Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 15:15:31 +0100 From: Bruce M Simpson <bms@spc.org> To: Matthias Buelow <mkb@incubus.de> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org, Maxi Combina <maxicombina@gmail.com> Subject: Re: filesystems not properly unmounted [OT] Message-ID: <20050606141531.GL734@empiric.icir.org> In-Reply-To: <42A454AF.3010908@incubus.de> References: <285af087050603095356601a3d@mail.gmail.com> <200506061249.j56Cn1vd018910@lurza.secnetix.de> <285af08705060606255e26aa5b@mail.gmail.com> <42A454AF.3010908@incubus.de>
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[Cc list trimmed] On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 03:50:39PM +0200, Matthias Buelow wrote: > I don't understand this "we need to compete with Windows on the desktop" > thing. I've never considered Windows to be particularly useful as a > desktop environment, why should the Unix systems compete with it? I disagree. People are increasingly looking to open source systems to offer a real alternative to the 'dominant paradigm' of Windows. The points made about cross-porting environments such as UWin, Cygwin etc. seem irrelevant here. I have worked with all of them in depth, and I can testify that they are of limited usefulness -- Windows is totally different =66rom UNIX, inside and out. Those systems which don't adapt to the new rules of the game will fall by the wayside, or find themselves increasingly forced into a niche. FreeBSD is no exception to this. It would be the height of conceit to imagine that FreeBSD's destiny lies in the server space alone, and the amount of work that goes into this system serves to demonstrate that the grass roots developer base at large are aware of this, even if the pundits amongst them don't voice this as an opinion. Just because I prefer to run WindowMaker and lots of shell sessions on my open source UNIX machine doesn't mean that I shouldn't care about the way these things are headed, because ultimately the value of this technology (and thus the opportunities to work on it) is determined by how useful it is to people at large. Regards, BMS
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