From owner-freebsd-newbies Sun May 28 16:31:33 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Received: from gargoyle.apana.org.au (brisba6.lnk.telstra.net [139.130.66.200]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5778437B9E3 for ; Sun, 28 May 2000 16:31:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au) Received: (from uucp@localhost) by gargoyle.apana.org.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) id JAA06717; Mon, 29 May 2000 09:31:16 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au) Received: from roadrunner.apana.org.au(203.3.126.132), claiming to be "ROADRUNNER" via SMTP by gargoyle.apana.org.au, id smtpdSy6715; Mon May 29 09:31:09 2000 Message-ID: <008b01bfc8fd$541f9420$847e03cb@ROADRUNNER> From: "Doug Young" To: "leegold" Cc: References: <000501bfc8f2$e3ea30c0$cedda4d8@leegold1> <003f01bfc8f4$f5a59c30$847e03cb@ROADRUNNER> <000a01bfc8f9$013844e0$cedda4d8@leegold1> Subject: Re: any good books? Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 09:34:53 +1000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2919.5600 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.5600 Sender: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > one thing, that caught me off guard was the lack of support for the newer > video cards. i got a shiny new card - highly rated - that's not x86 > supported. typical newbie blunder. got me peaved. I've got caught out there before .... my choice of desktop O/S is Solaris, & try getting an AGP card it likes !!!. The choice is between the totally crazy pricing of Matrox (around $400 in Australia) & the extremely good & well priced (but typically hard to find) ATI Rage Pro. > > i've taken a mess of programming, computer- college level courses, nothing > i've seen is as tuff a nut to crack as unix sysadmin. And that's what's > happening - FreeBSD and maybe to a lesser extent Linux, requires the USER to > become their own sysadmins. and that ain't easy my friend. think about it. > Actually the commercial unixes do come with "proper" docs. Both Solaris, & even more so, SCO docs are among the best on the planet. I figure the difference is that when you charge thousands for an O/S, clients can demand intelligible docs, but with "free" operatings like FreeBSD & the linuxes, the developers are basically code crunchers to whom docs are simply a distraction. At least the FreeBSD stuff is partly intelligible, as compared with those unbelievably dreadful linux HOWTO's. The reason I use FreeBSD is that its cheap ... I do have scottish ancestry :) .. , its reliable in a server mode, and once one figures stuff out its really simple to configure. The whole problem, as you have stated, is that proper (meaning in step_by_step format) explanations of even the most basic functions are somewhat difficult to find. I messed around with various linuxen for years without getting anywhere fast. The docs are typically written in some language not of planet earth (possibly martian or something even weirder), the faithful exhibit a religious zeal like nothing I've seen before (I swear they all face California to chant their "Hail Linuses" / "Our Linuses " or whatever oddball rites they perform, & it doesn't take a lot of lurking in their mailing lists / newsgroups to see that they believe Bill Gates is the Antichrist). Worst of all, the RedHat / Mandrake disasters I used proved to be so unstable they were worse than useless. Some of the regulars in these lists use slackware & claim its acceptably stable, but whats the point ......why confuse oneself with a second poorly documented O/S ?? At least FreeBSD does a very good job as a back-end server. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message