Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 22:51:37 +0530 (IST) From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@futuresouth.com> Cc: Peter Schwenk <schwenk@math.udel.edu>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Some Observations Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.20.9912022234400.7690-100000@theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in>
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> > 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
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