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Date:      Wed, 17 Sep 2003 12:37:12 -0700
From:      Johnson David <DavidJohnson@Siemens.com>
To:        Jon Mercer <jon.mercer@achean.com>
Cc:        freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Sorry.
Message-ID:  <200309171237.12609.DavidJohnson@Siemens.com>
In-Reply-To: <3F68B121.5020103@achean.com>
References:  <4BA256918ACE7449BD7896E65711C88B4A7F4C@1UPMC-MSX8.isdip.upmc.edu> <200309171132.04405.DavidJohnson@Siemens.com> <3F68B121.5020103@achean.com>

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On Wednesday 17 September 2003 12:08 pm, Jon Mercer wrote:

> 1. Desktop computing is hardly the area where massive efficiency is
> going to be all the rage in the future. Windows can hardly be
> described as the paragon of fast computing on the desktop.

But unfortunately, the desktop is all anyone thinks about. Just look at 
Linux. IBM, SGI and Sun are all gungho over Linux, the media is paying 
attention, it's being scaled up to the really big iron and scaled down 
to the smalled embedded devices. But all you ever hear from a lot of 
*Linux* advocates is "Linux will fail without the desktop".

> 2. On the server side, having an OS that is as efficient as possible
> is important because these servers often need to be more scalable
> than on the desktop to handle the increasing loads of growing
> businesses. It just strikes me that Linux, with more effort being
> placed into threading, etc. is better placed as a server OS than
> FBSD.

It's going to be a long long time before FreeBSD is ready for the IBM 
big iron or to replace the million dollar Solaris servers running the 
enterprise. But neither is Windows, but that's not stopping stupid 
execs from trying. Perception is everything in this market, like it or 
not.

But there's no reason for FreeBSD not to be running the print, file and 
web servers. There's no reason for it not to be the development 
workstation of choice. It ought to make an awesome POS terminal. It's 
still the number one choice for ISPs.

Maybe Linux will grab all the Fortune 500 companies. But I see no reason 
why FreeBSD can't grab all of the small business market.

David



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