Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1998 11:01:40 -0500 From: Nikolas Kauer <nkauer@students.wisc.edu> To: "'dg@root.com'" <dg@root.com> Cc: Brian Behlendorf <brian@hyperreal.org>, Joey Garcia <bear@pacificnet.net>, "advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG" <advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Simple End-User Unix: Learning from Apple Message-ID: <01BD6EA7.32263340.nkauer@students.wisc.edu>
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> For those that have been in this for awhile like me, the battle is > Windows vs. Unix. Which variants of Unix aren't important; what's at stack is > the very philosophy of free and creative thinking. You say: Whoa! What has > he been smoking! Actually Van Jacobson (father of TCP/IP) put it best > (paraphrased) 'With Windows, all you can do is what they let you do. If there > isn't a button for it, then you can't do it. That's the fundamental > difference > between Windows and Unix - With Unix you can string arbitrary commands > together (using pipes) and do something much grander then the individual > components would seemingly allow.' Thanks for pointing out the "true beauty" of Unix. Maybe we should keep this in mind and just acknowledge that newbie Joe User will not be able to appreciate the merits of FreeBSD, Linux, you-name-it-Unix unless he/she wants to and actually does spend a fair amount of time learning the stuff. In this view, trying to make Unix simple (in the sense of Microsoft's philosophy) is predetermined to fail if you do not compromise its strengths. Rhapsody, originally, was an attempt to do the impossible (easy windows on top, strong Unix underneath). Now, "Apple [...] expects Rhapsody to begin life as a server OS. Third parties hailed Apple's caution in touting Rhapsody as a general-purpose OS. [...] Apple will deploy Rhapsody to people who can use it [...]. It's not at the plug-and-play level yet. [...] The [Rhapsody] plan is complementary to the Mac OS [...]" (http://www.zdnet.com/macweek/mw_1206/nw_rethink.html) Efforts to promote Unix will always primarily address the (naturally limited) number of sophisticated ("hacker-type") users, who are able to work their way and willing to share their insights with the community. We don't care how many we are !!! Welcome to the club. Advocacy mailing list closed. :-) Any objections? PS Just playing Unix's advocate. --------------------------------------- Nikolas Kauer, kauer@pheno.physics.wisc.edu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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