Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 12:38:49 -0600 (MDT) From: Brett Taylor <brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu> To: Phillip Salzman <advocacy@saten.dyn.ml.org> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Desktop OS Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980526122407.11096E-100000@peloton.physics.montana.edu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980526015340.1412A-100000@saten.dyn.ml.org>
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Howdy, On Tue, 26 May 1998, Phillip Salzman wrote: > I read a few messages saying that FreeBSD should stick > to being a robust 'Server OS', but I disagree entirely. I don't think that's been the idea (see Jordan's original "focus" post), but I would agree that ignoring the desktop would be a failure. I, among others I'm sure, use FreeBSD as our desktop. I have NO other operating system around (finally threw out my 286) and I haven't needed one either. Admittedly, I'm working on my PhD in theoretical physics and I use LaTeX and other standard sorts of Unix tools all day long. Clearly secretaries would be swamped by trying to run FBSD wo/ a long break in period and I seriously doubt they'd want to learn *TeX. :-) But, I think FreeBSD CAN make a push to be a good scientific/engineering desktop platform. I know there are a fairly large number (around 10 or so) FreeBSD desktops at Lockheed-Martin in Palo Alto, mostly due to the presence of Brian Handy, who is about to finish his PhD in solar physics. I've gotten my own advisor excited about putting FreeBSD on his ThinkPad and I MAY have convinced the dept computer person to let me turn some old 486's into FreeBSD terminals serving off of what is, for now, a Red Hat PPro machine. Even the dept computer person (I refuse to call what she does sys admin), who's a dyed in the wool Windows person has finally, after much of my badgering, seen the need to have unix workstations available to the graduate and undergraduate students. If we could push science and engineering depts to use FreeBSD on simple, even what might be considered old, computers to use as essentially X-terminalsc we could make a lot of headway. The problem is making it easy for the sys admins, who may and likely are Windows people, to be able to set up and administer the machines. Admittedly, I'm not saying anything new here. I convinced her that the way Red Hat handles package installation (nearly everything goes into /usr/bin - this is what the present Red Hat sys admin told me anyway) is silly. I think the ease of use of CVSup and our ports/package handling is easy enough that she can deal w/ it. One thing that might make it easier for Windows people is a GUI package/port controller. I'd be happy to talk about/work on some coherent plan for pushing FreeBSD as a desktop alternative to Windows/Linux/etc. Anyway, don't abandon the desktop. :-) Brett ********************************************************* Brett Taylor brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu http://peloton.physics.montana.edu/brett/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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