Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 19:03:57 -0800 (PST) From: Haikal Saadh <wyldephyre2@yahoo.com> To: Johnson David <DavidJohnson@Siemens.com>, freebsd-advocacy <freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Is FreeBSD Ready for the Desktop? Message-ID: <20030204030357.95356.qmail@web11807.mail.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <200302031824.21656.DavidJohnson@Siemens.com>
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--- Johnson David <DavidJohnson@Siemens.com> wrote: > On Monday 03 February 2003 06:06 pm, Haikal Saadh wrote: > > > So in summary, I like to say: The OS is capable of making a good > > desktop, but the minute it starts to ship with good packages, > we're > > talking. > > Hmmm, I wonder how Windows succeeded then. I understand your point, > but the > lack of additional third party software on the install CD hasn't > hindered > Microsoft any. Is this just a matter of having to be twice as good > as Windows > to get half the attention? > Microsoft markets windows as a platform on which to run other applications, which are easily available, and easily installed. Vast majority of software comes on a CD which is installed by just double clicking an installer and all is well. FreeBSD is also a platform on which to run other apps, but availabilty, or rather access to them is beyond the means of most people. Granted, to those with fast, unlimited connections, everything is a 'make install' (providing you have enough diskspace OO.org, for instance, claims to need 6G to compile) or a pkg_add away. Life is also further complicated by the fact I may not have the same versions of the same dependencies, and may not have the same snapshot of the ports tree installed by my friends, which make sharing stuff harder. Worst case scenario would be I tar up my entire ports tree distfiles and all, which I update month or two, and burn it and palm it off, but this is not a real elegant solution. As for FreeBSD having to be twice as good, I think we have to be. Windows is firmly entrenched in the minds of the masses, and people in general are reluctant to change, to explore outside their comfort zone. Most people don't have a spare machine to chuck FreeBSD on and give it a whirl, to see if they like. If FreeBSD cannot provide the same or better user experience as what they are accustumed to out of the box, they will slip back to windows. Like I said, first impressions count. > Maybe someone could make a "Desktop FreeBSD" CD, with various > useful and > popular packages for the desktop user. Sort of one CD version of > the Toolkit > geared towards desktop users. > That would be wonderful. A CD with packages for gnome2/kde, evolution, OO.o, gimp, mozilla, and the lot in x11/gnome-fifth-toe, a few games, media players and anything else will go a *long* way to making it that much easier for us to shove it down the throats of the masses :) As an aside, freebsd a firewall/proxy has been quite easily to sell. IPFilter, squid, dhcpd and caching dns is a breeze to set up with FreeBSD. I set one up in about an hour, and the response was 'Wow, is that it?' The face that it works silently, unattended, without crashing, unlike wingate or other MS platform equivalent goes a long way in reinforcing the claim that FreeBSD is a 'rock solid' OS. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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