Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 10:02:18 -0700 (PDT)
From: Tim Gerchmez <fewtch@serv.net>
To: Marcel Mason {Personal} <marcel@nunanet.com>
Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: How important is "the OS?"
Message-ID: <XFMail.980626100218.fewtch@serv.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.3.94.980625132237.11168A-100000@natsiq.nunanet.com>
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On 25-Jun-98 Marcel Mason {Personal} wrote:
> While I agree completely with your intent the MS/OS itself is pretty
> cheap compared to the MS software you run on it.
That's true, although if your conscience doesn't bother you about such things,
just about any commercial software package can be found on the Net free, if you
know where to look...
> I spec'ed out a new
> "built for *nix machine" recently and when I told them I didn't want
> Win95 on it the first thing they did *after* asking me if it was
> really a MAC I wanted was knock $125 Cdn. off the price. The looks I
> got were just too good to ignore so I told them I wanted FreeBSD 2.2.6,
> Xwindows, and Enlightenment installed as well :-}
ROFL!!! I would have loved to see their faces when you told these sales droids
you wanted FreeBSD, X and Enlightenment... they probably went to the back to
look for a guru, and told you they would contact the manager and to call back
later about it...
> Your "average" user is going to by either a Win95 machine or a MAC, all
> software installed, Internet ready, take it out of the box, plug it in,
> hit the power button system regardless (IMHO) of what other options
> are available.... That is what the "average" user wants, that is what
> MS & MacIntosh provide ..... that's why they're rich, they saw the
> market & filled the void.
Too true... of course the average user also wants to add some software on,
usually games. So they get a store-bought PC with the basic package (MS Office
97 standard edition, usually, and MSIE 4.0, with a modem), and add some games
on CDROM... and that's it... To me that is so incredibly boring, I'd rather
lie in a grave for a while than use such a system.
> Almost ... At one point I was 50% of the people in a community of a
> little over 4,000 who did *anything* with any *nix. At this point,
> 5 years later, there are double that number .... it's a start
..and I have finally joined the fray, after thinking for so long that I would
*never* have any interest or need for a Unix system. All I needed was to give
it a good try. Now I'm hooked, and this is making computing exciting again,
like it was in 1983 when I got my first computer (a Commodore 64)... I couldn't
sleep nights, I would wake up in the morning and jump out of bed to turn it on
and discover more... Unix is becoming like that to me.
> One of the reasons when Windows first came out I said "It's a fad, it will
> die & I'm not gonna be stuck with a graphic interface that no one uses
> or delevops software for". I was obviously wrong .... there are not
> too many out there who want to play with any system configurations, and
> if they do it is assumed that "Power Tools" will do it for them ....
> ie, they (the user) has little control over any tweeking.
Well, the control can be had, but it's buried in the registry, and information
is difficult to come by. It can be done, but it's much more difficult to tweak
a Win95 system to perfection than it was with Win 3.1 (since most of the tweaks
for that were in system.ini or were DOS-based).
> Well .... I have my Unix dual boot machine at home, my Unix box at
> work, and a new Unix only machine on the way to my door, my kids
> (well one of them anyway) already uses FreeBSD at home and because
> of that he got a summer job at a local ISP (he's 15 btw).
Cool... maybe I'm wrong, not all kids are interested only in gaming, especially
teenagers... I'm more concerned with the younger ones though...
> You did a great job, something I think that many have thought of but
> few have committed to e-paper.....
>
> Thanks
Thanks yourself for the comments...
----------------------------------
E-Mail: Tim Gerchmez <fewtch@serv.net>
Date: 26-Jun-98
Time: 08:37:51
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