Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 12:26:40 -0500 From: Byung-Jae Kwak <bjkwak@nist.gov> To: Johnson David <djohnson@acuson.com> Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: arrgh squared [long] Message-ID: <3C695050.EB436295@nist.gov> References: <000501c1b28b$fb806ae0$50cd7ad1@ljgms2k> <20020211211418.D5B6737B405@hub.freebsd.org>
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Mr. Johnson David, I am quite new to FreeBSD (just installed FreeBSD 4.5 several days ago), and I am willing to invest my time to learn FreeBSD. Your e-mail helped me a lot, and I will keep your advice (the philosophical difference between Windows and Unix) in mind. You said there are extensive FreeBSD documentations. I have FreeBSD Handbook, and it will keep me busy for a while. But other than that, I didn't find much useful documentation on FreeBSD. Did you mean the "man page"s for Unix commands? Will Linux How-to documentation be helpful to learn FreeBSD? It will be appreciated if you could give me some direction where I can go from here. Thank you very much! Byung-Jae Johnson David wrote: > > On Sunday 10 February 2002 03:37 pm, leegold wrote: > > > The question is: am I learning Unix? Is this hack, > > and typing in cmds told to me, and the book buying, > > ...am I learning Unix? Do I have to take a year of C, > > then a course on Unix system internals, do I have to > > do this to understand how to fix my X? > > I'm not going to answer the above question except to say that step-by-step > howtos won't help you learn Unix, but they will get your X up and running so > that you can stop banging on your system and start using it to learn Unix. > > Now I'm going to radically switch gears. As more and more people attempt to > switch to FreeBSD (or another freenix) in an attempt to escape from Microsoft > systems, frustrations like the above will become more common. These kinds of > posts will become the mainstay of the list in a few short years. The reason > is simple. Microsoft and FreeBSD (and their users) have completely different > philosophies of operating systems. When all you know is one philosophy of > computing, any deviance is viewed as stupidity, ignorance, and in some cases, > heresy. > > The first major difference is the philosophy of the user. The basic > philosophy of Microsoft is "the user is stupid so don't let the user do > anything stupid". The basic philosophy of FreeBSD, on the other hand, is "the > user knows what he is doing so let him do it." This is reflected in a lot of > different things, so I'll remark on just one, the documentation. Microsoft > documention is scanty and presented in a scripted step-by-step fashion. > FreeBSD documentation is extensive and presented in a reference format. > > The second major difference is the philosophy of use. The basic philosophy of > Microsoft is "one system one user." FreeBSD is much different and quite > comfortable with multiple users per system. Even despite the "advances" of NT > over DOS, the Microsoft viewpoint is still firmly centered in the concept of > one user per system. Examples of this are numerous. > > When you combine the two differences above, you begin to understand the > differences in how things are administered. For Win95/98, there simply is no > concept of an adminstrator user, because there is only one user. WinNT/2K is > more advanced because it at least recognizes the need for an administrator, > file permissions, and the like. But even there an administrator isn't > mandatory. Under FreeBSD the root account isn't even optional, and file > permissions are integral to understanding how things work. The Win95/98 way > works well for single user stand alone systems. The FreeBSD way works well > for networks of workstations. > > > Would I be better off w/Debian? > > Hmmm, not really. It's still a Unix (or at least pretends to be a Unix), so > you will be facing the same frustrations you have with FreeBSD. The advantage > of Debian is that Linux has many more users, so you have many more sources of > help. > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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