Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 15:17:33 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Liam J. Foy" <liamfoy@sepulcrum.org> Cc: advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: RE: Explaining FreeBSD features Message-ID: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNIEMDFBAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20050621173806.GA667@anarion>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: Liam J. Foy [mailto:liamfoy@sepulcrum.org] >Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 10:38 AM >To: Ted Mittelstaedt >Cc: Fafa Hafiz Krantz; advocacy@freebsd.org >Subject: Re: Explaining FreeBSD features > > >> Fafa, I've seen these kinds of efforts before and they are all >> generally doomed to failure. >> >> You see, the problem is that FreeBSD is not a general computer >> operating system product. It is a very specific product in fact. >> >> Now, the USES that FreeBSD can be put to are VERY general. BUT, >> do NOT make the mistake of confusing the fact that just because >> FreeBSD can be put to general use, that somehow it is a general >> product. It is not. >> >> FreeBSD is targeted at 2 main groups of people: >> >> 1) Very knowledgeable people who are using it for personal, or >> in-house corporate projects. >> >> 2) Very knowledgeable people who are using it to construct >> turnkey systems for customers who couldn't care less what is >> under the hood. >> >> By contrast, Windows and Linux are in fact, general computer >> operating system products. They are targeted at groups #1 and >> #2, but they are also targeted at group #3 which are: >> >> 3) People who barely know how to push a button who have a problem >> they need to fix with a computer operating system, and they >> really don't care if they understand how the fix works as long >> as it works. > >My 11 year old sister uses KDE and OpenOffice fine on FreeBSD. Your 11 year old sister didn't set it up. You did. YOU, not her, are the "customer" that FreeBSD is targeted at. >I think the >problem arrives when setting these things up. Once these are >setup, it's almost >the same as Windows in my personal opinion. I once seen an >Internet Cafe using >FreeBSD on about 40+ machines with KDE. Am sure these users >hardly noticed the >difference. > They did. That Internet Cafe met group #2. They constructed a turnkey system for their customers to use. >We should be promoting that what can be done on Linux(in terms >of desktop usage) >can be done on FreeBSD. > Absolutely. Just understand that the only people that this message does any good with are the more intelligent members of the computing public who are sick and tired of Windows and are ready to go to a real operating system. The average wanna-be power user does not have the patience or intelligence or whatever to read through a lot of instructions first, instead he just wants it to work like Windows - ie: stick in the install CD and be led by the hand through the setup process and end up with a cookie-cutter desktop like what everyone else has. >> >> >> This gives rise to a rather serious Catch-22 with FreeBSD: >> >> You need to really understand intimately how FreeBSD works >> and how computer software that runs on it works in order to >> get it to work well enough for you to learn intimately how it >> works. > >I disagree. By 'intimately' do you mean the internals? > No. I am using the word as a convenient label meaning "understanding that inside the CPU there's this thing called a processor that runs machine instruction code that is compiled from software written in a language called C, yadda yadda yadda..." In other words, you have to be the kind of person that is willing to sit down and read the instructions FIRST before plugging it in and snapping switches on. And even doing that you won't understand all the instructions until after you have turned it on and worked with it a little bit. Most consumers today (at least in the US) are used to every product they encounter, from a toaster to a car to a VCR, being built to be operated by the average 8 year old, so they are pretty lazy. Hell, a lot of products don't even come with instructions anymore since just about everyone that got the product immediately threw the instructions in the garbage. Linux today is written for these people, FreeBSD isn't. And, no amount of articles and how to guides is going to change that. Ted
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