From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Dec 27 13:07:23 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B2EFB16A41F for ; Tue, 27 Dec 2005 13:07:23 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from malcolm.kay@internode.on.net) Received: from ash25e.internode.on.net (ash25e.internode.on.net [203.16.214.182]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EEA4F43D68 for ; Tue, 27 Dec 2005 13:07:19 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from malcolm.kay@internode.on.net) Received: from alpha.home (ppp131-136.lns2.adl2.internode.on.net [59.167.131.136]) by ash25e.internode.on.net (8.12.9/8.12.6) with ESMTP id jBRD79G7042543; Tue, 27 Dec 2005 23:37:09 +1030 (CST) (envelope-from malcolm.kay@internode.on.net) From: Malcolm Kay Organization: at home To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, danial_thom@yahoo.com Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 23:37:03 +1030 User-Agent: KMail/1.8 References: <20051224225721.17983.qmail@web33307.mail.mud.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <20051224225721.17983.qmail@web33307.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200512272337.03661.malcolm.kay@internode.on.net> Cc: rod person Subject: Re: BSD Question's. X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 13:07:23 -0000 On Sun, 25 Dec 2005 09:27 am, Danial Thom wrote: > > Schwab Streetsmart > Accounting Software (CA) > Quicken > Photoshop > Adobe Acrobat (for creating PDFs) > > Those are the ones I use daily. Surely there are > some half-assed alternatives for some of these, > but if I have to use something inferior to use > FreeBSD then thats a point against it. > This is all a question of the applications you need. My game is full custom integrated circuit design and suitable CAD software is available, at a price, on most unix style systems including Solaris, HP-UX, various Linux distributions and FreeBSD. In this field it is the Windows half-assed alternatives that are distinctly inferior. > Also, what you missed, was that I mentioned that > you can be relatively sure that any hardware will > have drivers for windows, while with FreeBSD > you're never quite sure. Its also nice when you > get a new printer or scanner to not have a 3 day > project to get it to work. > For sure Windows has drivers such as the WNT postscript driver that stuffs up scaling calculations for certain target resolutions of the photolithography machines so that art work generated from PCB layout packages is several percent out in size, and is therfore of course useless. It took much more than 3 days to track down the problem and generate a utility to post process the Microsoft postscript output to turn it into something usable. Eventually we discovered the problem was admitted somewhere in the Microsoft Knowledge Base and had been known for sometime without any upgrade or work around offered. Such simple known problems just do not persist in FreeBSD. > The only point I made was that FreeBSD is focused > on server functions and that is justified by the > simple fact that it will never be as useful as > windows; if for no other reason than there simply > aren't the resources for FreeBSD to be a good > server and also a competitive desktop. > The Windows resources are really applied over a rather narrow range of popular applications. Go outside that range and and other systems are more than competitive. Malcolm Kay