Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 01:15:22 +1000 From: David Nugent <davidn@labs.usn.blaze.net.au> To: "Francisco Reyes" <francisco@natserv.com> Cc: "chat@freebsd.org" <chat@FreeBSD.ORG>, "Geir Eivind Mork" <gemork@online.no> Subject: Re: OS/2 users going to FreeBSD? :-) Message-ID: <199706231515.BAA01482@labs.usn.blaze.net.au> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 18 Jun 1997 11:29:16." <199706181529.LAA24912@federation.addy.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> I have seen several OS/2 users using/switching to FreeBSD (I am one > of them). > I can understand why (lack of IBM marketting), but I wonder how this > migration compares to other OS. Does anyone has any guess on > percentage of people coming to FreeBSD from other OS? (notice I said > guess. I don't think it is possible to come up with any real numbers > ). I guess you could count me as one, although I've used UNIX in one form or another a lot longer. I still keep current with it, and have occasionally still use it as a desktop environment. In general, the graphics is considerably faster than X, and the applications - like Win* I guess - are also very usable. However, I keep on going back to booting UNIX after a few brief days of enchantment with OS/2, but I rarely get so sick of it that I actually delete the partition. :-) I do keep getting frustrated about the things I *can't* change about it. This has nothing to do with marketing - either an OS does the job or it doesn't for me, and in OS/2's case, it does pretty well (mainly word processing in my case). The disincentive so far as work goes is that I've only come across a few places that actually use OS/2 and need contractors whereas UNIX-related work is very common. In fact, I haven't come across any at all in 2-3 years now. :-/ Still, I have two other machines here which run OS/2 full time. One is about to go (it runs a dialup bbs which is closing down), and my wife would be fairly annoyed if I changed her system over to UNIX, not to mention her attitude if I put a Windows disk anywhere near her machine - my life would not be worth living afterwards. :-) She loves it, and wouldn't run anything else at this time, and more so since she upgraded to Warp4. (I keep threatening that she'll boot it one morning to find FreeBSD there, which has been a running gag for some time. :-) Since she has taken to using the UNIX box fairly often these days when her machine as been 'taken over' by the kids - I don't think she'd mind half as much as she makes out). > The one thing that I don't know if there is something as good in > FreeBSD as in OS/2 are email software. I use PmMail and soon to get > PMInews. From what I have heard the other email software for OS/2 are > algo great. FWIW, I did the port of Pine to OS/2 a couple of years ago. I truely *hated* all of the os/2 mail packages I looked at. YMMV. But imho mail software under OS/2 does not in general get anywhere near the flexibility and power of MUA packages available for UNIX. PMMail looks pretty crappy when compared with emxh, it it isn't at all the only available option. As for IBM's Ultimail - bah - it is designed after entirely the wrong philosophy. Very little software in this area in OS/2 is done right, imho. They seem to go out of their way to look pretty, but when it comes to basic functionality, they seem to lack. I guess this is more a general reflection of software available on pc platforms when compared with the vastly more mature programs available under UNIX. PC software (or, rather, software for PC based operating systems) seems to be, in general, more shallow and designed for look and feel rather than functionality. The PC user is less technically demanding and seems to overlook the advantages in, say, regular expressions or editing text configuration files and scripts rather than chasing the mouse around popup dialogs. UNIX software authors don't tend to concentrate on looks at all - which is, rightly so, an issue for the window manager rather than applications per se. As an example, I remember the first time I started xmh. Yeach, blah... a really bland white screen with horrid 2d borders and a sticky and very unattactive fixed font. After half an hour of fiddling with X resources, I had it looking fairly nice, and I had to wonder why its author didn't sent out something decent as a default resource file. The answer, of course, is that xmh and X runs on all sorts of graphics hardware, some of which isn't color ro the nice resolutions I use, where my resource file would end in a really crappy result. :-) The fact that it has been around for so long, too, probably has something to do with it. However, its basic functionality is really quite good. I guess half the problem is that this enhanced functionality tends to scare the non-technical user off! Regards, David David Nugent - Unique Computing Pty Ltd - Melbourne, Australia Voice +61-3-9791-9547 Data/BBS +61-3-9792-3507 3:632/348@fidonet davidn@freebsd.org davidn@blaze.net.au http://www.blaze.net.au/~davidn/
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199706231515.BAA01482>