Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2001 14:28:41 -0800 From: David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com> To: Nils Holland <nils@tisys.org> Cc: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: NatWest? no thanks Message-ID: <3BE1CC99.D3C8733C@acuson.com> References: <20011101214159.C27349-100000@howie.ncptiddische.net>
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Nils Holland wrote: > The masses can surely come to FreeBSD, but we really shouldn't trade > flexibility and power to make our system attractive to them. I couldn't have said it better myself. But it's odd that you said it in the middle of your post arguing that FreeBSD should not have mass acceptance. You err when you equate "mass acceptance" with "point-and-click-only". We CAN have mass acceptance while keeping all our flexibility and power. The two things holding FreeBSD (and other Unix-like systems) back from "mass" acceptance are installation/administration, manufacturer support, and application base. We can't fix the latter two directly, but they will solve themselves in time. But the first is very close to being resolved right now! The main problem with the installer and admin tools is that the "mass" public perceives them as difficult. But they are not difficult. Other than the initial kernel config screen, the installer is very straight forward, well documented, and streamlined. It could use some polishing on spots, but by and large it is much more usable than the Mandrake or SuSE installers. It would be very hard to make it any easier without taking away the flexibility. Instead of trying to put sugar in the medicine, perhaps we should be educating the patient that medicine tastes bad but is good for you. Administering a system is not easy, and no matter how much GUI fluff you throw on top of it, it will never be easy. But it is not difficult, especially for single-user desktop systems. We should be forthright and admit that administering FreeBSD is not easy. We don't have to win over every single user in order to have "mass acceptance". Frankly, we don't need those users who won't bother expending enough effort to lift their fingers off the mouse. They may be the Microsoft target audience, and they may represent the editorial staffs of ZDNet and C|NET, but they aren't the majority. That is not to say that we should shun the GUI. I think a sysinstall module for KDE would be awesome! But we don't have to be an all-or-nothing OS. We don't have to be a GUI-only system like what many Linux distros are trying to be. But neither do we have to be the CLI only system that everyone thinks we are. David To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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