From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Sep 9 21:22:38 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DD80D16A4CF for ; Thu, 9 Sep 2004 21:22:38 +0000 (GMT) Received: from mxout3.cac.washington.edu (mxout3.cac.washington.edu [140.142.32.166]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9BA4243D64 for ; Thu, 9 Sep 2004 21:22:38 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from dsyphers@u.washington.edu) Received: from smtp.washington.edu (smtp.washington.edu [140.142.32.139]) ESMTP id i89LMa8S005397; Thu, 9 Sep 2004 14:22:36 -0700 Received: from [192.168.1.101] (c-24-18-235-11.client.comcast.net [24.18.235.11]) (authenticated bits=0)i89LMZ7k016000 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5 bits=128 verify=NOT); Thu, 9 Sep 2004 14:22:36 -0700 From: David Syphers To: eric Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 14:22:37 -0700 User-Agent: KMail/1.6.2 References: <200409091513.i89FDuS01592@clunix.cl.msu.edu> <200409091322.15452.dsyphers@u.washington.edu> <20040909205759.GC9666@catastrophe.net> In-Reply-To: <20040909205759.GC9666@catastrophe.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <200409091422.37843.dsyphers@u.washington.edu> cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org cc: Younes Al-Hroub Subject: Re: Which Release to Download? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2004 21:22:39 -0000 On Thursday 09 September 2004 01:57 pm, eric wrote: > On Thu, 2004-09-09 at 13:22:15 -0700, David Syphers proclaimed... > > > I disagree. I think a completely new user should start with 5.x - there's > > no reason to learn the details of how 4.x works, just to have significant > > portions of that knowledge become obsolete in a month. I wouldn't use > > 5.2.1 on a production machine, but it's perfectly fine for a desktop or > > learning machine. > > Obsolete? You can't be serious; I don't forsee going to 5.x anytime > in the next year or so. Poor choice of words on my part. People are perfectly free to run FreeBSD 2.2, and some do. What I meant was, most new users are going to want 5.x, as things have advanced significantly from 4.x. For every person like you, who won't move to 5.x for at least a year after it's gone -stable (due to large numbers of local modifications, production stability concerns, or whatever), there's at least one person like me, who went to 5.x years ago even though I'm not a developer (did Cardbus support ever make it to 4.x?). I'm not recommending that new users go to -current (6.x), but I am saying the system administration skills they learn in 5.x will be useful to them much longer than those they would learn in 4.x. -David -- +++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot. +++