Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 11:13:32 +0000 From: labrinop@pop.vaniercollege.qc.ca To: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: How important is "the OS?" Message-ID: <199806271515.LAA08865@pteradactyl>
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On 26-Jun-98 Marcel Mason wrote: > FreeBSD will run on a 486 @ 33 with 8 Meg of RAM *way > better* than the same machine could run Win9x. The two sayings i most remember about Microsoft software are: 1) Windows is the only program that can make a 486 seem slow! 2) Office 97 is the first application that brings a Pentium to its knees! I remember using Microsoft products (MBASIC and M80) on a CP/M-80 machine (Microsoft was still working out of someones garage back then, it think), Anyway, i gave up on Microsoft in 1992, i had just purchased MASM (v5.0 i believe), and immediately started to play with it, to try out the new features. I did a debug of a binary and found it was generating the wrong opcodes, i pulled out the Intel 486 reference manual to double-check the opcode, and it was generating the wrong opcodes! I called Microsoft tech-support to see it there was a patch or something available, and they tried to convince me it wasn't a bug! Also, when i was looking for a C/C++ compiler (this was all before i had heard of FreeBSD), i tried 'Microsoft v7 with SDK' and 'Borland 3.1', (both new at the time). Guess which one i purchased, and i have never looked back since. The first UN*X i used was SCO, learned a lot on it (and still think sysadmsh is a great interface). Then around 1996 a friend bought FreeBSD 2.1.0 to install on his machine, but he didn't want to repartition his hdisk and gave the CDs to me. I installed it, fell in love with it (source code and all), and i still have 2.2.6 at home, and 2.2.5 on my machine at work I have a second machine at home which i wanted to install FreeBSD on, to play with networking (they both have NICs), but no CD drive. All I had to do was mount the CD under the ftp directory, and with bootdisk in hand, was able to install over anonymous ftp. Coolest thing i ever saw, let Windows95 beat that! To anti-quote Charles Dickens: Microsoft Windows, there is more grave then gravy in it. PeterL To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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