Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 03:48:52 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com>, "Andrew C. Hornback" <achornback@worldnet.att.net>, "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org> Cc: <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) Message-ID: <000301c178cb$d105d880$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <017f01c1788c$8cb71d90$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Anthony >Atkielski >Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 8:16 PM >To: Andrew C. Hornback; Mike Meyer >Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) > > > >No. I come from a non-religious point of view, and when one is not >encumbered >by religious faith in a particular platform or operating system, one tends to >see advantages and disadvantages of each system more clearly. I do >not worship >a FreeBSD god (nor a Windows god), so I do not feel frightened by the idea of >running two completely different operating systems for two entirely different >purposes. I choose the tool that fits the job. > You know I thought I might stay out of this one this time around, but this is getting just too disconnected from reality to tolerate. If anyone knows anything about the suitability of Windows to the desktop and FreeBSD to the server I ought to. Anthony, you have got to understand something before you continue on with this, that is the wide variation of computer usage in the world. Your arguing from a United States viewpoint in a world forum, and you don't understand it. Here in the US there is a very good reason that Windows is "more suited" to the desktop than UNIX is. This is that 80% of all business in the US are under the 100-employee mark, and to put it simply the vast majority of non-high-tech companies cannot afford to hire the top drawer IT administrators that can make an effective decision between using UNIX or using FreeBSD for either the server or the desktop. In fact, the majority of these companies don't even HAVE a network manager, and survive entirely on $50-per-hour consultants that work out of a '73 Ford Pinto and a cell phone. Even if network managers were plentiful at the prices they could afford to pay them, they wouldn't hire them as full time employees simply because most of these business just don't value Information Technology (IT) all that much. Now, when you have a company that regards IT as a necessary evil, something to try to spend as little money on as possible, (which most of these companies do) the absolute last thing they care about is suitability of the software they are running to their overall information infrastructure. The primary thing they care about is cost - and they can get El-Crapo PC computers for pennies down at K-Mart, which all used to come with Windows 98 loaded on them. Well, the $50-per-hour-Ford-Pinto consultants make most of their money off of these folks and since these companies all figure that if the consultant is at the site more than 2 hours he's robbing them blind, the consultants have learned how to go in, make as few changes as possible with the maximum number of bandaids, then get the hell out while they can still issue a bill that has a remote chance of being paid. So what it boils down to is that the reason that Windows is so suitable here is because we are flooded with the $50-per-hour-work-out-of-their-van Windows consultants, and these people can be used and abused by the majority of businesses who wouldn't let a network manager onto the payroll over their dead bodies, unless such network manger only worked 1/4 the time managing the network and 3/4 of the time running the cash register and asking "do you want fries with that?" In short, Windows is the CHEAPEST solution here in the US for most companies to get somthing slapped down in front of the user to be able to read E-mail and write a few wordprocessing documents - simply because for most companies, the costs are in the outside consulting support they have to grudgingly hire, rather than in the infrastructure, or software liscenses. In particular, although you will never get anyone to admit it, most of these companies have ONE Cd of Windows they bought and load it on ALL of the systems they have under the roof. To them the software cost for Windows is the same as it is for FreeBSD because they are blatently pirating the software. Overseas, though, things are much different. In many countries there is no real history of Windows usage, and do you know why that is? It's because the dominant commercial desktop OS for years and years was OS/2! Also, there's lots of countries where Windows has not been localized to that country. There is simply not this giant pool of idle Windows admins kicking around like there is here. Why do you think that they _had_ a BSDcon in Europe in 2001 and here the BSDcon that was supposed to happen in 2001 was washed down the drain? It's simple - overseas they are used to paying a lot more for Microsoft products than we are and I daresay that the total amount of piracy of Windows overseas (discounting Asia where piracy is an institution) in businesses is far less than here in the US. In short, the environment is totally different, and penetration of Windows is far less. Just look at the financial reports for any large domestic software vendor who has overseas sales broken out and you will see this. In summary, your arguing from a classic "tech" position where you simply don't take any of the financial/business/political issues into account, and so you are making the classic "tech" mistake where your putting far more emphasis on the technical merits of one system over the other. Such things are important to you so you think they are important to any business that runs software. Well, they AREN'T. Most of the computer market here in the US knows about as much about how their computers operate as most of the automotive market knows how their cars are bolted together. Thye buy the Microsoft dog food because it comes in a big fat economy-sized bag that's on sale with a coupon, instead of the FreeBSD dog food which 1 can costs the same and never goes on sale. They don't know or care that the Microsoft dog food is mostly shit-colored bread, while the FreeBSD dog food is real Meat and meat by-products. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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