From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Aug 4 13:11:52 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9785D37B400 for ; Sun, 4 Aug 2002 13:11:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from jive.SoftHome.net (jive.SoftHome.net [66.54.152.27]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 1639C43E3B for ; Sun, 4 Aug 2002 13:11:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from yid@softhome.net) Received: (qmail 22405 invoked by uid 417); 4 Aug 2002 20:11:43 -0000 Received: from shunt-smtp-out-0 (HELO softhome.net) (172.16.3.12) by shunt-smtp-out-0 with SMTP; 4 Aug 2002 20:11:43 -0000 Received: from unknown ([216.194.1.154]) (AUTH: LOGIN yid@softhome.net) by softhome.net with esmtp; Sun, 04 Aug 2002 14:11:41 -0600 Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2002 16:09:43 -0400 From: Joshua Lee To: Peter Leftwich Cc: FreeBSD-Questions@FreeBSD.Org Subject: Re: Oh man I'm going to get flamed Message-Id: <20020804160943.7ee7c4f5.yid@softhome.net> In-Reply-To: <20020802185133.X93594-100000@earl-grey.cloud9.net> References: <20020802185133.X93594-100000@earl-grey.cloud9.net> Organization: Plan B Software Labs X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.8.0claws (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd4.6) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, 2 Aug 2002 19:01:50 -0400 (EDT) Peter Leftwich wrote: > Just hear me out *grin* > > It would include the latest XFree86, KDE (or whatever most resembles > the familiar StartButton), and OpenOffice. Out of the box. It would > include viewers and players for common media -- practically built-in > to KDE and its menus -- for files of type *.pdf, *.ra, *.asx, *.swf, > *.doc, *.mov, *.qt,*.mpeg, *.mpg, *.mp3 and many other popular file > types. cd /usr/ports/misc/instant-workstation && make install && make clean Incidentally, there is a Live-CD for demonstrating such a configuration from NetBSD. Though NetBSD is actually somewhat less user friendly and has less software selection than FreeBSD; so it's not the solution you're looking for unless you need to salvage old non-PC hardware at which it is unparalleled. FreeBSD is not Windows, it is not Mandrake Linux (shudder), and most BSD users don't want it that way. It is very useable IMHO not only as a server, but also as a *workstation* OS, but that's not identical to a "desktop" OS yet according to what most desktop consumers want. (Most people in my experiences in supporting friends and co-workers don't even know what to do at an MS-DOS prompt anymore thanks to Windows, much less the real power of shells, sed, awk, perl, and friends.) FreeBSD is best either for servers or for very technically competant people who like to fiddle with the system and write the occasional program or script. There will always be a useful niche for FreeBSD, just as Unix in general never will die, and it doesn't need to be a Windows-killer to do so. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message