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Date:      Sun, 11 Oct 1998 20:26:21 +0200
From:      Neil Blakey-Milner <nbm@rucus.ru.ac.za>
To:        Tim Vanderhoek <vanderh@ecf.utoronto.ca>, Nicholas Charles Brawn <ncb05@uow.edu.au>
Cc:        freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: age check :)
Message-ID:  <19981011202621.A16321@rucus.ru.ac.za>
In-Reply-To: <19981010133249.B21109@mrmell>; from Tim Vanderhoek on Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 01:32:49PM -0400
References:  <19981009200951.60385@welearn.com.au> <Pine.SOL.4.02A.9810092152480.23539-100000@banshee.cs.uow.edu.au> <19981010133249.B21109@mrmell>

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On Sat 1998-10-10 (13:32), Tim Vanderhoek wrote:
> If you happen to be at university, try comparing the ratio of
> fourth&fifth years running-Linux:running-FreeBSD to the ratio of first
> years running-Linux:running-FreeBSD.
> 
> That'll probably give you a more accurate answer.  Probably a little
> more satisfying answer, too.  :)

That definately doesn't work at my university, since the Honours and above
people seem pretty dedicated to Linux, which is what they really first got
interested in.

I've managed to convert an Honours student, and a third year student (the
only one who used Linux), and a few of my fellow second years, and most of
the first-years that use Linux.

Of course, most of them use the student server, which runs FreeBSD, and has
quite a history (if anyone remember Geoff Rehmet from 386BSD-conversion
days...) and about 550 user accounts, with an average of 40 people logged on
during the day, so convincing them that FreeBSD will do the job has been
quite easy. :)

As an example, we had a Linux machine hosting a Practical Marking System
server, which the CS1s (over 120 at a time) would look at through their
browsers, and it would run CGIs in the background querying databases, and
similar fun things, running on similar hardware, fall over after the first
few minutes.  The system was moved to the FreeBSD system, which handled it
fine, and had, in addition, about 30 people logged on at the time.  (This was
a stupid test in the beginning, because the person who designed the system
never asked the resident webmaster-type-thing (me) on how best to handle the
system, and didn't use mod_perl, and similar fun things on either machine.)

Of course, I'm sure there are tons of valid reasons why the Linux machine
could have fallen over without insulting the operating system itself, but it
did manage to convince people that FreeBSD was more stable.

Anyway, after all that, I'm 20 and 2 weeks or so.

Neil
-- 
Neil Blakey-Milner
nbm@rucus.ru.ac.za

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