Date: Sat, 12 Jul 1997 18:48:40 -0700 From: Pedro Giffuni <pgiffuni@fps.biblos.unal.edu.co> To: Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: My opinion about freebsd (fwd) Message-ID: <33C833F8.CEC@fps.biblos.unal.edu.co> References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.970711170623.4049A-100000@andrsn.stanford.edu>
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This whole issue reminds me how I started with FreeBSD anyway (this is chat isn't it ? :-) )....No, I'll better not tell how I went from Pascal expert and MS fan to C apprentice and UNIX lover. I got to FreeBSD the long way: M$-WIN 3.1---->VM/CMS---->Solaris---->SCO---->AIX---->FreeBSD/2.0.5 My impressions were 1) M$ will take to places you never thought you could go, but it ties your hands in the process. 2) VM/CMS teaches important networking concepts, but..ugh it's so slow and old. 3) Solaris a typical unix; it's cool...hey not everyone uses MS ! 4) SCO sucks, Has anyone built Lynx? Hylafax? What a nightmare, ugh the commercial compiler also sucks what is this gcc every app wants? 5) I preferred Solaris, but this was faster before I upgraded their unsecure OS. 6) How does this run all those things I couldn't run with SCO? Why is this so fast? The "usability" factor is not really a problem of FreeBSD, it's a problem of unix; please note the problems discussed in this thread involve third party applications. Of the above systems, FreeBSD is the easiest to install and keep up running, and it also comes with much more applications in the same CD. My experience leads me to believe free-unix users are implicitly accepting a challenge and they end up learning anyway. I don't live exactly in the "provinces", but I have found new users with a very low level of computer knowledge that get familiar to FreeBSD, and AIX, even when they don't master M$-win! Yes, believe it or not, many users prefer a text console: it's easier to learn two or three commands to get your mail out than to master the "secrets" of the point and click interface. The greatest barrier is usually the language, but when I changed the language in AIX to spanish, two or three persons came to say there was something wrong with their accounts (I'll use italian now, itīs more elegant) :). In all this I have found OSs are like religions; you just don't change to the religion that offers more advantages now! (remember OS2, Macs?) People use what other "elite" users use and FreeBSD depends on how many elite users are convinced to join. IMO, FreeBSD and the GNU systems will win over M$ on the long run: mercenaries just can't beat organizations that don't depend on Big-Bucks(TM) :-). Pedro. Annelise Anderson wrote: > > I'm pretty close here to talking myself into a position about > which I'm not really enthusiastic--that to run FreeBSD you need to > acquire a good deal of the knowledge of a unix professional (including > some knowledge of C) and that my hypothetical dissident in the provinces > isn't going to make it. > > Annelise >
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