Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 16:06:50 +0100 From: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be> To: "Paul C. Boyle" <paulcb_mcse@yahoo.com>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: GUI question. Message-ID: <p05101403b8a5459d1362@[10.0.1.26]> In-Reply-To: <200203010532.AAA17582@alpha.vaxxine.com> References: <200203010532.AAA17582@alpha.vaxxine.com>
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At 12:33 AM -0500 2002/03/01, Paul C. Boyle wrote: > I just want to get an idea of what people are using for a desktop GUI. Aqua under MacOS X. ;-) > Myself I prefer KDE. For *BSD (including FreeBSD), I would generally prefer no GUI -- I use these types of OSes mainly as servers, which almost never need anything like X, etc.... For those cases where I might actually need an X server and a window manager, I'd probably prefer something fairly light, most likely fvwm or something similar. > This posting is mainly directed to the OLDIES. I got my start with BSD 2.9 on a PDP 11/70 in 1989. Do I count? ;-) > Do you use FreeBSD as a desktop workstation or do you still clean windows. I try to keep my life as Microsoft-free as possible. On servers, I prefer to use FreeBSD (on x86 hardware), OpenBSD (on most everything else, other than SPARC64), and Solaris (on SPARC64). For firewalls, I much prefer OpenBSD on pretty much whatever. On desktops, I prefer Macintosh. > Does FreeBSD do everything you need for a workstation? That's hard for me to judge. I simply never use it for this role. > Personaly I think KDE is elegant. And I can't see waisting a 17" flat screen > monitor on just a black and white console. For a B&W console, I'd stick an old 15" freebie (or near-freebie) monitor on the thing and be done with it. Better yet, connect it to a KVM switch. > I see in the news that IBM is supporting LInux and maybe HP is as well. > Why do you suppose they overlooked FreeBSD. Linux has the market mindshare. It is also a sufficiently ill-defined quantity and the Linux-side players are sufficiently ignorant of most business/marketing/propaganda issues that they can be relatively easily subverted. The companies are well aware of the fact that *BSD was born via trial-by-fire here in the US between the hacker and business communities (and all the ultra-nasty lawsuits, etc...). The business types know that there are still plenty of players on the other side of the fence that are still around and have very long memories and a great deal of distrust that has been built up over the years, and they know that they're not going to be too successful in twisting *BSD to suit their whim. Therefore, it's a lot easier for IBM, HP, etc... to play the Microsoft-like "embrace-and-extend" philosophy with Linux than it is to try to do that with *BSD. The Linux community has never really been so seduced by the dark side, and therefore they make relatively easy prey. Not so the *BSD types -- we may not be as well known in the market, but we have earned our scars in battle and wear them as badges of honor. > Not that I would want a corporate stering committe, that could compromise > quality for deadlines. > > What do you think? Some would claim that it's a licensing issue (GPL vs. BSD), and that the companies don't want to put their corporate family jewels in a true open source environment, but I don't think that this is the real problem at all. I think that the real problem is that they want to be more Microsoftian than Microsoft, and they know that they've already burned the *BSD community, so they figure that you can't play that trick twice on the same people. Since they have not yet had these kinds of problems with the Linux folks, they can embrace them very tightly -- as you would a sheep, just before slaughtering it. You gotta watch really closely to see what the heck that thing is in their other hand. -- Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles@skynet.be> Do you hate Microsoft? Do you hate Outlook? Then visit the Anti-Outlook page at <http://www.rodos.net/outlook/>; and see how much fun you can have. "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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