From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun May 21 08:12:10 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id IAA22078 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 21 May 1995 08:12:10 -0700 Received: from leo.ibms.sinica.edu.tw ([140.109.40.249]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with ESMTP id IAA22070 for ; Sun, 21 May 1995 08:12:07 -0700 Received: (from taob@localhost) by leo.ibms.sinica.edu.tw (8.6.11/8.6.9) id XAA17862; Sun, 21 May 1995 23:12:03 +0800 Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 23:12:02 +0800 (CST) From: Brian Tao To: FREEBSD-HACKERS-L Subject: Re: (fwd) Re: Mma for Linux, when? In-Reply-To: <17788.801053281@freefall.cdrom.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sun, 21 May 1995, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > I don't buy the conclusion, though I certainly see merit in the > argument that we should have as many native applications as possible. > For better or for worse, many users perceive an operating system's > viability as a function of the number of native apps for it. I > suppose the logic is that if the ISV felt the OS to be worth the > effort, then it must be worth looking at. I don't think most users are clued-in enough to know or care about how many *native* applications are available for an OS like FreeBSD or Linux. All they want to know is that FreeBSD not only runs FreeBSD binaries, but also SCO and BSD/OS (and maybe even Linux in the future). Binary compatibility with BSD/OS should be a big selling point in FreeBSD's favour. I've been able to convince at least a dozen users on io.org to run FreeBSD at home (despite an extremely strong Linux presence in Toronto) because io.org runs BSD/OS, and that means a giant repository of pre-compiled binaries for them to use. Instead of arguing that we might as well give up on FreeBSD and run Linux for the apps, we should set a goal of "Better Linux Than Linux" (apologies to OS/2 Warp and "Blade Runner"). ;-) Perhaps this should be moved to freebsd-chat... -- Brian ("Though this be madness, yet there is method in't") Tao taob@gate.sinica.edu.tw <-- work ........ play --> taob@io.org