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Date:      Fri, 9 Mar 2001 07:43:39 +1000
From:      "Doug Young" <dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au>
To:        "David Johnson" <djohnson@acuson.com>
Cc:        <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: About Unix
Message-ID:  <00e601c0a818$d817e520$0200a8c0@apana.org.au>
References:  <OFA420CC63.6AEAEDB6-ON87256A08.006994B1@smed.com> <01030800251100.00557@r55h47.res.gatech.edu> <00f901c0a794$0b2a64e0$847e03cb@apana.org.au> <20010308015238.A6647@marx.marvic.chum> <01b401c0a7a6$3927e720$847e03cb@apana.org.au> <3AA7DADC.72A86

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I did try a few linuxes wayyyyy back but it was a combination of factors
(shockingly
obtuse docs / instability / woeful GUI / constant lockups / need to install
a new kernel
every other day / etc etc, finally topped off by the HUMBUG experience, that
convinced
me there must be a better way. I now use FreeBSD mostly (occasionally
OpenBSD)
on servers (never workstations) & either Solaris or Win2000 on workstations,
depending
on the applications that need to be run. I use StarOffice (rather than
MSOffice) in Solaris & Win2000 but unfortunately most small business
accounting packages here are DOS /
Windows beasts.No linux I used was even as stable as Win98 & therefore a
long way
short of Win2000.

The BSDs have definitely proven to be good server O/Ses but the GUIs will
need to
improve a lot before I'll be happy to use them .... compare the messing
around thats
all too often required to get X running with the ease of configuring the
Solaris / CDE GUI
I guess the BSD developers have little interest in GUI stuff anyway,
possibly considering
that stuff is for gameplayers rather than serious users (read developers)
>
> The bigoted faithful of Linux won't switch. But they are only a fragment
> of a tiny minority (you can tell who they are since they pronounce Linux
> as "guh-noo-lin-nooks").
>
> I heard an old story about how people decide on which Linux distribution
> they finally stick with. They bounce from distro to distro until they
> find one that matches their personality, hardware and/or configuration.
> This is the one they stick with. If it happens to be FreeBSD, then
> they'll be a BSDer for life.
>
> Unfortunately, some Linuxers get caught up in the whole GNU jihad, and
> then the choice of a distribution becomes a religious imperative...

Possibly ..... I've never given a lot of thought to the GNU thing .... if
something works
properly I don't mind paying for it, unfortunately the prices asked are
often way over
the perceived value. Certainly some GNU applications are as good as,or
better, than
commercial software ..... sometimes its the other way around. eg that nFTP
thing
developed by a Russian academic is in many ways vastly superior to the likes
of CuteFTP,
however the whole XFree / KDE scene is a poxridden disaster compared with
commercial X,
so I can't see that GNU in itself is the holy grail of software.



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