Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 08:58:24 -0500 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: RE: BSDi Acquired by Embedded Computing Firm Wind River Message-ID: <15059.4480.67277.332449@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <22683751@toto.iv>
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Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> types: > When discussing desktops and servers in context together, here > is the definition: > > Server: That which is intended and generally provides services to desktops, > over the network. > > Desktop: That which is primary purpose is to serve as a user interface > between the human and the services provided by servers on the network. > > But, before we forget, there's one other type of system: > > standalone: A host that is intended and generally uses services that it > provides itself, and where network connectivity is not particularly critical > to it's operation. > > Of course, many corporate networks are somewhat fuzzy, in that often > users may spend much time running Word or Excel and just using their > own desktop's resources. It's not at all unusual for things Unix systems to be fuzzy the other way. For instance, many Unix desktops used to run smtp servers. In the early days of the web, Unix sysadmins would set up web servers on their desktop just to have one to demo internally. As long as you avoid multimedia applications, hardware configured to be a server can run interactive workstation tasks - like those mentioned by Ted - "between the cracks" of whatever server they run. A word processor or spreadsheet waiting for the user to type a character just doesn't use very much CPU. Cray saw this kind of thing when they first started putting interactive users on their supercomputers. The interactive users needed so little CPU that the difference in billable cycles available per month wasn't visible. I'll add my voice to the chorus - I'm quite happy with FreeBSD as a desktop. It would be better if there were better support for new hardware, but that's a minor matter. On the other hand, I've never used either Windows or the Mac as my day in and day out desktop. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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