Date: Tue, 21 Apr 1998 11:25:37 +0200 From: Michael Schuster <Michael.Schuster@utimaco.co.at> To: Scott J F Kilgour <sck@globalnet.co.uk> Cc: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD Message-ID: <353C6611.9BEBD7C4@utimaco.co.at> References: <01bd6c74$f5791040$56547ec2@sjfk>
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> Scott J F Kilgour wrote: > > Can u help? > > I have been reading some fact sheets on FreeBSD, and it all seems > quite interesting, then again, quite complicating. > > Is it a programming language that a non-mathematician can use. I have > been told it is quite handy for designing personal > icons, folders etc. It seems that a clarification (at least one :-) is necessary: FreeBSD is an operating system (OS). The main task of an OS is to abstract from that actual hardware with its own special properties you are using (like CPU, hard disk numbers, size(s) and sectors per track, screen size and colours, keyboard type, etc.) and to provide a) the user (to a lesser extent) and b) applications (see below) with a "generalised", an abstract machine that is the same (more or less) no matter what hardware you are actually using. In general, an OS offers services to the application (e.g. a file system, network, user I/O, etc). The quality of an OS is largely (sp?) defined by the power and flexibility of the services, and by the OS's availability for many platforms (ie. hardware configurations). A programming language is a tool describing - again in an abstract way, using so-called "statements" - how to combine an OS's services into manipulating a set of data (like pictures, user input, whatever) in a way conforming to certain requirements (eg. "I want to do ray tracing with a zillion colours"). There's two types of programming languages: compiled and interpreted. Compiled languages are translated once into (native) machine language to run on a given set of hardware plus OS (the result is called a "program" or "application"), whereas interpreted languages do this translation statement by statement while your "program" is running (in this case, the statements plus the special program translating them are called the "application"). >From your questions I gather that you are actually lookin for an application to perform a task. So, the question actually is: what do you actually want to do? List your requirements, and then ask again. Ah, yes, freebsd-doc is about documentation of and for the FreeBSD project - go to freebsd-questions for this! > My young cousin has been blabbering on about it. very nice of him! > SCOTT KILGOUR -- Michael Schuster To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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