Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 09:30:41 -0800 (PST) From: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com> To: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Rant: What are we? Message-ID: <199803301730.JAA15302@pau-amma.whistle.com>
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Various folks have said lots of things regarding the "character" of FreeBSD-newbies. I would like to emphasize a point that was mentioned earlier: each of us is a "newbie" about something. >From reading messages on this list, I get the impression that most of these message are from folks who are new to UNIX. My background is different: I've been administering UNIX systems since 1986 (and other types of systems since 1969). However, until about a month ago, I had never done anything on a FreeBSD system (though I did do some things with BSD/OS systems about 3 or 4 years ago...). And I will also confess that my major was Information & Computer Science.... (Further, I use FreeBSD only at work. At home, I use SunOS 4.x & Solaris 2.x, with which I'm far more familiar....) However, dealing with FreeBSD as a fairly straightforward BSD UNIX system is not where I find all that much mystery. That role is reserved for the PC hardware... and the BIOS peculiarities... and trying to imagine what someone who has evidently been using this kind of hardware in other (such as M$) environments might be meaning. (I do not, and will not, knowingly use M$ products.) There seems to be a presumption that the person administering the machine will have a knowledge of the hardware implementations that I find astonishing -- and unless I happen to be lucky enough to actually have the documentation that came with a given system, I have no way of knowing what cards are in it, what kind of CPU it has, or much of anything else. (Well, that's not strictly true: I found that by watching the messages at boot-time, the kernel issues messages about what it thinks it found, and the "dmsg" command displays a copy of these, usually.) Also, my interest in FreeBSD is "different" from (some) others, in that my responsibility is maintaining a set of FreeBSD (and a couple of Solaris) boxes for other folks (so they can get their work done). To that end, for example, I'm concerned with such things as ensuring that the server machines run well with minimal disruption (which implies a lot). Back to the topic: folks who are "new" to FreeBSD each have areas of "newbie-ness" & areas of knowledge. All it takes is for a single area (whether it be the software or the hardware) to be unfamiliar for a person to feel like a newbie.... Cheers, david -- David Wolfskill dhw@whistle.com (650) 577-7158 pager: (650) 401-0168 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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