Received: from sys3.physics.iisc.ernet.in (144.16.71.27) by theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in with SMTP; 3 Dec 1999 09:41:41 -0000 Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1999 15:19:20 +0530 (IST) From: Rahul Siddharthan To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Cc: "Matthew D. Fuller" , Peter Schwenk , freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Some Observations In-Reply-To: <15159.944213183@zippy.cdrom.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > (typing in the card specs, and all that). What I was really > > driving at was that after installing X, some friendly (ok, > > perhaps windows-like) desktops could also (*optionally*) be > > installed and autoconfigured. (Gnome, KDE, Afterstep, > > Windowmaker, ....) And then the option of a xdm/kdm/etc graphical > > We do have an option to do that from the installer now. :) Thats nice. I haven't tried installing since 3.1, I just update it with cvsup. Anyway, FreeBSD and OpenBSD seem to be catching on among the "academic" types: when I first got into FreeBSD almost nobody here seemed to have heard of it. Now there are a quite a few users at my end, though neither is close to linux right now. And in many places linux still isn't close to windows, unfortunately, but it's picking up. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Fri Dec 3 6:27:43 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from probity.mcc.ac.uk (probity.mcc.ac.uk [130.88.200.94]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1BD3C14E9B; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 06:27:32 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org) Received: from dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org ([130.88.200.97]) by probity.mcc.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 1.92 #3) id 11ttg9-0000Wj-00; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 14:27:21 +0000 Received: from localhost (jcm@localhost) by dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id OAA99438; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 14:27:20 GMT (envelope-from jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org) Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1999 14:27:20 +0000 (GMT) From: Jonathon McKitrick To: Wes Peters Cc: Rahul Siddharthan , jkh@freebsd.org, freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Some Observations In-Reply-To: <38476DD7.A16B35D@softweyr.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, 3 Dec 1999, Wes Peters wrote: >I recently re-partitioned the disk on my laptop, erasing the Win98 and BeOS >partitions and dedicating the whole disk to FreeBSD, and upgraded from 3.1 >to 3.3. I was pleasantly surprised to see the menu of window manglers. I'm So, you scrapped Win98 *and* BeOS after all, eh? -jm ------------------ Bayliss: "And that's another thing... you never say 'please' and 'thank you.'" Pendleton: "Please stop being an idiot. Thank you." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message From owner-freebsd-advocacy Fri Dec 3 10:53:55 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from ind.alcatel.com (postal.xylan.com [208.8.0.248]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 279C1151F3 for ; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 10:53:50 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Received: from mailhub.xylan.com (mailhub [198.206.181.70]) by ind.alcatel.com (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.1 (ind.alcatel.com 3.0 [OUT])) with SMTP id KAA29703; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 10:50:57 -0800 (PST) X-Origination-Site: Received: from omni.xylan.com by mailhub.xylan.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4 (mailhub 2.1 [HUB])) id KAA00959; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 10:50:56 -0800 Received: from softweyr.com (dyn0.utah.xylan.com) by omni.xylan.com (4.1/SMI-4.1 (xylan engr [SPOOL])) id AA25813; Fri, 3 Dec 99 10:50:53 PST Message-Id: <3848111B.5FDDDB82@softweyr.com> Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 11:51:07 -0700 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr LLC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (X11; I; FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE i386) X-Accept-Language: en Mime-Version: 1.0 To: Rahul Siddharthan Cc: "Jordan K. Hubbard" , "Matthew D. Fuller" , Peter Schwenk , freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Some Observations References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > Jordan K. Hubbard reported: > > > > We do have an option to do that from the installer now. :) > > Thats nice. I haven't tried installing since 3.1, I just update > it with cvsup. I was pleasantly surprised to find it. I'm thinking maybe I should help test the "Release Candidates" a bit more so I can find MORE pleasant surprises. ;^) > Anyway, FreeBSD and OpenBSD seem to be catching on among the > "academic" types: when I first got into FreeBSD almost nobody > here seemed to have heard of it. Now there are a quite a few > users at my end, though neither is close to linux right now. And > in many places linux still isn't close to windows, unfortunately, > but it's picking up. Yeah, that's the good news, we're all still growing. -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message