Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 02:30:44 -0400 (EDT) From: jack <jack@germanium.xtalwind.net> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD and memetics Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9904230102180.75149-100000@germanium.xtalwind.net> In-Reply-To: <51207.924838293@zippy.cdrom.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
For the foreseeable future nothing in the desktop market but that
pseudo-OS from Redmond will be anything but a very small fish in
a very big ocean. It is not fair, it is not logical, it is not
`right', but that is the way it is. People just need to get over
it.
IMO, where FreeBSD can best expend its finite resources is in the
area where it already excels, servers. An area where it can be a
bigger fish in a smaller pond.
We had a 2.2.6 box acting as a terminal server with 64 analog
modems connected to it. It ran from last June, when lightning
hit a pole down the street and the power company took a loooong
lunch, until two weeks ago when we took it down to replace those
modems with digital. Another box runs our user database, does
account renewals, renewal notification, billing, RADIUS
authentication and accounting, and a few other incidentals.
That box ran from last July, when someone accidentally turned it
off, until two weeks ago when it was updated from 2.2.6 to
stable. (Scrappy if you're on this list, kudos to your group
also, it's postgresql. We guesstimate about 750,000 transactions
a day and the postmaster daemon ran the entire time.)
Nearly every one of the few times a box has gone down in the past
two plus years that we have run FreeBSD it has been either a
hardware problem or pilot error. Perhaps [net|open]BSD would
give us the same reliability, but I have no intention of
abandoning what I know works to find out. I doubt BSDi would
since our news server runs for months on FreeBSD but never ran
for more than a few weeks on BSDi. From what I've seen of linux
I have no reason to think it would perform as well. I know NT
doesn't come anywhere near close to matching those uptimes.
If someone needs/wants a particular bell or whistle for their
desktop there is nothing stopping them from writing it themselves
or hiring someone who can. FreeBSD needs to keep its resources
directed toward remaining the quality, reliable, industrial
strength OS that it is and not worry about quantity.
Offering the greatest quality in a niche market is the best way
to survive against Bill's $$$ and Linus' groupies. Rational
advocacy of a solid platform is what is needed to increase the
growth rate of the userbase. Rabid fanaticism doesn't work and
is easily overlooked and upstaged. Just ask the poor SOB that
went to all that trouble to blow up the World Trade Towers and
then got bumped back to page five by OJ. :)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jack O'Neill Systems Administrator / Systems Analyst
jack@germanium.xtalwind.net Crystal Wind Communications, Inc.
Finger jack@germanium.xtalwind.net for my PGP key.
PGP Key fingerprint = F6 C4 E6 D4 2F 15 A7 67 FD 09 E9 3C 5F CC EB CD
enriched, vcard, HTML messages > /dev/null
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.4.10.9904230102180.75149-100000>