Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 16:14:54 -0800 From: Astrodog <astrodog@gmail.com> To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: SPAM: Score 3.3: Re: Instead of freebsd.com, why not... Message-ID: <2fd864e05021416142cfe2249@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <515551513.20050215004727@wanadoo.fr> References: <9C4E897FB284BF4DBC9C0DC42FB34617641AE6@mvaexch01.acuson.com> <d9175cad05021205463a6c12fb@mail.gmail.com> <d9175cad050214084136d3b12c@mail.gmail.com> <515551513.20050215004727@wanadoo.fr>
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> This I will grant unconditionally. Windows costs a fortune, and for > companies of any size, it can cost as much or more to put Windows on the > machine than it does for the hardware itself. > > There are a lot of companies pirating Windows, though. In some > countries (the U.S. for example) this is only a minority of customers, > in other countries it is essentially everyone. Often this takes the > form of fudging on the number of licenses purchased vs. the number of > seats actually installed. > > If a company can use pirated copies of Windows with impunity, the cost > advantage of a truly free OS disappears. > > This is mostly due to exposure, as you note. There's nothing inherently > more or less secure about Windows (at least in recent versions based on > NT). > %60-some percent of webservers run Apache. More than 2 million of those run FreeBSD, (Almost as many as all of Linux combined) There's a bit more to it than exposure. > Much of the exposure is the result of changes made by Microsoft to > please the desktop market. If FreeBSD or other operating systems were > to replace Windows, they'd develop the same exposure, because desktop > users want features more than security (also true for corporate users in > many cases, sadly). > > > 3) Stability: FreeBSD is possibly the most stable OS currently in > > existence. For some people's desktops that does not matter. However, > > there are mission-critical desktops in existence and sometimes > > crashing is not allowed. > > Such as? ATMs come to mind, but not much else. A mission-critical > desktop also implies a mission-critical human being behind it, which is > quite rare (maybe a mission controller for a spacecraft, or something). > > > 4) Flexibility (especially mutliuser): This one is probably the most > > important. When dealing with desktops, the ability to make it act > > appropriately for the intended users is integral to its success or > > failure as a desktop OS. > > Unfortunately, this favors Windows, not other operating systems. > Corporate IT groups can force specific Windows environments on a network > of thousands of machines much more easily than they can with any other > operating system. They can force things to run on every machine when it > is booted. They can prevent users from logging in as local > administrators, and they can prevent the machine from giving users a > chance to gain administrative access before or during the boot process. > > None of this is possible with FreeBSD or with any other OS, as far as I > know. These features were market-driven. Many large customers _require_ > these features today. > NIS/NIS+/LDAP, can all do this quite well. Combined with NFS... hot damn, you have the same thing, except minus the whole overhead/multiuser issue below > The features you describe are merely cosmetic. What large organizations > want is the ability to control what's on the desktop to a far greater > degree. Windows actually allows this, or at least it does better at it > than any other general-purpose desktop OS. > > > 5) Ease of development: A place where non-windows becomes > > substantially more prevalent in the desktop market is the desks of > > Software Engineers. > > It depends on which environments they are programming for. Typically > software engineers run the OS that will run the software they write. Barring maybe VxWorks. > > In any case, they are such a tiny minority of the desktop population > that they can be ignored. > Definitly. > > Those of us that program for a living often choose Unix (or Unix-like) > > because it has a powerful terminal, good (and free/OSS) versioning > > software available, good (and in gcc's case free and OSS) compilers, > > excellent editors (free, OSS), excellent documentation systems (man is > > free and OSS, for instance), and wonderful debuggers (gdb...free, > > OSS). It also is capable of running the same software that we are > > running on our Unix servers so that we can work on applications that > > work with them in an environment that simulates the server. It is also > > remarkably stable during development. This makes debugging > > substantially simpler. > > Unfortunately, this assumes that the engineer is writing software for > UNIX. If he is writing for Windows (as most engineers are), he must run > Windows. > If he is following ANSI C, and keeps his code modular, for the most part, the OS its actually written on is irrelevent. > > Windows, however, is often not the environment on the server ... > > Most engineers are writing for the desktop. > > > 6) mutliusericity: (Yes, I know that's not a real word...) In > > general, Windows does not handle multiple simultaneous users. This is > > something that Unix was built around and thus is strong with. > > Very true. The NT code base does support multiple users, but the notion > of a GUI is so entrenched in Windows that this support is practically > invisible. > > UNIX, of course, was built as a timesharing system, and it handles > multiple users effortlessly. Indeed, the average PC today could service > thousands of simultaneous users under FreeBSD, if they used UNIX in the > classic way (from a terminal or terminal emulator). It's a pity that > this aspect of UNIX is so rarely used, although I've seen a few > examples. > > A good example of UNIX used in a classic way is the Internet Chess Club > (http://www.chessclub.com), which runs FreeBSD and supports thousands of > simultaneous users via terminal interfaces (the client programs used by > members of the club to play online chess are essentially dressed-up > telnet clients). It would be extremely difficult to even get this to > run under Windows, much less obtain any kind of performance. > > > The need to do this on a desktop is somewhat rare ... > > More than somewhat, particularly in small businesses and at home. > Desktops by nature are single-user systems. Only one person uses the > system at a time. Multiuser support isn't needed. UNIX handles this > well, but the desktop scarcely uses it. Windows handles it poorly, but > desktop users seldom need it. > > Serially multiple users aren't the same thing, and current versions of > Windows handle that pretty well, anyway (although not nearly with the > security of UNIX). > > True multiuser operation does exist on the desktop, but it's limited and > invisible. For example, on corporate desktops, some services on a local > machine may run under administrator accounts, whereas the current > desktop user will be logged in under a normal user account. This > prevents the local user from changing things on his own machine, which > is exactly what corporate IT groups prefer. > > Of course, this can be done even more effectively with UNIX, but > unfortunately it's not enough of a factor to influence desktop market > penetration. > > > Windows has a major fault with multiple users and appropriate storage > > of settings. > > Agreed. You can sign on as different users in Windows XP, but there's > tremendous overlap between users; it's convenient but not very secure. > This isn't the fault of the OS per se, but of the way applications (and > some system programs) are written for the OS, without multiuser > awareness. > > > Many applications (including M$ apps proper) do not > > separately store settings in a user-by-user basis and instead toss > > them into the centralised registry as a system setting. > > Yes. It's possible to use ACLs in the registry, but nobody does it (and > it's a bit dangerous because it's easy to get very confused). Yay for TrustedBSD. > > > This is both a security nightmare and a frustration to the various > > users. This situation simply doesn't come up in fBSD. If a user stores > > a setting, it is stored (generally) in their home directory safe from > > affecting other users. > > Yes. Of course, the user can simply choose to run as root when he boots > the system, and then he can blast everything that corporate IT has set > up. That can be prevented with Windows to a large extent. > Hrm. Every time I boot my system, it asks for a username, and password. If I don't know the root password.... I could boot it single user.... but even then, it STILL asks. > -- > Anthony > > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-advocacy-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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