Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 23:10:06 -0400 From: "Marcel Mason" <marcel@nunanet.com> To: "arthur" <arthur@col.auracom.com> Cc: "Tim Gerchmez" <fewtch@serv.net>, <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: How important is "the OS?" Message-ID: <000c01bda0af$ece39260$c72ff7c7@morrigan>
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-----Original Message-----
From: arthur <arthur@col.auracom.com>
Date: Thursday, June 25, 1998 10:37 PM
Subject: Re: How important is "the OS?"
> Unfortuneatly, to a wide majority, the home computer is nothing more
>than an appliance, or form of entertainment, and that makes the above
>statement very true, and very depressing. Although the up side to that
>is that hardware prices have become ridiculously low compared to years
>gone past, and that makes me sooooo happy.
Yes... there is that (the cheap hardware), now if so much of it wasn't
plug-n-pray I be a lot happier <grin>. Your also dead on the money
re: what people use their machines for but there may be a reason for
why they are choosing the O/S's that they do. Unfortunately, at this
time, there is not a lot available for *nix that your "average" user
wants/needs/desires/etc..... I did a lot of searching around for both
the O/S *and* the applications I could run on what ever O/S I
decided on. Godd 'ole MS would have been a real easy choice
based on *only* the applications side of it.
I can get office suites, graphics programs, HTML editors, Internet
suites, games galore, and more shareware/freeware than you can shake
a stick at. Unfortunately the same is not true for FreeBSD. As such,
unless someone can point me in the direction of a decent HTML
editor for *nix, I still need Win9x (horrors, I supose I could create &
edit web pages in pico or vi }}}}}} shudder {{{{{ but I'd rather have
a *nix version of Arachnophilia or Galts WebMaster Pro).
> OK, I'm sticking my neck out here for a good thrashing, but! ... since
>this is "newbies" it might be a good forum to make this statement. In my
>own personal opinion it almost seems that with the easier net access,
>easier as apposed to 6-7 years ago, people that are getting frustrated
>with MS's products go looking for something else, and that, in a way, has
>made trying a unix varient "trendy" for lack of a better term. Those that
>don't mind getting down and dirty with config files will stick with it,
>while others don't.
I've got to say that I agree with the first part, people are getting
frustrated with MS (I believe) and they are looking for something else
but I see the majority of them heading for the MAC G3 store. It would
be nice to see *nix a trendy O/S, even to the point where there
was enough of us here (locally speaking) to form a user group.
> Please, correct me if you feel my opinion is wrong, but that's just the
>way I see things, and since this is a list of new-to-FreeBSD/unix type
>users I'd appreciate hearing everyone's reason for looking into this
>type of operating system.
Got tired of MS coming tumbling down around my ears and having
to constantly upgrade the hardware to keep up with the software
demands. FreeBSD will run on a 486 @ 33 with 8 Meg of RAM *way
better* than the same machine could run Win9x. Rising software
pricing was also a factor, why would anyone in their right mind
want to pay $500+ for an office suite when one ships for almost
nada on the FreeBSD CD-ROM?
Also got *REAL* tired of having little or no control over what system
resources were being used for what and when. I had that
control back in the days of DOS ... I wanted it back again.
> If anyone didn't catch my impression above, I feel that the popularity
>and growth of unix varients is on a major upswing. And not to sound like
>a history buff, but without the earlier beginnings of unix, there would be
>no internet today. (my opinion of course)
It would be nice, but it's not a real problem if a major upswing does
not happen. The FreeBSD, Linux, and other free projects will (I hope)
continue in the manner they do now.
> I agree, it's comments like these that can bring out very interesting
>and enlightening conversations without causing an uproar, well I hope
>my "trendy" statement doesn't cause me too much pain ;) ... as I duck
>under my desk and hit the send key. (LOL).
Ah heck, trendy is o/k with me.... bell-bottoms are trendy and they
are making a big splash with my daughter <grin>
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