Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 17:54:02 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: kris@catonic.net (Kris Kirby) Cc: brett@lariat.org (Brett Glass), chip@wiegand.org (Chip Wiegand), chat@FreeBSD.ORG (FreeBSD Chat) Subject: Re: Just an observation - MUA's seen in the lists Message-ID: <200104131754.KAA14193@usr02.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0104131309160.90249-100000@spaz.huntsvilleal.com> from "Kris Kirby" at Apr 13, 2001 01:10:51 PM
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> > It's OK to use an unreliable machine for your MUA, just so long as > > your mission-critical data is backed up on a machine running a > > RELIABLE operating system! > > Hey! Wait a minute! Email *is* mission-critical. When was the last time > you went without email for a few days? :-) It is OK to have the MUA on a machine that is unreliable, so long as the email itself is stored and sent via a reliable machine. In other words, all most people run on their PC's is User Interface. If instead of looking at the MUA, you were to look at the first (historically: last in order) "Received:" timestamp line, you would get a better picture of what people are using as their mail server. The MUA numbers should come as no surprise to anyone: o For years, Jordan has been stating that FreeBSD is a server OS, not a desktop o Anytime some wants to make FreeBSD more suitable for desktop use, everyone jumps down their throat, and automatically (and incorrectly) assumes that this would make FreeBSD less useful as a server. o FreeBSD has not actively pursued desktop software: o FreeBSD has not lobbied Microsoft to port its "Office" suite of software o FreeBSD steadfastly refuses to choose a single official GUI and toolkit (this is one of the reasons Microsoft states they have not ported Office to Linux) o FreeBSD application training is not really transportable from one application to another, because there is no style guide, and the tools available could not enforce style guide conformance, even if there were one o FreeBSD does not have a standard install software system that is as sophisticated as InstallShield, for use by commercial software installation o FreeBSD has a number of "data interfaces" which, unlike procedural interfaces, are bound to vary between releases, thus limiting the total available market for any commercial software (see anything linked to libkva as an example of this). o FreeBSD does not have a standard method of installing and uninstalling startup and shutdown procedures for third party layered software that would allow such software to replace FreeBSD default components (e.g to replace Sendmail with MS Exchange for FreeBSD). o FreeBSD binaries only run on FreeBSD, and the FreeBSD ABI is significantly less popular than the Linux ABI, since the Linux people have actively pursued making Linux binaries run everywhere (this would be a big point in Linux' favor, if their ABI weren't so fungible) o FreeBSD management and operation is far from user friendly; thus a Microsoft product would be as hard to manage as any other package, well below Microsoft's usability standards: o Fixing this requires a "regitry" style system o FreeBSD's developement environment is nowhere near as usable for shallow programmers of desktop software as, for example, Visual BASIC or Visual C++. Really, FreeBSD is unsuitable for use as an MUA supporting desktop machine, unless your users are much more sophisticated than average. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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