Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 02:14:24 -0600 From: charon@freethought.org To: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: speaking of 3.4... Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19991124021424.00a59c30@nsit-popmail.uchicago.edu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.9911231012010.72429-100000@resnet.uoregon.ed u> References: <2049.943380341@localhost>
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I know this topic is quickly being talked to death, but here's my $0.02 on the non-technical side: The high frequency of releases makes users like myself (I use WinNT much of the time, am not a developer, and don't admin a network) not want to buy the CD's. Frighteningly for some of you, FreeBSD users like me are growing more and more numerous. I've used FreeBSD since 2.2.2, but first bought the CD's at 3.2. By the time I got the CD's, I basically couldn't use the ports collection on them. I needed ports that weren't on the CD's, which meant that I had to fetch them by hand, and by that time many of the ports had changed versions and required newer versions of ports than were _on_ the CD's. Also, by the time I got the CD's there were a lot of changes made to -STABLE, so there was no incentive to install an old version of the OS. _And_ XFree86 had a new version out. If -RELEASE's exsited on their own, self-consistant, and no one tore apart anyone for asking a question about an old release on -questions, then I would buy the CD's. But in the current system, with frequent releases that aren't much more than glorified snapshots, there is no incentive for me to buy the CD's, and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone else. So I guess my (naive) suggestion is that there are less frequent releases and then we'll have two set of users - RELEASE users and -STABLE users, with a division much more clear than presently. This would give FreeBSD the releases necessary to get users used to Win95/Win98 (notice the 3-year gap?) interested, but also have the edge-of-development stuff for those who want it. Just some thoughts from one of the masses. -Charon To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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