From owner-freebsd-advocacy Sat May 8 20:52:30 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from uumail-relay-blr.ernet.in (uumail-relay-blr.ernet.in [202.141.1.17]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8079E1571B for ; Sat, 8 May 1999 20:50:47 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in) Received: from iisc.ernet.in (iisc.ernet.in [144.16.64.3]) by uumail-relay-blr.ernet.in (8.9.0/8.9.0) with ESMTP id JAA24887; Sun, 9 May 1999 09:13:56 +0530 Received: from physics.iisc.ernet.in by iisc.ernet.in (ERNET-IISc/SMI-4.1) id JAA24411; Sun, 9 May 1999 09:05:25 +0530 (GMT+0530) Received: from theory6.physics.iisc.ernet.in by physics.iisc.ernet.in (ERNET-IISc/SMI-4.1) id DAA26918; Sun, 9 May 1999 03:39:58 GMT Date: Sun, 9 May 1999 09:07:46 +0530 (IST) From: Rahul Siddharthan To: Wes Peters Cc: Dru , "Jordan K. Hubbard" , advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: desktop, was linus on BSD In-Reply-To: <3734FF6B.6A737C3A@softweyr.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > I think one of the big differentiators between "desktop" users of > FreeBSD and Linux is that many FreeBSD users never wanted a damned PC > in the first place. FreeBSD makes a pretty crufty PC, but a fine UNIX > workstation. For those looking for a workstation, installing XFree86 > and {window manager of choice, WindowMaker for me} makes workstation > enough, especially so now that one or two competent word processors > and at least one usable spreadsheet are available for the typical > "productivity" applications. Who talked about a damned PC. The talk was on desktops, and a workstation (with Windowmaker, or whatever) *is* a desktop. In academia, at least, a lot of users like to get their work done on workstations without wanting to learn how to install everything themselves. They're not unix gurus but they can compile fortran/C programs, run matlab/octave/latex, check mail, etc from the command line and that's all they want to do. FreeBSD is fine for them if someone else sets up the system first. It would be even better if an easy-to-set-up desktop distro was rolled out. Desktop != PC. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message