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Date:      Tue, 18 Jul 2000 11:03:06 -0700
From:      David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com>
To:        leegold <goldtech@worldpost.com>
Cc:        freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: new books, changing my pt. of view
Message-ID:  <39749BDA.8E6A214B@acuson.com>
References:  <000b01bff0cb$f90fe8e0$57e17ad1@beefstew>

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leegold wrote:
> 
> Isn't anybody worried that the new O'Reilly books in the making will leave
> the newbie w/the short end of the stick paper documentation-wise? Imo, this
> is the current state of affairs.

The day that ORA publishes "Learn FreeBSD in 7 Hours" is the day I build
a bonfire in my back yard and start cleaning out my bookshelf :-)

If someone has absolutely no experience with Unix, they will do much
better by getting "Unix for Dummies", reading it until they learn enough
that the remainder of the book is insulting, and then picking up an
O'Reilly book. Dummies books are great for getting introduced to foreign
topics. I still pick them up from time to time. But that's not
O'Reilly's charter.

> I know I'll be publicly flogged for saying this but NT is easier to learn
> and is apparently an easier OS to document for the newbie ( by is very
> nature and culture ) than Unix a.k.a. FreeBSD. I am primarily talking about
> CLIENTS - yeah I think NT workstation is a good client. Kneejerks that it
> crashes is not true Imo.

FreeBSD has never catered to the newbie crowd, and I doubt it ever will.
This is a Good Thing. A lot of the simplicity of NT is at the expense of
stripping away user control over the system. NT is a "one size fits all"
operating system, while Unix is a "have it your way" system.

David


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